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Avatar: The Last Airbender

2022-05-24T09:47:02Z

195.194.119.220: /* Legend of Korra */

{{/co/}}
{{awesome}}

'''TL;DR''' a setting for AZN kung-fu and high magic without being the over-the-top [[Exalted]] and not the highbrow [[Legend of the Five Rings]].

Let's say you want something that is fantasy, set in a large complex world that in no way rips off [[J.R.R. Tolkien]], is presented in visual form and is just well made all around. Well, Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko had come to your aid with '''Avatar: The Last Airbender''' and its new followup [[FAIL|'''The Legend of Korra'''.]] It is in no way related to [[Avatar|James Cameron's similarly titled work]] (thank god).

== Setting ==

You have a world modeled primarily off Asia (in particular dynastic [[China]]), plus some people can magically manipulate simple matter using martial arts moves called "bending." Benders can manipulate one and only one of the Earth, Air, Fire or Water elements. The exception to this rule is one person called the "Avatar" who can master all four types of bending, and universally regarded as a spiritual leader (think: the Dalai Lama). There is only ever one Avatar in each generation, who is the reincarnation of the previous Avatar and can remember (converse with the ghosts of) previous Avatars.

[[File:Avatar-.The.Last.Airbender.full.1161878.jpg|thumb|750px|right|The continent of the Avatar universe, only slightly inspired by [[China]] - The Republic City from the second series is situated on the western coast of the Earth Kingdom.]]
The world has one language and four nations:

* The '''Water Tribes''': Hunter-gatherer Inuit-like people who live in the North and South polar regions. The South Pole tribe consists of stereotypical Inuit, whereas the ones living at the North Pole got bored of making simple igloos and carved their ''entire city'' out of ice. Then they added canals to troll the physicists. Korra was born in the South. There is also a water tribe scattered in equatorial swamps that manipulate the swamp vines by bending the water saturating the vines.
**The Northern and Southern Water tribes are Inuit and First Nations analogues, even casting Native Americans in the Netflix Live action (people tend to overlook that historically, the Indigenous Peoples of both Americas crossed from Asia, and so remain very genetically close to Asia.) the Swamp Tribe is like Southeast Asians living in a Louisiana Bayou.
**The Water Tribes were notable for not only creating a society in the barren poles, but doing so within proximity to two portals to the [[Chaos Wastes|Spirit World]]. A third would be created in the second series.
**The Northern Water Tribe is the first of the two, and is notably more advanced than their southern cousins, who are implied to be a mere colony, with the North often interfering in Southern politics, or sending their exiles there.
**That being said, a point of contention between the two tribes was that the Northern Water Tribe left the Southerners on their while the Fire Nation was raiding them for 100 years; after the Air Nomad genocide, the Fire Nation wanted to stop the Avatar from reincarnating within the Water Tribe, so they arrested all Water Benders they could in the South, which was weaker than the North.

* The '''Earth Kingdom''': A large loose continental power ruled out of the massive fortified city of Ba Sing Se. Wealthy and prosperous, they are masters of resource harvesting with bending as a safe and efficient means of mining metals and rare earths, and reduced labour required for farming.
**Culturally diverse, the Earth Kingdom takes a lot of notes from Imperial China, especially the Warring States and Ming era China. Like the Warring States/Three Kingdom period, the entire "Kingdom" is actually divided into several provinces, led by an appointed Governor or a King (Bumi from Omashu) who leads their state in their own right, nominally paying tribute to the Earth King in Ba Sing Se. In the second series, after the assassination of the Earth Queen, the entire Kingdom actually fractures back into independent states, [[Great Crusade|each one having to be reconquered by]] h[[Miao Ying|ot fascist dom mommy Kuvira]].
**Ba Sing Se is the Capital City, and is arranged in three Concentric Circles (like the city in Attack on titan), each tier literally stratified to house ths different classes. It is the home of the Earth King, who lives in utmost luxury within the innermost circle. He is more of a figurehead, though, with most of the power held by bureaucrats within the city, or by the Kings and governors without.
**Modeled heavily by Ming and Qing era China, which both had emperors who ruled mostly through their bureaucrats, to the point that they had no idea how their subjects lived. The Qing emperors were notoriously out of touch, and were the dynasty that lost to the West in the Opium Wars. They even had their own secret police, which also served to stifle dissent and to shuffle away naysayers from the Emperor so that he wouldnt have to listen to reports of how bad they were losing to the West.
**Seriously, this shithole has a [[Inquisition|secret police force]] that monitors the inhabitants and re-indoctrinates them to not cause trouble. Some [[Tolkien]]-esque undertones there. Then again, the first series is mostly about Buddhism, balance and peace, so it makes sense.
** The sequel splits the Earth continent into three big territories: The original Earth Kingdom, '''Republic City''' (a neutral territory independent from each nation while working with them all), and '''Zaofu''' (a city of metalbenders who made their own city after Toph began teaching Metalbending. One of her daughters runs the place).

* The '''Fire Nation''': A technologically advanced state based off of a volcanic island chain with imperialistic ambitions (so, culturally Japan, but also mixed in with Malay and Indonesian aesthetic). By technologically advanced, we mean they have steampunk tanks, ironclad ships, a giant freaking drill and hot-air zeppelins (the original concept for the zeppelins was invented by an earth nation mechanic but the fire nation turned them up to 11), and by the time of the sequel, a ''nation-wide electric grid''. Their culture encourages ambition and competition.
**The Fire Nation is led by the Fire Lord, who unlike the Earth King, actually runs the country as an absolute monarchy. Even the Fire Sages, the pseudo-Shinto monks, that keep the nation's history and handle the Fire Lord's coronation, are more loyal to the Fire Lord than the Avatar they're supposed to serve/venerate.
**As a technologically-advanced, imperialist state, they're modeled off Japan, but their clothing and food is very Malay/Indonesian. Seriously, avatar had '''two''' [[Weeb|beach episodes]], both of which were located in the Fire Nation, where the cast wore Malay-inspired outfits.
**In the second series, the Fire Nation is still an autocracy, though this time led by Zuko's daughter (he abdicated, and is still alive in the second series). They are still militarized, but just like IRL Japan or Germany, only mobilize their troops for their own defense.

* The '''Air Nomads''': Monastic wanderer-gatherers who lived ascetic (if non-celibate) lives, like what normies think Tibetans live like. They have four temple-cities that the wanderers will cycle through, and monuments scattered throughout the territories of the other three nations. By the time of the first story, the Air Nomads were purged [[Exterminatus|with <s>holy</s> fire]] in an attempt to prevent the reincarnation of the next Avatar. The Avatar was born to Air Nomads anyways and is the protagonist of the first story.
** After the Harmonic Convergence and Korra saving the world, a strange anomaly happens where random people begin developing airbending powers. Of course, Tenzin (Aang's son) begins making a world tour to meet these airbenders and rebuild the Air Nomads.

There is a fifth faction, of the fae creatures collectively called "Spirits," who used to be common but have mostly left the physical world behind for their own [[Warp|Spirit World]] that is an alternate dimension. The spirits that remain in the physical world are dedicated to the places they reside, interacting very little with people but they have been known to pick-up on the ambient mood of communities around them (ie. a river spirit will be irritable if the river is polluted and neglected, a mountain spirit will be confrontational if the nation has been at war).

'''When the first story starts''', the Fire Nation has been expanding aggressively into the Earth Nation for four generations, which hasn't been reacting beyond resisting in small city-states and issuing an "everything is fine they'll never win" message from the capital in what's obvious procrastination, hoping the Fire Nation will give up and decide the constant sieges are too expensive (spoiler: nope). The Fire Nation has already extinguished the Air Nomads, satisfied they have prevented the rebirth of the next Avatar prophesied to end their conquering. The Fire Nation naval aggression have made a virtual embargo on the Water Tribes, isolating north from south and both from the Earth Nation.

The only surviving Air Nomad after the pogrom is the current Avatar, who hid himself in cryosleep. Nobody was around to resuscitate him so he was out of the picture for a century or so. His education was interrupted and feels he needs to learn all four forms of bending as well as visit each of the isolated culture/nations before he can fulfill his purpose as a peacemaker.

'''The second story''' is sixty years after the first story, and the world's technology has advanced to the level of the 1900's -- ironclad ships are common, we can see industrial manufacturing in privately-owned companies instead of Fire Nation government military efforts, automobiles are uncommon but visible, use of Electricity, while limited to the most properous areas of the world is a thing and we see people listening to crystal radios. Most of the story takes place in "Republic City," which is for all intents and purposes New York City with Chinese architecture. Republic City is the world's equivalent of the United Nations; an independent city-state regarded as a symbol of the international peace. There is civil unrest, as the improved technology is closing the gap between benders and non-benders, causing resentment since benders have had a leg-up in social strata. This resulted in the insurgency of the "[[Communism|Equalist Movement]]" who want to overthrow the "let them eat cake" bender bourgeoisie.

The Avatar of this era is a young woman from the water tribes who is comfortable with the physical powers granted by her mastery of multiple elements but stunted in her training with spiritual matters and diplomacy, making her a poor mediator in the role that's expected of her, and easily manipulated by politicians. The Equalist insurgents are lead by a charismatic leader named "Amon," who claims to have a method for permanently disabling any person's bending ability; crippling the Avatar would be a huge symbolic victory for the Equalists, who see the Avatar as the pinnacle bender and biggest target for their resentments.

== Characters ==
=== The Last Airbender ===

[[File:Avatar-The-Last-Airbender-Free-Download.jpg|thumb|400px|right|From top left and towards right, Toph, Prince Zuko, Sokka, Katara and Avatar Aang.]]
: '''The Gaang'''
* Aang: Protagonist de jour. Mostly optimistic (when he's not panicking) and the nimblest motherfucker you'll ever meet due to being an Airbending prodigy. His destiny is to master the other three elements and save the world. Favorite mode of transport: flying bison. Known to go [[Awesome|godmode]] when shit hits the fan.
* Katara: Motherly waterbending love interest. Occasionally kicks ass. WARNING: FRIENDSHIP SPEECHES AHEAD. The only one in the group with any resemblance of common sense other than Aang, and has a surprising amount of wisdom and knowledge for her age.
* Sokka: Katara's bigger brother, a tech-minded guy in a world of magic Kung Fu and Spirits that get pissed off if you cut down too many trees in an area. The non bender of the group so he has to think his way to victory. Man's man, ladies man, master swordsman, brilliant scientist (he co-invented the submarine with the earth nation mechanic who invented the zeppelin in this world), leader of men, and a genius in the use of comedy in all its shapes and forms, from the one-liner to the pratfall. We all wish we were Sokka.
* Toph Beifong: A blind twelve year old girl introduced in Season 2. Also a massive badass, a tomboy and the best Earthbender in existence.
* Momo: Aang's companion. Hybrid of a bat and a lemur - This is normal in the Avatar universe. Is a cute little bugger.
* Appa: Aforementioned flying bison. Hasn't got a lot of personality and functions as the group's main center of operations, supplied by a platform on its back. A large part of the second season is focused on getting him back from captivity. Like Aang, he's the last of his kind, [[Grimdark|but as an animal rather than a human, he's an endling]] ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endling An actual real-life term])... [[Skub|Until the next series retconned Appa into a subspecies of flying bison, removing the story sting and symbolism of being the last of his kind]].

: '''Allies'''
* Suki: Member of the order of Kyoshi warriors (a group of warriors inspired by one of Aang's past lives, Avatar Kyoshi - [[Awesome|an Avatar who looked like an amazon combined with a geisha]]). They live on an island and hold the Avatar in high regard. Kind-hearted yet one of the best fighters in the series, second only to Iroh, Azula, Mai and Ty Lee. Literally knocked the sexism out of Sokka when they first met (beating him in a fight and proving to him that it's possible a woman can fight better than a man) and later on the two fall in love.
* King Bumi: King of the Earth city Omashu, a massive badass and a very old man (he's a childhood friend of Aang's, and Aang was frozen in ice for a century). Possible origin of the term "mad genius", Aang's nickname for him, since he acts crazy but is extremely smart. Tied with Toph for the most powerful Earthbender in existence. He surrendered his city to a fire nation invasion, but, in the series' best moment of [[Just As Planned]], the city was evacuated, [[Awesome|he waited until the firebenders temporarily lost their powers, then used his Earthbending to singlehandedly retake his city without killing or losing a single person]].

: '''Enemies'''
* Zuko: Exiled firebender prince. Originally a whiny bitch attempting to hunt the avatar to end his exile, but undergoes <gasp>CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT</gasp>, eventually becoming Aang's firebending teacher.
* Azula: Zuko's crazy badass dominatrix sister. Also a magnificent bitch with mommy-issues. Hobbies: Shooting lightning, [[Tzeentch|manipulating others to further her plans]], being better than you and volleyball. Often accompanied by her only friends/lieutenants the knife-wielding goth, Mai, and the acrobatic valley girl, <s>jailbait</s> <s>teenager fap bait</s> Ty Lee.
*Ozai: Ruler of the Fire Nation, firebender of (near) "UNLIMITED POWAH!", crappy father (burned his preteen son's face and exiled him for being 'rude'; rude here meaning [[Salamanders|protesting against using new recruits as cannon fodder]], he also made Azula what she is), and above all evil motherfucker (not surprising considering he's played by Mark Hamill aka Joker). Willing to genocide entire races and nations in order to ensure his power, and his country's undisputed supremacy ([[God-Emperor of Mankind|Sounds quite familiar]]). At the end, [[Horus Heresy|he is betrayed by his son who joins the enemy side]] and Aang strips him of his powers and his previously banished son becomes the new monarch and throws him in the dungeons to rot.

: '''Others'''
* Iroh: Zuko's uncle, a bro-tier guy even when on the villain's side and (spoiler) later revealed to be a secret hero who also [[Awesome|saved the dragons from extinction by pretending he'd killed the last ones]]. Basically what would happen if one of the dirtier-minded Buddhas could eat fire, shit lightning, and drink enough tea to cause a younger man's heart to explode. [[Kharn|A fun guy to be around, minus the team-killing]]. Voiced by the glorious, the late Mako Iwamatsu.

=== Legend of Korra ===

[[File:4388128-553141-legend of korra.jpg|thumb|400px|right|From top to bottom, Master Tenzin, Mako, Bolin, and Avatar Korra.]]

: '''The Krew'''
* Korra: The title character, and a brash, athletic tomboy who lacks spiritual aptitude (which means she punches people instead of meditating and talking things through like some kind of hippy... which isn't a good idea when your chief enemy is claiming you oppress people who disagree with them). Gets her ass kicked a lot despite being skilled in three of the four elements due to her impulsiveness and not outright mastering any of them. Rule 34 has taken this penchant for failure and run a fucking marathon with it.
**Unlike Aang, whose story arc revolves around him beating back the evil empire and rebuilding the world, Korra's is about the balance of Spirituality with the "Modern" world; as mentioned above, Korra started out with 0 aptitude for air bending, the most spiritual of the elements. She even sneaks out of her training to participate in "pro-bending" matches, a mix of MMA and full-contact dodgeball that her air-bending master considers to be low-class garbage. She eventually [[meme|gets good]], but only after losing her connection to all the other elements and falling into despair. The rest of the seasons has her fighting in a civil war, chasing anarchists, resolving disputes with <s>[[Daemons]]</s> Spirits and the Material World, and fighting Earth Empire Fascists, and eventually losing her connection with her previous incarnations, losing her GOD MODE power button and forcing her to deal with problems herself.
**Korra gets a lot of flak for supposedly being a [[Mary Sue]], because much of her supposed power and competence is handed to her on a plate with no personal growth involved. But then again, that's the entire point of ''being the literal avatar of Bending, having the combined experience of all previous Avatars.'' She doesn't get a flawless [[Ultramarines|Creator's Pet]] story flow; gets even poisoned by mercury, tortured, Chi damaged and imprisoned, and learns to take a hell of a beating and works together with non-benders and benders alike. Hell, she even '''has her Avatar powers beaten out of her by Anarchists,''' but apparently she's still a Mary Sue because...[[-4 STR|reasons]]
**[[Musclegirl|Her arms]] are also enough of an inspiration for girls worldwide to invest in fitness and go to a gym. Crush us between your thighs, Korra.

* Mako: Writers said he's "Zuko without the angst"; however they forgot Zuko had other traits and so is just some generic dude Korra wants to make out with, and kind of a creepy asshole. Also cheated on Asami. His primary characteristics are his strong sense of duty and a scarf. Team's Firebender, was taught how to lightningbend by a mobster. Becomes a cop in the second season, and then stopped after scandals involving eccentric rich dudes. Named after the late Japanese actor, Mako Iwamatsu, who among his many accomplishments voiced Iroh in The Last Airbender.
* Bolin: Mako's younger brother. Unlike Mako, Bolin is an earthbender and has character traits. He's the team's "funny guy" (he's basically like Sokka, but without the wit or tactical sense...actually now that you say it, nothing like Sokka except occasionally being comic relief), being on the better side of the whole dudebro thing while avoiding asshole territory. Had a crush on Korra, but she strung him along and shacked up with his brother Mako, with Bolin even walking in on them kissing when he was ready to confess his feelings to Korra. Ouch! Also happens to luck into being a movie star because of an eccentric rich man. In spite of his inability to get with Korra, he spent the rest of the series being chased by women(and a Yandere waterbender)/simping for his girlfriend, a metalbender named Opal.
**An absolute failure as a metalbender, but later learns that he could lavabend, which impresses everyone. Shows that some advanced techniques cant simply be learned.
* Asami Sato: Daughter of this world's inventor of the automobile and easily the most rounded and best member of Team Avatar. She does not have any flaws other than being too nice sometimes, which is not a flaw, and yet is somehow not a loathsome Mary Sue. Mostly because she isn't in the show much, isn't overpowered, and when she's kicking ass with an Equalist power fist it is pretty awesome. [[Retcon|Revealed]] to be in lesbians with Korra at the end of the series (technically the directors said they're bisexual, but same difference) in a transparent attempt to redeem the series in the eyes of Tumblr, kicking off a category 5 skubstorm in the process and delighting everyone who wanted to make/already had made [[Rule 34]] of the pairing.

: '''Allies'''
* Tenzin: The youngest song of Aang and Katara, a sane, calm, rational Airbending master and adviser to Korra... most of the time. Has a wife and four children (his wife gives birth to the fourth during the show), three of which are airbenders. Starts off being a hard-ass until his own family insists that he ease off. Is very set on keeping the Airbending traditions alive and considers his duty to his people and his father important above all else to the point that he wants to be just like his father... with good reason, since he's trying to rebuild a civilization that went through an attempted genocide which his father was the only survivor of.
* Lin Beifong: Toph's even more hard-assed daughter who's chief of Republic City Police. Pretty much only uses metalbending and tries her damnedest to keep everything under control. Despite being a hard-ass, she's completely correct in her negative assessment of Korra in Season 1.
* Suyin Beifong: Lin's sister who built a city of metalbenders named Zaofu. Had to leave Republic City after her mother covered up her association with a gang of criminals and accidentally scarring her sister.

: '''Enemies'''
* Amon: [[Eliphas]] the Inheritor's bastard son [[Communism|and a hero of the common man and working class who strives to end the oppression of foul bending class and bring about true equality and a golden age of happiness]], until later episodes reveal he's just batshit insane. Also, has the BEST voice in the entire series, being also blessed by [[Cyrus|Steve Blum]].
**He is the leader of the Equalists, an anti-bending faction composed of non-benders. They make up for their lack of elemental control with chi-blocking martial arts, stun batons, and later in the uprising, [[Awesome|steampunk powerfists, Tianium Mechs that cant be metal-bent, and fighter-bomber biplanes.]]
**They're aguably the most sympathetic of the four villains, as non-benders living in a society literally run by benders: the Council of Republic City was originally composed of representatives of the four nations and advanced their nation's interest over the city's, with the non-bending population of the city having fuck all representation on the council; the police has non-bending detectives, but metalbending SWAT, who spend most of their time doing a really bad job of managing the Triads (criminal gangs composed of benders of the three nations, who extort the non-benders for protection). Fuck, even the electricity is generated by Benders, with one episode showing [[servitor|Mako earning some extra cash by lightning bending to generate electricity]].
**Amon is able to remove people's bending which the Equalists believed to have been a sign of favor from the Spirits, and an ability only Aang was shown to have in the first series. It later turns out he was just a Bloodbender, who was able to lobotomize the bending part of their brain and prevent them from controlling their chi, which is actually more awesome.
* Vaatu: The spirit of chaos of the Avatar world, who is embattled with an eternal conflict with Raava, the incarnation of peace. They're suppose to be analogies of Yin and Yang (the Chinese philosophy that opposing forces balance and compliment each other to create peace and equilibrium), but the writers kinda fucked it up and made it: "VAATU IS CHAOS SO BAD, RAAVA IS PEACE SO GUD". Even worse, the writers already did spirits that were a Yin and Yang analogy in ATLA with the spirits Tui and La who took the form of Koi fish.
* Unalaq: [[Lorgar]] of the Avatar world. Starts off a malicious prick and then literally gets empowered by the Dark God to make a fucking Kaiju fight. Is also Korra's uncle. Also a very powerful Waterbender.
** Eska and Desna: Unalaq's identical twin son and daughter. One of them becomes Bolin's stalker and tries marrying him. She's voiced by Aubrey Plaza.
* Red Lotus: A secret society dedicated to the cause of anarchy. Not necessesarily the most sympathetic villains, but certainly the ones whose worldviews are the most coherent and interesting.
** Zaheer: The Normie Batman-lite leader of the group, the deeply spiritual Zaheer semi-spontaneously developed Airbending powers after Korra aligned the spirit world with the one that matters. Instead of being a Buddhist about it like Aang, he rips the air out of people's lungs and embraces the void like a boss. Learns how to fly after his girlfriend is tricked into making her own head explode. Voiced and faced by Henry Rollins.
**Ghazan: One of Zaheer's pals. An earthbender with a pretty cool temper, except he is actually so good he can lavabend, a fit previously only done by the Avatar in their avatar state. Voiced by Peter Giles.
** Ming-Hua: An [[Abaddon|arm-less]] lady with an extraordinary good level of waterbending. Seriously, in a world where you have to mimic martial arts mouvements to shoot fireballs and stuff, doing it without arms seems a tad bit difficult and yet she is able to form water arms that she can partially freeze to form blades, hooks and over deadly forms depending on the situation. Voiced by Grey DeLisle.
** P'li: Zaheer's girlfriend. A firebender gifted with the rare skill to also create explosions with her mind (Combustionbending). Drove off a dragon using her firebending and combustionbending skills that she hadn't used in 13 years, being locked in a prison built inside a glacier specifically so the cold would prevent her from using her power. Voiced by Kristy Wu.

* Kuvira: [[Imperial Guard|The Lord Commander Militant]] of the Avatar setting. Student of Suyin and former member of the metal bender clan. Cleaned up the mess left behind by the Red Lotus after Suyin refused to step up and founded the Earth Empire, claiming that the concept of kings was outdated.
**Pretty much Mao Zedong, but make him a hot metalbender. She united the Earth Kingdom by giving them two options: submit or be conquered, but was not above fighting the enemy alone just to cement her superiority. Kind of a Mary Sue, if not a foil to Korra, who also punches her way through her problems.
**She also built a giant [[Titan|Mecha]], utilizing "spirit energy" which is basically the Avatar version of both Nuclear power and the Warp.

: '''Others'''
* Varrick: The [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Littlefinger]] of the Avatar universe. He at first appears to be very eccentric and friendly to Team Avatar, but it turns out he is manipulating entire wars in order to profit off of them. Still manages to be one of the most fun characters in Seasons 2 and 4, respectively. Probably has tons of crack stowed away on many of his boats, which he uses to fund movie production and insane inventions. Always flanked by his secretary/maid/assistant/bodyguard Zhu Li, who always does the thing.

== Films ==

A movie was released in 2010 by M. Night Shyama-{{BLAM|'''*CRUSH*'''}} 

Ahem, Please ignore the vandal spreading lies above. [[Alpha Legion|there is none, as of yet]]. No movie was ever made that wasn't universally panned by critics and fans alike, blatantly ignored/basterdized the [[fluff]] in ways unseen since [[C. S. Goto]], and contained more racewashing than a Marvel comics fanfic collectively written by Tumblr. There are no plans of any movies like the one described in the future, nor was one ever made in the fist place.

Any mention of anything resembling a movie set in the Avatar Universe may result in [[Blam|an invitation from the Earth King to Lake Laogai]]. Remember, [[Meme|there is no Last Airbender movie in Ba Sing Se. All media related to it are just the two TV shows, comics, and video games.]]

Also, please report sightings of a man by the name of [[Heresy|M. Night Shyamalan]] to your nearest Earth Kingdom constable, as he is wanted for questioning. Do not attempt to apprehend this man by yourself has he is known to destroy anything he is able to grab into an unrecognizable mess.

== Games ==
* There's an [http://the-logbook-project.blogspot.com/p/avatar-world_23.html Apocalypse World hack] for Avatar like stories. (They dropped the sex movies, you perv.)
* There's a Savage Worlds splatbook for Avatar; also [http://savagepedia.wikispaces.com/Avatar+the+Last+Airbender some details on Savagepedia]. (more links needed)
* "Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple" for the vaguely Asian-setting protagonist gang tries to solve other people's problems & hilarity ensues, with a little magic but there are no hit points so there's no kung-fu roll playing here.
* ''Jadepunk'' and ''Tianxia'', both made for the same system as ''Do'', run on the same 'Steam/Dieselpunk through an Eastern Lens' idea as ''Korra'' but play it put for actual drama.
* The Way of the Four Elements monastic tradition from 5e is a very obvious homage to The Avatar.
* It doesn't take a genius to see that Avatar was "heavily influenced by" [[Exalted]].
* ''Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game'', an officially licensed TTRPG for the setting, produced by Magpie Games. Released on Kickstarter and raised $3 million in the first 3 days.
[[Category: Television]]

Avatar: The Last Airbender

2022-05-24T09:43:40Z

195.194.119.220: /* Legend of Korra */

{{/co/}}
{{awesome}}

'''TL;DR''' a setting for AZN kung-fu and high magic without being the over-the-top [[Exalted]] and not the highbrow [[Legend of the Five Rings]].

Let's say you want something that is fantasy, set in a large complex world that in no way rips off [[J.R.R. Tolkien]], is presented in visual form and is just well made all around. Well, Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko had come to your aid with '''Avatar: The Last Airbender''' and its new followup [[FAIL|'''The Legend of Korra'''.]] It is in no way related to [[Avatar|James Cameron's similarly titled work]] (thank god).

== Setting ==

You have a world modeled primarily off Asia (in particular dynastic [[China]]), plus some people can magically manipulate simple matter using martial arts moves called "bending." Benders can manipulate one and only one of the Earth, Air, Fire or Water elements. The exception to this rule is one person called the "Avatar" who can master all four types of bending, and universally regarded as a spiritual leader (think: the Dalai Lama). There is only ever one Avatar in each generation, who is the reincarnation of the previous Avatar and can remember (converse with the ghosts of) previous Avatars.

[[File:Avatar-.The.Last.Airbender.full.1161878.jpg|thumb|750px|right|The continent of the Avatar universe, only slightly inspired by [[China]] - The Republic City from the second series is situated on the western coast of the Earth Kingdom.]]
The world has one language and four nations:

* The '''Water Tribes''': Hunter-gatherer Inuit-like people who live in the North and South polar regions. The South Pole tribe consists of stereotypical Inuit, whereas the ones living at the North Pole got bored of making simple igloos and carved their ''entire city'' out of ice. Then they added canals to troll the physicists. Korra was born in the South. There is also a water tribe scattered in equatorial swamps that manipulate the swamp vines by bending the water saturating the vines.
**The Northern and Southern Water tribes are Inuit and First Nations analogues, even casting Native Americans in the Netflix Live action (people tend to overlook that historically, the Indigenous Peoples of both Americas crossed from Asia, and so remain very genetically close to Asia.) the Swamp Tribe is like Southeast Asians living in a Louisiana Bayou.
**The Water Tribes were notable for not only creating a society in the barren poles, but doing so within proximity to two portals to the [[Chaos Wastes|Spirit World]]. A third would be created in the second series.
**The Northern Water Tribe is the first of the two, and is notably more advanced than their southern cousins, who are implied to be a mere colony, with the North often interfering in Southern politics, or sending their exiles there.
**That being said, a point of contention between the two tribes was that the Northern Water Tribe left the Southerners on their while the Fire Nation was raiding them for 100 years; after the Air Nomad genocide, the Fire Nation wanted to stop the Avatar from reincarnating within the Water Tribe, so they arrested all Water Benders they could in the South, which was weaker than the North.

* The '''Earth Kingdom''': A large loose continental power ruled out of the massive fortified city of Ba Sing Se. Wealthy and prosperous, they are masters of resource harvesting with bending as a safe and efficient means of mining metals and rare earths, and reduced labour required for farming.
**Culturally diverse, the Earth Kingdom takes a lot of notes from Imperial China, especially the Warring States and Ming era China. Like the Warring States/Three Kingdom period, the entire "Kingdom" is actually divided into several provinces, led by an appointed Governor or a King (Bumi from Omashu) who leads their state in their own right, nominally paying tribute to the Earth King in Ba Sing Se. In the second series, after the assassination of the Earth Queen, the entire Kingdom actually fractures back into independent states, [[Great Crusade|each one having to be reconquered by]] h[[Miao Ying|ot fascist dom mommy Kuvira]].
**Ba Sing Se is the Capital City, and is arranged in three Concentric Circles (like the city in Attack on titan), each tier literally stratified to house ths different classes. It is the home of the Earth King, who lives in utmost luxury within the innermost circle. He is more of a figurehead, though, with most of the power held by bureaucrats within the city, or by the Kings and governors without.
**Modeled heavily by Ming and Qing era China, which both had emperors who ruled mostly through their bureaucrats, to the point that they had no idea how their subjects lived. The Qing emperors were notoriously out of touch, and were the dynasty that lost to the West in the Opium Wars. They even had their own secret police, which also served to stifle dissent and to shuffle away naysayers from the Emperor so that he wouldnt have to listen to reports of how bad they were losing to the West.
**Seriously, this shithole has a [[Inquisition|secret police force]] that monitors the inhabitants and re-indoctrinates them to not cause trouble. Some [[Tolkien]]-esque undertones there. Then again, the first series is mostly about Buddhism, balance and peace, so it makes sense.
** The sequel splits the Earth continent into three big territories: The original Earth Kingdom, '''Republic City''' (a neutral territory independent from each nation while working with them all), and '''Zaofu''' (a city of metalbenders who made their own city after Toph began teaching Metalbending. One of her daughters runs the place).

* The '''Fire Nation''': A technologically advanced state based off of a volcanic island chain with imperialistic ambitions (so, culturally Japan, but also mixed in with Malay and Indonesian aesthetic). By technologically advanced, we mean they have steampunk tanks, ironclad ships, a giant freaking drill and hot-air zeppelins (the original concept for the zeppelins was invented by an earth nation mechanic but the fire nation turned them up to 11), and by the time of the sequel, a ''nation-wide electric grid''. Their culture encourages ambition and competition.
**The Fire Nation is led by the Fire Lord, who unlike the Earth King, actually runs the country as an absolute monarchy. Even the Fire Sages, the pseudo-Shinto monks, that keep the nation's history and handle the Fire Lord's coronation, are more loyal to the Fire Lord than the Avatar they're supposed to serve/venerate.
**As a technologically-advanced, imperialist state, they're modeled off Japan, but their clothing and food is very Malay/Indonesian. Seriously, avatar had '''two''' [[Weeb|beach episodes]], both of which were located in the Fire Nation, where the cast wore Malay-inspired outfits.
**In the second series, the Fire Nation is still an autocracy, though this time led by Zuko's daughter (he abdicated, and is still alive in the second series). They are still militarized, but just like IRL Japan or Germany, only mobilize their troops for their own defense.

* The '''Air Nomads''': Monastic wanderer-gatherers who lived ascetic (if non-celibate) lives, like what normies think Tibetans live like. They have four temple-cities that the wanderers will cycle through, and monuments scattered throughout the territories of the other three nations. By the time of the first story, the Air Nomads were purged [[Exterminatus|with <s>holy</s> fire]] in an attempt to prevent the reincarnation of the next Avatar. The Avatar was born to Air Nomads anyways and is the protagonist of the first story.
** After the Harmonic Convergence and Korra saving the world, a strange anomaly happens where random people begin developing airbending powers. Of course, Tenzin (Aang's son) begins making a world tour to meet these airbenders and rebuild the Air Nomads.

There is a fifth faction, of the fae creatures collectively called "Spirits," who used to be common but have mostly left the physical world behind for their own [[Warp|Spirit World]] that is an alternate dimension. The spirits that remain in the physical world are dedicated to the places they reside, interacting very little with people but they have been known to pick-up on the ambient mood of communities around them (ie. a river spirit will be irritable if the river is polluted and neglected, a mountain spirit will be confrontational if the nation has been at war).

'''When the first story starts''', the Fire Nation has been expanding aggressively into the Earth Nation for four generations, which hasn't been reacting beyond resisting in small city-states and issuing an "everything is fine they'll never win" message from the capital in what's obvious procrastination, hoping the Fire Nation will give up and decide the constant sieges are too expensive (spoiler: nope). The Fire Nation has already extinguished the Air Nomads, satisfied they have prevented the rebirth of the next Avatar prophesied to end their conquering. The Fire Nation naval aggression have made a virtual embargo on the Water Tribes, isolating north from south and both from the Earth Nation.

The only surviving Air Nomad after the pogrom is the current Avatar, who hid himself in cryosleep. Nobody was around to resuscitate him so he was out of the picture for a century or so. His education was interrupted and feels he needs to learn all four forms of bending as well as visit each of the isolated culture/nations before he can fulfill his purpose as a peacemaker.

'''The second story''' is sixty years after the first story, and the world's technology has advanced to the level of the 1900's -- ironclad ships are common, we can see industrial manufacturing in privately-owned companies instead of Fire Nation government military efforts, automobiles are uncommon but visible, use of Electricity, while limited to the most properous areas of the world is a thing and we see people listening to crystal radios. Most of the story takes place in "Republic City," which is for all intents and purposes New York City with Chinese architecture. Republic City is the world's equivalent of the United Nations; an independent city-state regarded as a symbol of the international peace. There is civil unrest, as the improved technology is closing the gap between benders and non-benders, causing resentment since benders have had a leg-up in social strata. This resulted in the insurgency of the "[[Communism|Equalist Movement]]" who want to overthrow the "let them eat cake" bender bourgeoisie.

The Avatar of this era is a young woman from the water tribes who is comfortable with the physical powers granted by her mastery of multiple elements but stunted in her training with spiritual matters and diplomacy, making her a poor mediator in the role that's expected of her, and easily manipulated by politicians. The Equalist insurgents are lead by a charismatic leader named "Amon," who claims to have a method for permanently disabling any person's bending ability; crippling the Avatar would be a huge symbolic victory for the Equalists, who see the Avatar as the pinnacle bender and biggest target for their resentments.

== Characters ==
=== The Last Airbender ===

[[File:Avatar-The-Last-Airbender-Free-Download.jpg|thumb|400px|right|From top left and towards right, Toph, Prince Zuko, Sokka, Katara and Avatar Aang.]]
: '''The Gaang'''
* Aang: Protagonist de jour. Mostly optimistic (when he's not panicking) and the nimblest motherfucker you'll ever meet due to being an Airbending prodigy. His destiny is to master the other three elements and save the world. Favorite mode of transport: flying bison. Known to go [[Awesome|godmode]] when shit hits the fan.
* Katara: Motherly waterbending love interest. Occasionally kicks ass. WARNING: FRIENDSHIP SPEECHES AHEAD. The only one in the group with any resemblance of common sense other than Aang, and has a surprising amount of wisdom and knowledge for her age.
* Sokka: Katara's bigger brother, a tech-minded guy in a world of magic Kung Fu and Spirits that get pissed off if you cut down too many trees in an area. The non bender of the group so he has to think his way to victory. Man's man, ladies man, master swordsman, brilliant scientist (he co-invented the submarine with the earth nation mechanic who invented the zeppelin in this world), leader of men, and a genius in the use of comedy in all its shapes and forms, from the one-liner to the pratfall. We all wish we were Sokka.
* Toph Beifong: A blind twelve year old girl introduced in Season 2. Also a massive badass, a tomboy and the best Earthbender in existence.
* Momo: Aang's companion. Hybrid of a bat and a lemur - This is normal in the Avatar universe. Is a cute little bugger.
* Appa: Aforementioned flying bison. Hasn't got a lot of personality and functions as the group's main center of operations, supplied by a platform on its back. A large part of the second season is focused on getting him back from captivity. Like Aang, he's the last of his kind, [[Grimdark|but as an animal rather than a human, he's an endling]] ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endling An actual real-life term])... [[Skub|Until the next series retconned Appa into a subspecies of flying bison, removing the story sting and symbolism of being the last of his kind]].

: '''Allies'''
* Suki: Member of the order of Kyoshi warriors (a group of warriors inspired by one of Aang's past lives, Avatar Kyoshi - [[Awesome|an Avatar who looked like an amazon combined with a geisha]]). They live on an island and hold the Avatar in high regard. Kind-hearted yet one of the best fighters in the series, second only to Iroh, Azula, Mai and Ty Lee. Literally knocked the sexism out of Sokka when they first met (beating him in a fight and proving to him that it's possible a woman can fight better than a man) and later on the two fall in love.
* King Bumi: King of the Earth city Omashu, a massive badass and a very old man (he's a childhood friend of Aang's, and Aang was frozen in ice for a century). Possible origin of the term "mad genius", Aang's nickname for him, since he acts crazy but is extremely smart. Tied with Toph for the most powerful Earthbender in existence. He surrendered his city to a fire nation invasion, but, in the series' best moment of [[Just As Planned]], the city was evacuated, [[Awesome|he waited until the firebenders temporarily lost their powers, then used his Earthbending to singlehandedly retake his city without killing or losing a single person]].

: '''Enemies'''
* Zuko: Exiled firebender prince. Originally a whiny bitch attempting to hunt the avatar to end his exile, but undergoes <gasp>CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT</gasp>, eventually becoming Aang's firebending teacher.
* Azula: Zuko's crazy badass dominatrix sister. Also a magnificent bitch with mommy-issues. Hobbies: Shooting lightning, [[Tzeentch|manipulating others to further her plans]], being better than you and volleyball. Often accompanied by her only friends/lieutenants the knife-wielding goth, Mai, and the acrobatic valley girl, <s>jailbait</s> <s>teenager fap bait</s> Ty Lee.
*Ozai: Ruler of the Fire Nation, firebender of (near) "UNLIMITED POWAH!", crappy father (burned his preteen son's face and exiled him for being 'rude'; rude here meaning [[Salamanders|protesting against using new recruits as cannon fodder]], he also made Azula what she is), and above all evil motherfucker (not surprising considering he's played by Mark Hamill aka Joker). Willing to genocide entire races and nations in order to ensure his power, and his country's undisputed supremacy ([[God-Emperor of Mankind|Sounds quite familiar]]). At the end, [[Horus Heresy|he is betrayed by his son who joins the enemy side]] and Aang strips him of his powers and his previously banished son becomes the new monarch and throws him in the dungeons to rot.

: '''Others'''
* Iroh: Zuko's uncle, a bro-tier guy even when on the villain's side and (spoiler) later revealed to be a secret hero who also [[Awesome|saved the dragons from extinction by pretending he'd killed the last ones]]. Basically what would happen if one of the dirtier-minded Buddhas could eat fire, shit lightning, and drink enough tea to cause a younger man's heart to explode. [[Kharn|A fun guy to be around, minus the team-killing]]. Voiced by the glorious, the late Mako Iwamatsu.

=== Legend of Korra ===

[[File:4388128-553141-legend of korra.jpg|thumb|400px|right|From top to bottom, Master Tenzin, Mako, Bolin, and Avatar Korra.]]

: '''The Krew'''
* Korra: The title character, and a brash, athletic tomboy who lacks spiritual aptitude (which means she punches people instead of meditating and talking things through like some kind of hippy... which isn't a good idea when your chief enemy is claiming you oppress people who disagree with them). Gets her ass kicked a lot despite being skilled in three of the four elements due to her impulsiveness and not outright mastering any of them. Rule 34 has taken this penchant for failure and run a fucking marathon with it.
**Unlike Aang, whose story arc revolves around him beating back the evil empire and rebuilding the world, Korra's is about the balance of Spirituality with the "Modern" world; as mentioned above, Korra started out with 0 aptitude for air bending, the most spiritual of the elements. She even sneaks out of her training to participate in "pro-bending" matches, a mix of MMA and full-contact dodgeball that her air-bending master considers to be low-class garbage. She eventually [[meme|gets good]], but only after losing her connection to all the other elements and falling into despair. The rest of the seasons has her fighting in a civil war, chasing anarchists, resolving disputes with <s>[[Daemons]]</s> Spirits and the Material World, and fighting Earth Empire Fascists, and eventually losing her connection with her previous incarnations, losing her GOD MODE power button and forcing her to deal with problems herself.
**Korra gets a lot of flak for supposedly being a[[Mary Sue]], because much of her supposed power and competence is handed to her on a plate with no personal growth involved. But then again, that's the entire point of ''being the literal avatar of Bending, having the combined experience of all previous Avatars.'' She doesn't get a flawless [[Ultramarines|Creator's Pet]] story flow; gets even poisoned by mercury, tortured, Chi damaged and imprisoned, and learns to take a hell of a beating and works together with non-benders and benders alike. Hell, she even '''has her Avatar powers beaten out of her by Anarchists,''' but apparently she's still a Mary Sue because...[[-4 STR|reasons]]
**[[Musclegirl|Her arms]] are also enough of an inspiration for girls worldwide to invest in fitness and go to a gym. Crush us between your thighs, Korra.

* Mako: Writers said he's "Zuko without the angst"; however they forgot Zuko had other traits and so is just some generic dude Korra wants to make out with, and kind of a creepy asshole. Also cheated on Asami. His primary characteristics are his strong sense of duty and a scarf. Team's Firebender, was taught how to lightningbend by a mobster. Becomes a cop in the second season, and then stopped after scandals involving eccentric rich dudes. Named after the late Japanese actor, Mako Iwamatsu, who among his many accomplishments voiced Iroh in The Last Airbender.
* Bolin: Mako's younger brother. Unlike Mako, Bolin is an earthbender and has character traits. He's the team's "funny guy" (he's basically like Sokka, but without the wit or tactical sense...actually now that you say it, nothing like Sokka except occasionally being comic relief), being on the better side of the whole dudebro thing while avoiding asshole territory. Had a crush on Korra, but she strung him along and shacked up with his brother Mako, with Bolin even walking in on them kissing when he was ready to confess his feelings to Korra. Ouch! Also happens to luck into being a movie star because of an eccentric rich man. In spite of his inability to get with Korra, he spent the rest of the series being chased by women(and a Yandere waterbender)/simping for his girlfriend, a metalbender named Opal.
**An absolute failure as a metalbender, but later learns that he could lavabend, which impresses everyone. Shows that some advanced techniques cant simply be learned.
* Asami Sato: Daughter of this world's inventor of the automobile and easily the most rounded and best member of Team Avatar. She does not have any flaws other than being too nice sometimes, which is not a flaw, and yet is somehow not a loathsome Mary Sue. Mostly because she isn't in the show much, isn't overpowered, and when she's kicking ass with an Equalist power fist it is pretty awesome. [[Retcon|Revealed]] to be in lesbians with Korra at the end of the series (technically the directors said they're bisexual, but same difference) in a transparent attempt to redeem the series in the eyes of Tumblr, kicking off a category 5 skubstorm in the process and delighting everyone who wanted to make/already had made [[Rule 34]] of the pairing.

: '''Allies'''
* Tenzin: The youngest song of Aang and Katara, a sane, calm, rational Airbending master and adviser to Korra... most of the time. Has a wife and four children (his wife gives birth to the fourth during the show), three of which are airbenders. Starts off being a hard-ass until his own family insists that he ease off. Is very set on keeping the Airbending traditions alive and considers his duty to his people and his father important above all else to the point that he wants to be just like his father... with good reason, since he's trying to rebuild a civilization that went through an attempted genocide which his father was the only survivor of.
* Lin Beifong: Toph's even more hard-assed daughter who's chief of Republic City Police. Pretty much only uses metalbending and tries her damnedest to keep everything under control. Despite being a hard-ass, she's completely correct in her negative assessment of Korra in Season 1.
* Suyin Beifong: Lin's sister who built a city of metalbenders named Zaofu. Had to leave Republic City after her mother covered up her association with a gang of criminals and accidentally scarring her sister.

: '''Enemies'''
* Amon: [[Eliphas]] the Inheritor's bastard son [[Communism|and a hero of the common man and working class who strives to end the oppression of foul bending class and bring about true equality and a golden age of happiness]], until later episodes reveal he's just batshit insane. Also, has the BEST voice in the entire series, being also blessed by [[Cyrus|Steve Blum]].
**He is the leader of the Equalists, an anti-bending faction composed of non-benders. They make up for their lack of elemental control with chi-blocking martial arts, stun batons, and later in the uprising, [[Awesome|steampunk powerfists, Tianium Mechs that cant be metal-bent, and fighter-bomber biplanes.]]
**They're aguably the most sympathetic of the four villains, as non-benders living in a society literally run by benders: the Council of Republic City was originally composed of representatives of the four nations and advanced their nation's interest over the city's, with the non-bending population of the city having fuck all representation on the council; the police has non-bending detectives, but metalbending SWAT, who spend most of their time doing a really bad job of managing the Triads (criminal gangs composed of benders of the three nations, who extort the non-benders for protection). Fuck, even the electricity is generated by Benders, with one episode showing [[servitor|Mako earning some extra cash by lightning bending to generate electricity]].
**Amon is able to remove people's bending which the Equalists believed to have been a sign of favor from the Spirits, and an ability only Aang was shown to have in the first series. It later turns out he was just a Bloodbender, who was able to lobotomize the bending part of their brain and prevent them from controlling their chi, which is actually more awesome.
* Vaatu: The spirit of chaos of the Avatar world, who is embattled with an eternal conflict with Raava, the incarnation of peace. They're suppose to be analogies of Yin and Yang (the Chinese philosophy that opposing forces balance and compliment each other to create peace and equilibrium), but the writers kinda fucked it up and made it: "VAATU IS CHAOS SO BAD, RAAVA IS PEACE SO GUD". Even worse, the writers already did spirits that were a Yin and Yang analogy in ATLA with the spirits Tui and La who took the form of Koi fish.
* Unalaq: [[Lorgar]] of the Avatar world. Starts off a malicious prick and then literally gets empowered by the Dark God to make a fucking Kaiju fight. Is also Korra's uncle. Also a very powerful Waterbender.
** Eska and Desna: Unalaq's identical twin son and daughter. One of them becomes Bolin's stalker and tries marrying him. She's voiced by Aubrey Plaza.
* Red Lotus: A secret society dedicated to the cause of anarchy. Not necessesarily the most sympathetic villains, but certainly the ones whose worldviews are the most coherent and interesting.
** Zaheer: The Normie Batman-lite leader of the group, the deeply spiritual Zaheer semi-spontaneously developed Airbending powers after Korra aligned the spirit world with the one that matters. Instead of being a Buddhist about it like Aang, he rips the air out of people's lungs and embraces the void like a boss. Learns how to fly after his girlfriend is tricked into making her own head explode. Voiced and faced by Henry Rollins.
**Ghazan: One of Zaheer's pals. An earthbender with a pretty cool temper, except he is actually so good he can lavabend, a fit previously only done by the Avatar in their avatar state. Voiced by Peter Giles.
** Ming-Hua: An [[Abaddon|arm-less]] lady with an extraordinary good level of waterbending. Seriously, in a world where you have to mimic martial arts mouvements to shoot fireballs and stuff, doing it without arms seems a tad bit difficult and yet she is able to form water arms that she can partially freeze to form blades, hooks and over deadly forms depending on the situation. Voiced by Grey DeLisle.
** P'li: Zaheer's girlfriend. A firebender gifted with the rare skill to also create explosions with her mind (Combustionbending). Drove off a dragon using her firebending and combustionbending skills that she hadn't used in 13 years, being locked in a prison built inside a glacier specifically so the cold would prevent her from using her power. Voiced by Kristy Wu.

* Kuvira: [[Imperial Guard|The Lord Commander Militant]] of the Avatar setting. Student of Suyin and former member of the metal bender clan. Cleaned up the mess left behind by the Red Lotus after Suyin refused to step up and founded the Earth Empire, claiming that the concept of kings was outdated.
**Pretty much Mao Zedong, but make him a hot metalbender. She united the Earth Kingdom by giving them two options: submit or be conquered, but was not above fighting the enemy alone just to cement her superiority. Kind of a Mary Sue, if not a foil to Korra, who also punches her way through her problems.
**She also built a giant [[Titan|Mecha]], utilizing "spirit energy" which is basically the Avatar version of both Nuclear power and the Warp.

: '''Others'''
* Varrick: The [[A Song of Ice and Fire|Littlefinger]] of the Avatar universe. He at first appears to be very eccentric and friendly to Team Avatar, but it turns out he is manipulating entire wars in order to profit off of them. Still manages to be one of the most fun characters in Seasons 2 and 4, respectively. Probably has tons of crack stowed away on many of his boats, which he uses to fund movie production and insane inventions. Always flanked by his secretary/maid/assistant/bodyguard Zhu Li, who always does the thing.

== Films ==

A movie was released in 2010 by M. Night Shyama-{{BLAM|'''*CRUSH*'''}} 

Ahem, Please ignore the vandal spreading lies above. [[Alpha Legion|there is none, as of yet]]. No movie was ever made that wasn't universally panned by critics and fans alike, blatantly ignored/basterdized the [[fluff]] in ways unseen since [[C. S. Goto]], and contained more racewashing than a Marvel comics fanfic collectively written by Tumblr. There are no plans of any movies like the one described in the future, nor was one ever made in the fist place.

Any mention of anything resembling a movie set in the Avatar Universe may result in [[Blam|an invitation from the Earth King to Lake Laogai]]. Remember, [[Meme|there is no Last Airbender movie in Ba Sing Se. All media related to it are just the two TV shows, comics, and video games.]]

Also, please report sightings of a man by the name of [[Heresy|M. Night Shyamalan]] to your nearest Earth Kingdom constable, as he is wanted for questioning. Do not attempt to apprehend this man by yourself has he is known to destroy anything he is able to grab into an unrecognizable mess.

== Games ==
* There's an [http://the-logbook-project.blogspot.com/p/avatar-world_23.html Apocalypse World hack] for Avatar like stories. (They dropped the sex movies, you perv.)
* There's a Savage Worlds splatbook for Avatar; also [http://savagepedia.wikispaces.com/Avatar+the+Last+Airbender some details on Savagepedia]. (more links needed)
* "Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple" for the vaguely Asian-setting protagonist gang tries to solve other people's problems & hilarity ensues, with a little magic but there are no hit points so there's no kung-fu roll playing here.
* ''Jadepunk'' and ''Tianxia'', both made for the same system as ''Do'', run on the same 'Steam/Dieselpunk through an Eastern Lens' idea as ''Korra'' but play it put for actual drama.
* The Way of the Four Elements monastic tradition from 5e is a very obvious homage to The Avatar.
* It doesn't take a genius to see that Avatar was "heavily influenced by" [[Exalted]].
* ''Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game'', an officially licensed TTRPG for the setting, produced by Magpie Games. Released on Kickstarter and raised $3 million in the first 3 days.
[[Category: Television]]

Tau

2022-01-07T11:41:11Z

195.194.119.220: /* Tau Member Races */

{{heresy}}
{{Plot Armour}}
{{skubby}}
{{flamewar}}

[[Image:TAUSYMBOL.gif|center]]

{{Infobox 40k Nations
|name= T'au Empire
|image=[[Image:Tau_Empire_Flag.jpg|300px|center]]
|bgcolor=
|fgcolor=
|Capital= T'au
|Official Languages=Tau Lexicon
|Power= Minor Power
|Size=Approximately over 300 worlds
|Head of State= Ethereal Supreme
|Head of Government= Ethereal Council
|Governmental Structure=Caste-Based Authoritarian Federation
|State Religion/Ideology=[[Greater Good]]
|Demographic=[[Tau]], [[Kroot]], [[Vespid]], [[Gue'vesa|Humans]], [[Nicassar]], [[Tarellian]], Nagi, Hrenians and other minor [[Xenos]] races
|Military Force=[[Tau]] Fire Caste, Tau Air Caste, [[Kroot]] and [[Vespid]] Forces, The Deathsworn, Hrenian Light Infantry, [[Demiurg]] Forces, [[Nicassar]] Forces, Gue'vesa Forces and other minor Xenos armies, The [[Kor'Vattra]] and it's auxiliary fleets
}}
[[File:9jfnqeaplhexx.jpg|right|thumb|450px|Get the fuck out of the way, [[Imperium|Oldfag]]. (Vior'la Sept Fire Warriors)]]
{{Topquote|I'll say this about the T'au, they know how to put on a good war.|[[Ciaphas Cain]]}}
{{Topquote|Ce qui constitue une République, c'est l'extermination totale de tout ce qui lui est opposé. - What constitutes a Republic is the total destruction of that which is opposed to it.|Louis Antoine de Saint-Just}}
{{Topquote|Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.|C.S Lewis}}

Tau (τ) is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, 300 in Greek numerals, and also the name for 2π.

It is also the name of the Warhammer 40K race known as the '''Tau''', nowadays spelled '''T'au''' by GW copyright lawyers as if that somehow [[ChapterHouse Studios|fixes anything]] (many nicknames include "uncreative retards" if you are an [[Eldar]], "blueskinned atrocity" if you're a [[Imperium of Man|Human]], "bluies", as the Valhallan 597th call them, or "Space Communists" as anyone on /tg/ will tell you) are a playable race and a minor and overall insignificant power in ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]''. When first discovered by humanity, the Tau were a barbaric and primitive people. Their planet was then trapped in a warp storm for a few thousand years and they emerged from the other side as a unified species, led by the [[Druids|mysterious]] Ethereal caste and devoted to the concept of the "[[Greater Good]]". Their new empire supposedly has around 300 worlds, with dozens more small colonies and outposts, packed into a stellar cluster about 500 light years across. They have about [[T'au Septs|21 official]] "Septs" which are major systems based around a cultural 'prime' planet (think Manhattan then the tri-state area). They were growing until recently, when the Imperium sent a large invading force to counter them.

Although a dystopian society in its own right, the Tau Empire is noted for being one of the LEAST awful places in all the galaxy of 40k. It's also [[Derp|not really an empire]]; the Tau government, the Ethereal caste, is essentially an edifice of meritocracy and nepotism. Tau leaders are appointed to their position by even higher ranking leaders and/or a council of their future peers; the highest ranking Tau, the Aun'O, is elected by his future underlings, much like the Catholic pope, but is still simply considered the weightiest voice of a group (like a prime minister), not an Emperor with absolute power.

The Ethereals are basically like "upper management" if upper management worked... or maybe HR if they didn't just 'klkn' [fancy tau word for F'ed] everyone over. The Ethereals actually care about the people that look up to them as they set mandates across their society, which the castes strive to fulfill.

The Tau started as a classic case of successful design-based [[Troll|trolling]] on the part of [[Games Workshop]]. They were originally developed because GW felt that their setting needed an optimistic race and that their wallets needed more money, which they could get by selling shitloads of 40k to the robot-obsessed Japanese. The Tau, therefore, are the least [[grimdark]] faction in the game; [[Tau Diplomacy|they're the dudes willing to negotiate when they've beaten their enemies]] ([[The Beast|we cannot forget the green skinned diplomats our boy sent out during his siege of terra]]) while all the others are either too [[Chaos Space Marines| murderously psychotic in ways incomprehensible to anyone who does not share the same batshit insanity]], [[Imperium|religiously overzealous]], [[Eldar|arrogantly indifferent]], [[Orks|simplemindedly violent]], [[Necron|murderously enigmatic]], [[Tyranid|more interested in eating you than anything]], or [[Dark Eldar|all of the above]] to offer such courtesies.

This began to change in 6th edition. For all the claims that GW doesn't listen to its fans, someone seemed to have heard the incessant bitching many fa/tg/uys made over the Tau [[Belisarius Cawl|being shoehorned into the setting]] [[Primaris Marines|in the worst way possible.]] As a result, the Tau began to take on an Orwellian flavor and Imperium-esque elements, with the Ethereals being totalitarian autocrats performing acts of ruthless indifference towards their subjects, including [[Nazi|eugenics]] or up to [[Exterminatus]] of lost races (e.g. Orks and Tyranids), in the guise of being for the Greater Good.

As a result you now have a new generation of weebos running around thinking that the Tau actually don't give a fuck about their people and would actually kill their own kind for things like... sculpting [like really, if you do art outside of the Earth caste you just disappear] which would make the Tau the least functioning society in 40k as whole swathes of their own population are routinely exterminated for fixing their crisis suits so they don't drown or pull a pistol out to protect children (things that actually happened).

The Tau Codex leaves ambiguously the question of just how much of their success is due to various forms of indoctrination, caste-based conditioning, and subtle mind control. This has only been exacerbated by the recent Farsight Enclaves supplement, which makes the Ethereals come off as mustache-twirling, Saturday-morning-cartoon villains. It speaks volumes about the 40k setting that in spite of all this they're ''still'' the friendliest race in the galaxy.

An interesting contradiction arises because the Tau have annexed (sometimes peacefully) entire Hive Worlds, meaning the Tau might actually be a cat’s paw to a human civilization by now. This is because a single modestly-sized hive world ''probably'' boasts a larger population than the entire Tau species combined, along with an industrial capacity to match- not to mention the fact that the Tau willingly give their tech and knowledge to races who have been subsumed into the Greater Good. It seems that Games Workshop has not yet realized this problem.

=="Naive Weeaboo Space Communists"==
[[Image:Tau Weeaboo.png|thumb|right|Cue hotblooded music by [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r6xYnFDoV0 JAM Project].]]
The Tau's naiveté might seem at odds with the GRIMDARK-ness of the setting (and to a degree, a lot of it is), but the thing is, Games Workshop specifically plays this straight FOR the [[grimdark]] and ''knows'' that the seeming futility of the Tau's optimism only further accentuates the general hellishness of the rest of the galaxy - and dear [[Emperor|god]] do they play this up for maximum effect. In the 41st millennium, the Tau come across as ''more'' than a little naïve to the other races; the Imperium sees any contact with aliens as heretical and will shoot them with [[bolter]] rounds as soon as they look at them; the [[Ork]]s just want to kick the shit out of things; and the [[Eldar]] see the Tau as a race in its infancy, just staggering out of its borders for the first time and wandering into a pond full of [[Saharduin|sh]][[Dark Eldar|ar]][[Chaos|ks]] (most Eldar philosophers admit their own race has failed, the humans are failing, and add that the Tau are in for a rude awakening). If the sharks arrayed against the Tau think of them at all, it is surely as dinner.

In older fluff [a single book that was so off the rails it said Tau had toes and no nasal slits], the Tau were implied to have been secretly uplifted by the Eldar through the creation and subtle control of the Etherals (especially the mind-influencing pheromone secreting gland at the base of Ethereals’ spines) and guiding them through reverse-engineering Imperial technology from the ruined colony ships. Eventually the Eldar abandoned them because the Tau never accomplished anything notable on their own due to a crippling lack of creativity (a big red flag of bullshit, since the Tau are nothing if not creative). This older fluff also said that humans must be in physical contact with an Ethereal or perhaps subjected to heavy doses of the pheromone in other ways to be sufficiently affected but other aliens are affected merely by being in the vicinity of an Ethereal. In the current fluff, the Eldar backstory and Ethereals-controlling-other-races theory seem to have been cast aside as nonsense and are no longer canon. Especially given that the Tau themselves have laughed about it all and said it isn't true.

The Tau's generally-optimistic fluff, combined with their highly advanced technology, distinctly "Eastern" combat doctrine (that is often reminiscent of Sun Tzu's "''Art of War''"), use of [[Mecha|battlesuits]] (just [[Imperial Knight|like]] [[Dreadnought|the]] [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Imperium]]), [[Hammerhead Gunship|heavy firepower]] which rivals that of the Imperial Guard, and one of the [[Fish of Fury|most broken tactics in tabletop 40K until it was finally fixed an edition later]] has conspired to make them very much hated (and by that we mean a source of butthurt) by a reasonable-sized population of the [[/tg/|40K fan populace]]. /Tg/ has rightly dubbed the Tau [[Weeaboo]] (as much due to their Asian-ness as anything else) as a result.

[[Image:Tau fire warriors.jpg|490px|thumb|left|The [[Greater Good]]: translatable as [[Deal with it|"If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs."]]]]

And again in a case of much cultural confusion, the Tau are often considered [[Communism|communists]] (despite being a rigorous, hierarchical, near-eugenicist class society that would have Marx's spirit resurrect himself to commit suicide) due to their central philosophy of casting aside the self in favour of the Greater Good. This is partly because it's a nearly twenty year old meme by this point and memes that old are very stubborn about dying... and partly because we're a bunch of ignorant fucks. If anything the Tau more resemble the class system of Plato's ''Republic'' crossed with the caste system of India and [[Star_Trek#The_Federation|Star Trek's Federation]], and a little bit of facism as well (because they're the only ones in the entire galaxy who bother to try diplomacy with xenos rather than [[Exterminatus|exterminate]] them (partly because all but a few alien species are horrific space monsters that only a complete idiot would try to negotiate with)).

Even then, the Tau has more in common with the Imperium than the noblebright space hippie Feds; they adhere to a highly strict doctrine of eugenics, as [[Love Can Bloom|all forms of love, sex or breeding between different castes]] are, translated from Tau lexicon into Gothic, '''[[HERESY]]'''. The Tau also have an explicit merchant caste as well as a single unified currency (something the Imperium of Man only has in theory, [[Imperial Truth|much like everything else]]) along with a system of standardised wage labour which makes them actually more Capitalist than the still stuck in Feudal Economics Imperium. Contrast to the Craftworld Eldar whose society of post-scarcity voluntary labour actually is fully Communist, albeit there are still nobles entitled to bigger houses.

The Tau treat their member species with an unusual amount of autonomy and respect while also keeping them as second-class citizens with no say in the Tau government. There is no restriction on religion or cultural uniqueness so far as it doesn't interfere with the greater good: Humans may still worship the Emperor, Nicassar can continue exploring the universe and Kroot can continue to ingest the dead; so it's a pretty broad stroke of acceptability.

What is terrifying and an excellent twist on the Tau is that member races and the individual is kept from 'choice'. So if you suck, like you're just bad at everything, you're not going to be offed or turned into corpse starch. You are simply given a 1 bedroom apartment, universal healthcare, and a broom. And that's it. You don't get to be a hero, you don't get to rise above your worth, and this is all decided by an alien society. If you dare step outside of these boundaries, then you're given a couple chances. First you're sent to reeducation. Do it again and you might get some beneficial brain washing... and so on. But death? Certainly not, because what purpose would that serve?

To double the weebiness but to greatly decrease the communism connection, the Tau are remarkably similar to war-time era Imperial Japan. Not in terms of military doctrine but in terms of its geopolitics. Like Imperial Japan they're a young power situated in the east, relatively far from most of their possible rivals' centres of power. Like Imperial Japan they have a seemingly nice enough doctrine in terms of rhetoric; "Greater Good" and "Co-Prosperity Sphere"; but in practice what it means is that they want to replace the old empires in the region with their own. Like Imperial Japan they're at a significant disadvantage in terms of production power compared to their most serious rivals in the region, and hope to compensate for that by tactical superiority and winning big decisive battles to topple the old powers.

To further solidify the connections to Japan in the early 20th century, the Tau Empire even borrows some terminology, such as "spheres" of expansion, a firm belief that despite their grotesque material inferiority to their primary enemies, the power of their ideals and their superior willpower shall overcome their enemies all, and a dogged insistence on picking fights it probably can't win. Imperial Japan knew that America alone had nearly twelve times the industrial power, with Britain having thrice Japan's military-industrial might, France just about matching theirs, and the Soviets having four times that: even China, despite being a wartorn barely functional shithole, could be a quagmire for it.

But Japan didn't give a shit because they thought that they were so awesome they could somehow get all these people to surrender through a combination of being better at war than their soft, mewling enemies and that they simply believed in their destiny to rule the waves more than anyone else did. Much like how the Tau are fully aware that the Imperium, the Orks, the Necrons, and the Tyranids could all squash them flat in a stand up fight, but believe this is immaterial because their belief in the Greater Good shall overcome all and that they have mastered the ways of war while their foes are mired in ignorance.

What is for sure though is that whatever part of the political spectrum they'd fall on (probably wherever you'd put Imperial Japan during world war two), the Tau government is mainly oligarchical, with the vast majority of political power concentrated in the Ethereal caste.

This is further driven home by the fact there is a Tau splinter faction led by one of their two best generals alive, Commander [[Farsight]] of the Farsight Enclaves, whose government is a non-caste society devoid of ethereals, making it a meritocratic semi-democracy. The problem is, depending on who you ask Farsight may be either a hero in self-imposed exile or a single-minded military dictator, much the way Optimus Prime is sometimes depicted. Farsight's government is [[RAGE|NOT recognized by the Tau Empire]], who have finally gotten around to dispatching a fleet to silence them. We still have yet to see the outcome of this fleet dispatch, though (in all likelihood, no force was ever sent, because Tau don't kill each other and because Farsight is useful enough where he is, even if he's in rebellion).

Of course, the Farsight Enclaves are a fan favorite. The books he's featured in portray Farsight more as a guy that is incredibly depressed about his own mistakes and thinks that the Tau Empire is too inclusive and needs to learn how to grimdark better.

However, the new codex has HEAVILY downplayed Tau naiveté, bringing back the original codex mention that the Ethereals have officially declared some species "[[Exterminatus|lost causes]]" and that the [[Greater Good]] demands they be killed to the last.

*[[Orks]] were the first of the big players of 40k to get this treatment. They pretty much were the only serious competition Tau had before they discovered the Imperium, and it only took them a few weeks of study to realize the fact that Orks are beyond reason or sanity. They do still employ them as mercenaries in small numbers, and the Water Caste considers the Orks one of their biggest failures.

It should be noted that the Tau have experienced three major Ork attacks but never a true Waagh! This is largely because of the fortress worlds Farsight has created out in the Gulf, keeping them back at the cost of his forces. The Tau likely have no idea that this is happening since no one has ever gotten to the Enclaves and come back.

*[[Tyranids]] unsurprisingly ended up on "shoot on sight" list pretty much after the first contact. Unlike the Orks, the Tau have experienced the full and unadulterated rape train that is a Hive Fleet in the form of Gorgon which took a bite out of their Empire (lost something like 10% of it) as well as an ally species called the Ulumeathic League who might be completely wiped out.

*[[Eldar]] briefly were on the list too, owning this to the first contact being made by the Drukhari, and not just any, but [[Urien Rakarth]] himself. Eventually the Craftword Eldar intervened, and the Tau realized that not all space-elves are insane rapists. Although the Tau ended up accidentally destroying a Maiden World, likely making permanent enemies of Saim Hann in the process, they also had some positive dealings with Lugganath to finish off Hive Fleet Gorgon.

Interestingly, the Dark Eldar were supposed to be the original nemesis of the Tau when they were originally released.

*[[Space Marines]] were introduced to the Tau during the Damocles wars. Marines represent an interesting case to the Tau because while it's possible to reason and even negotiate with them, Water caste psychoanalysts have determined that Astartes aren't ''people'' but merely ''weapons'' and as such have no place in Tau'Va.

To sum it up, the Tau Empire is still an expansionist empire prone to using military force, but far better than almost every other polity in the setting, as it permits others to exist with rather lenient standards, and isn't dedicated to the purposeful extinction of all other life in the galaxy. It should be noted that the Water Caste has turned more worlds to join the Empire then the Fire Caste.

Additionally, you don't have to join the Empire to benefit from trade agreements and non-aggression pacts. For example, the Demiurge traded ion-tech for refuge from the ever xenophobic Imperium, but there doesn't seem to be any indication they've actually 'joined' the Empire.

Regardless of who you are, if you join the Tau Empire they will genuinely try and do their best to take care of you because they think, in their hubris, that they know best.

Also, as a result of surviving attacks from the major factions in the galaxy yet being blissfully unaware that those were merely tiny brushes or stragglers of vastly larger forces, the Tau believe they have proven they can truly hold their own in the galaxy against all the major players. As of Eighth Edition they were corrected quite painfully due to the opening of the Great Rift and the loss of most of their Fourth Sphere Expansion forces to a Warp rift, and following a massive Chaos invasion they have been forced to face the possibility that their empire might have bitten off more than it can chew.

==Military Doctrine==
[[Image:TauTyr2.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Close-quarters painting [[Drawfag|strikes again.]] (What a badass Hammerhead pilot)]]
The Tau military is basically the cherished love child of the United States military and its Japanese anime waifu.

The Tau disdain [[Choppy|melee]] [[Rip and tear|combat]] in favour of [[Shooty|ranged combat]], which renders them instantaneously [[Matt Ward|less manly]] in the eyes of most of /tg/'s playerbase. The reasons behind this are complicated. Generally, Tau see hand to hand combat in warfare as an anachronism, which makes sense, considering their basic guns can rip apart tank side armour. In addition, the Tau's body is adapted for flying — prehistoric Tau had gliding flaps like flying squirrels — thus compared to almost all other major races Tau have less muscle strength (heck, less body mass in general), have lower reaction speed, and are hyperopic/farsighted. In their initial design it was said in their first White Dwarf that they are a race that adopted the bow and arrow rather than how humanity adopted the sword.

That said, Tau do practice martial arts - Fire Warrior trials and rites involve knives. Ethereals have a tradition of fighting non-lethal duels to settle disputes, using sharp bladed weapons no less, so they are often quite good with their fighting style, as [[Aun'Shi]] has shown to some unfortunate Orks (keep in mind Aun'shi trained against Shas'Vre to get that good). And although the average Tau is indeed slightly weaker than an average human, they're still close enough to be Strength 3 just like Imperial Guardsmen. It's just that close combat is not their strong suit and they would rather fall back on guns than blades.

The Tau practice economy of force, which has consequences both on and off the battlefield. Sending excessive amounts of force at a target is wasteful, as the excess firepower would be more useful elsewhere. This is also an economic matter, as lower power units are cheaper and the Tau do not have an infinite supply of the rare materials needed to produce the strongest Battlesuits.

The Tau's superior [[Dakka|firepower]] is similar to that of the [[Imperial Guard]], but their strategy is much different, with an emphasis on tactical precision, mobility, the application of technology, and the initiative of individual units. Their military doctrine is not based on winning by attrition, not just because they disdain it but also because they simply can't afford it. Therefore they take great pains to avoid the bloody epic clusterfucks that characterize the style of warfare that is preferred by other factions such as the Imperium and Orks.

Rather, they use infiltration and their sophisticated battlesuits to [[Anal Circumference|bypass enemy strong points and launch deep into their rear]], cutting supply lines and logistics, destroying headquarters and support units, leaving enemies cut off and functionally helpless. There are numerous examples of Tau literally starving and/or thirsting entire armies to death by cutting out their supply lines, while simultaneously harassing them with night raids, ambushes and air strikes to the point the survivors are leaderless, demoralized, out of ammo and fuel, and can barely stand due to exhaustion. The [[Imperial_Armour_Volume_Three:_The_Taros_Campaign#Volume_Three_-_The_Taros_Campaign|Taros]] campaign is a prime example of these tactics (and of the Imperium's strategic stupidity).

Of course, these kinds of tactics only work fine against more convenient armies like the Imperial Guard or Orks. When it comes to Space Marines and Eldar, who sport mostly aerial/warp/webway supply lines, operate as elite armies without obvious weak spots to exploit, have similar or superior tactical mobility and badass officers that can survive most assassination attempts, Tau lose huge parts of their usual advantages (but get the numerical superiority in return). Against utterly unconventional foes, like Tyranids, Daemons or Necrons... well, all times they faced such foes, Tau either devised some entirely new strategies, or lost horribly.

[[File:TauTyr.jpg|thumb|left|300px|90% of Tau [[dakka]] comes in the form of [[Plasma|pretty blue lights.]]]]
The Tau, again, boast some of the most powerful ranged weaponry on the tabletop game, and can crank out more concentrated firepower than any other faction with the lone exceptions of the Imperial Guard and maybe the orks if you only count number of bullets in the air, and even then, the Tau's weapons hit quite a bit harder. They have pathetic hand-to-hand combat skills, however, and so the Tau bolster this by using several inducted races (the [[Kroot]], Vespid, and even some [[Gue'vesa|humans cut off from the Imperium during the Damocles Crusade]]) to act as buffers against assault troops to allow Tau Fire Warrior teams and their heavy, long-ranged firepower to tear enemies apart. The most pivotal, and perhaps most infamous, part of the Tau army are their [[Battlesuit|Battlesuits]], which can mount multiple heavy weapon systems and provide excellent mobility to their pilots, all on a fairly durable unit.

The Tau space navy is strong for its size, and Tau warships are quite powerful on a one-for-one basis. Tau air units are among the best in the game as well, with aircraft that are equal to and often superior to their Imperial Guard equivalents, including a stealth fighter, multipurpose heavy fighter, a superheavy fighter with guns that can one-shot a Titan, and their own [[Manta|Titan-equivalent]] (which is a small starship). Unlike the Imperium, they freely deploy flyers in very large numbers, with only Orks, Tyranids, and perhaps Necrons able to rival them in numbers when it's time to dogfight. Of course this is the way the Imperial fleets' atmospheric support craft are ''supposed'' to work too if fleet officers weren't a bunch of assholes who do everything they can to provide as little air support as possible.

On defense, the Tau are a bit unusual: they leave only token garrisons at their colonies to protect them. These garrisons are intended for scouting rather than combat, avoiding engagement in order to observe and report on invaders using Pathfinders, scanning towers, and drones. Because the Tau have fairly powerful spacefleets and usually keep their forces within reasoned distance of potential hotspots, any potential threat can be quickly dealt with by organizing a hunter cadre to be sent to deal with the situation. For those of you who don't get it, it's Frederick the Great's "he who tries to protect everything protects nothing" strategy.

Of course, this strategy means Tau must have some worlds actually being heavily defended - and in fact they do. Sept worlds tend to be guarded by some nasty space stations and garrisoned by large numbers of hunter cadres and auxiliary troops. This allows such worlds to act as major defensive nodes from which response fleets can be dispatched and to which evacuation fleets rally (think feudal Japan style castles from which commanders would send trained garrisons out to protect the lands around it from encroaching armies). In case some really scary shit like an Imperial crusade or a Tyranid hive-fleet comes into the sept, it is on the sept world where the decisive battle is fought (See the First Damocles Crusade for an example of this tactic in action).

This has, however, backfired on occasion, since it does mean that the Tau garrisons are very vulnerable in the initial stages of an attack. It also makes them very vulnerable to Orphean War style rapid assaults where the attacker is advancing so quickly the defender doesn't even have time to relay the news that they're under attack to the rest of their army. While the Tau haven't yet faced something like the Maynarkh Dynasty, they are awfully close to the Sautekh Dynasty and Imotekh is a noted cantankerous asshole and egotistical conqueror.

A distinct advantage the Tau have is their willingness to change military strategy without ego. As examples, look at how they changed tactics in reaction to the [[Damocles Crusade]] by the Imperium of Man, and even built an entirely new space fleet to match humans in straight-on space fights, or their unusual but effective choice of switching to older weapons when dealing with [[Hive Fleet Gorgon]].

==Fleet==
[[File:Tau_Map.JPG|500pc|right|thumb|The Domain of the Weebs.]]

In the old fluff, the T'au used to have equip their ships with reverse-engineered warp drives from an unknown faction that crashed a starship on one of their home world's moons. Using their gravitic wave technology (think a sail) they used this to skim the surface of the warp before bouncing back to the Materium after a short while (1/3 the speed of optimal Imperial warp drives).

New fluff, on the other hand, has retconned that by giving them what is called a "slingshot drive" or "skip drive." From what little fluff we have on it, it looks like the reality-based theoretical warp drive (in the modern physics meaning, i.e. the Alcubierre bubble). The practical applications, however, are the same in both new and old fluff - Tau FTL is much slower than the Imperium's, but is predictable, reliable, and not affected by warp storms (a big deal, given Tau spent half of their history inside one). As a result, Tau are capable of building highly reliable interstellar logistics lines over short distances, but their strategic mobility is... lacking, to say the least. Compared to pretty much every other faction the Tau move at an absolute snail's pace, hence the reason why their worlds are so tightly packed together. Of course, if the slingshot drive was THE best way to travel normally without the Warp and to avoid Warp phenomena, the radically more advanced Dark Age Humanity would have slapped the drives on every type of ship they had. They didn't, which implies that this technology is a dead end, a stopgap solution at best.

Additionally, slingshot drives are rather big, heavy, and power-hungry, even compared to the Warp drive (which itself can constitute 1/3 the volume of an Imperial ship). As a result, escort-class Tau spacecraft are built without FTL drives and are hooked to bigger ships for the purpose of interstellar travel, which basically make them equivalents of the Imperium's system monitor ships, with the same benefits (cheap, compact, fast, powerful and durable for their size) without their major downside (being incapable of FTL flight). Tau FTL limitations mean that they have to be more precise in how they concentrate their forces; they can't throw a bunch of ships into a warzone from halfway across the galaxy as Orks and humans can.
Tau empire have two fleets:
*Kor'Vatra, or "merchant fleet", is made of older modular ships that double as merchant and colony vessels (hence the name). One of their main shticks is huge arcs of fire for most gun batteries, with side batteries easily covering front arc, and nose batteries covering all but the stern - as a result, while Kor'vatra Ships may not have as much firepower as Imperial or Ork ones, they can focus more of it on one target. On the flip side, merchant ships while decently fast at sub-light, are not very agile, and must rely on escort wings and auxiliary fleets against more maneuverable foes. Even after the founding of Kor'Or'Vesh, the Kor'Vatra still see a lot of military use, especially against the Imperium, precisely because it's regarded as a non-military fleet. This is so Tau diplomats could tell their Imperial colleagues, "What battle cruisers on your orbit are you talking about? It's just our merchant vessels, moving goods to and from our trade missions."
*Kor'Or'Vesh, or "combat fleet" is a newer fleet, made for battling the Imperium's fleet in straight up combat, after Kor'Vatra got run over during the Damocles crusade. Made out of more compact, maneuverable and better armored ships, it may lack Kor'Vatra's wide arcs of fire, but is superior in every other regard, and as the Taros and second Damocles campaigns showed, it is more than capable of fighting off humans even if outnumbered.
Both fleets use largely the same technologies: railguns as short-range (by Tau standards), high-damage gun batteries; ion cannons as long-range beams (lance equivalent); and, above all, powerful small-craft ordnance (second only to Eldar and available in far greater numbers). Mantas, Barracudas, and EMP drone-torpedoes reign supreme at extreme ranges, gaining the Tau navy the same reputation their ground armies have. Because their small-craft ordnance is so powerful, most Tau ships tend more towards carrier and torpedo boat archetypes than battleships, and suffer horribly if an enemy comes within macro-cannon or boarding range (note the "if"). Technically, Imperial warships are, as they are when compared to most other factions, far superior. The problem for the Imperium is, like always, those warships are very rare, built in tiny numbers, and never around when you need them.

==Non-combat Fluff==
[[File:Tau city.jpg|450px|thumb|right|Contrary to what [[Imperium of Man|some]] believe, what this picture shows might just be the future for the entire galaxy if the Tau [[Great Crusade|get their way.]]]]
The Tau were a new race/culture found by the Imperium of Man during their "slash and burn" exploration of their galactic neighborhood. The Tau were still pastoral, had just discovered flint tools and charcoal, and the Imperium had them scheduled for "[[Grimdark|routine cleansing]]" (Low Gothic for “ruthless genocide”) and make room for colonization. Needless to say, that plan was promptly [[derp|fucked up]]. By an unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your viewpoint) coincidence which almost certainly involved the dickery of [[Tzeentch]] or [[Cegorach]] or [[The Deceiver|something]], warp storms started hitting the entire galaxy, right around the rise of Vandire, which occluded the Tau homeworld, so nobody could get in or out. Since the Tau were virtually invisible in the warp, the warp storm didn't have much of an effect on them as they were immune to the influences of Chaos.

[[FAIL|The sector was labeled "lost to Chaos,"]] and cleansing was [[What|deferred indefinitely]]. Then [[Age of Apostasy|this shit]] happened, and almost all records about Tau were lost in the ensuring [[Rape|clusterfuck]] of civil war. Only the Adeptus Mechanicus still had records of this first contact when the storm died down 6,000 years later. By then, the Tau had expanded to fill out the 'Cluster', colonizing hundreds of planets and incorporating dozens of alien races. They were put back on the radar when the Imperium found out their border worlds Kleist and Garrus, and probably a bunch of others, changed sides and gave up on Terra.

The Damocles Crusade was launched. The extermination order still stood—it was just going to be much more difficult than the Imperium expected, seeing as the Tau, instead of [[C.S. Goto|throwing spears and rocks at their tanks]] and Space Marines, were now throwing [[ion cannon|ion charges]], <s>[[plasma|plasma blasts]]</s> particle accelerators (pulse rifles), and [[railgun|electromagnetically-accelerated hypervelocity projectiles]] at their tanks and Space Marines.

Tau history is pretty typical up through the iron-age: a knack for engineering, warfare between "urban" farmers and "barbarian" nomads, and unrestrained growth causing a series of plagues, leading to a dark age. Here's where things go sideways, though the Tau see it as the start of their endless Golden Age: the arrival of the Ethereals. Legend tells of a five-year siege at the castle of Fio'taun, with both sides starving and succumbing to disease, when two foreign Tau entered the battlefield. One went to the castle, the other to the barbarian tribes. Each of these Tau had a quiet grace and irresistible authority. In just a few hours, the castle was persuaded to open their gates, and the barbarians laid down their weapons, and both parties met to parley a truce.

These strange Tau called themselves "Ethereals," and stressed the importance of peace and understanding between all Tau. They described a "Greater Good" that each Tau must strive towards. Soon after, soon enough to seem simultaneous, more of these strange new Tau emerged across the continent with their message of peace and co-operation for all Tau. Their quiet authority was always respected, and their message of harmony was universally embraced. Wait a minute, [[God-Emperor of Mankind|I've seen this]] [[Great Crusade|historical pattern before]]....

Perhaps uniquely for the setting, Tau-human interactions bear the whiff of realpolitik. On the one hand, the Imperium wants to exterminate them ''eventually'', but the upper management generally realizes that the Tau are going to be a giant drain of resources and manpower to get rid of, given the stiff resistance they put up in [[Damocles Crusade|previous campaigns]] and their [[Riptide|uniformly]] [[railgun|advanced]] [[battlesuit|technology]]. Furthermore, they serve as a useful buffer state against various threats on the Eastern Fringe, from Orks and Chaos raiders to Tyranid hive fleets to alien forces the Imperium hasn't had (recorded) contact with. Their existence deflects danger from Imperial space, and in a place and time when the Imperium is [[Time of Ending|coming under attack from all sides]], that's more important than dogma.

This strategy is not unique to the Tau only though, as the Imperium allows countless other (much more dangerous) xeno empires to prosper in the Eastern Fringe to serve as an ablative shield against much nastier shit. Amongst those is (for example) the Charadon ork empire, which is older than the Imperium and spawns a Waaagh! once or twice per millennium (even with the routine warboss assasination raids that the Ultramarines make). Even after the emergence of the genius warboss Snagrod and his Waagh on Rynn no one cared to issue a crusade against them. So yeah, the Tau Empire is not even close to being recognized as a threat dangerous enough to actually do something about.

Conversely, the Tau have realized just how massive an undertaking expanding through the entire galaxy would really be, and are taking it slow. They mostly absorb Imperial buffer worlds stripped of manpower and armament in the face of massive redeployments to face other threats, offering the Empire's protection in return for annexation. When this doesn't work, the Tau outright conquer the places that don't take the deal. The Tau have claimed that they are engaging in this sort of aggressive behavior because ''someone's'' going to [[Tyranids|gobble]] those settlements up sooner or later, and if ''they'' don't do it, then whoever does won't be [[Exterminatus|nearly as nice about it]]. While baldly self-serving, that logic is... well, mostly correct, really.

There's no love lost between the Imperium and the Tau, but open full-scale war is probably unlikely in the near-future after the stalemate of the Second Damocles Crusade and the veritable host of far greater existential threats that the Imperium is currently facing.

Looking at the new galactic map, where the Tau are now sandwiched between their own eye of terror and a Necron dynasty, they are soon to be fucked...<s>Maybe...</s> And lo and behold, they done got buttfucked by the Death Guard! But it's not all bad as they've found a cure for 1st generation Genestealer infections and they've finally broken out of their nook with the 5th Sphere; one of their biggest fears was being stuck in a globular cluster because one super nova could still put the kibosh on the whole thing.

However things turn out, as they continue to expand the Tau will inevitably see renewed clashes with the factions arrayed against them.

=== Castes ===
[[File:Commander HawkEye.jpg|thumb|290px|right|<s>Join the Greater Good, lose your virginity to a hot alien babe!</s> Non-approved sexual contact is an offence to the Greater Good, Gue'la. Now get back to work or you won't get your overtime pay! TAU GET OVERTIME PA{{BLAM}}{{BLAM|Asking questions is heresy!}} *PEW* You are an affront to the Greater Good, gue'ui.]]
Tau society after the arrival of Ethereals was organized into castes; everyone with a place, and a place for everyone. [[Love Can Bloom|Interbreeding between castes and Xenos races]] is one of the most severe crimes in the Empire, in other words, [[Heresy]]. This was outlawed by the [[Ethereal]]s presumably to preserve the biological differences between castes; the result is the creation of 5 sub-species. Tau society does have many examples of romance, and there are designations of 'pair' bonding at least amongst the Earth Caste. The Tau have children which they both raise and also send to the creches but they seem to monitor birth rates (likely to match resource levels as well as provide an additional level of social engineering).

There also seems to be a tribal system that remains from pre-Caste days that we don't know too much about. We know that bloodlines have some kind of importance, but as a meritocracy, it does not have a bearing on social constraints. They also can have relatively large families, Shadowsun had three sisters for example.

Breeding is managed by the Earth Caste, but, there is at least one instance where a pair-bond has their own child, so perhaps there is a degree of choice ''(if real caste systems are any guide, the Earth Caste probably only cares about the castes and septs the pair come from)''. Otherwise, Tau are paired in a way that will create the best biological result. An Imperial genetor's report in the fourth edition Tau codex observes the presence of synthetic proteins in Tau internal organs and suggests them as evidence that their evolution has been accelerated, though he might have been confused by synthetic proteins that the Tau were given as the Tau make extensive use of things like advanced medicines and treatments. [[/tg/]] seems to be under the strong impression that they are mammals, as you can see in the picture further down the page, despite the complete implausibility of this theory. The frequent [[/d/|sexualization]] of the Tau by fa/tg/uys is a mystery to many, but clearly not all. [[PROMOTIONS|Not nearly enough]], in fact. It's obviously a deep desire for Draenei to be added to the setting to [[PROMOTIONS|reward]] our brave Imperial Guardsmen.

==== {{anchor|Fire|Fire Caste}} Shas (Fire) ====
The '''Fire Caste''' consists of the various [[Fire Warrior|warriors]] of the Tau Empire. The miniatures of a Tau army in a [[Warhammer 40,000]] game are almost exclusively Fire Caste. Other castes think Shas are overly-aggressive hotheads due to their tendency to solve all problems by applying more plasma (when the Tau first encountered other sentient species, Fire Caste representatives immediately voted to hunt down and exterminate them, just like they hunted down dangerous local life forms on the other world they colonized). Whether or not Fire Caste members are ''actually'' "overly aggressive" compared to other [[Wyches|kinky]], [[Haemonculus|horrid]], [[World_Eaters|Earthshatteringly mad]], [[Night_Lords|batshit insane]], [[Blood Angels|bloodthirsty]] individuals and groups is a matter of debate. On the other hand, it also shows how calm and disciplined other castes are as well as the importance of the balance that the Ethereals bring to the Tau.

Fire Caste are taller than Earth Caste Tau, and physically stronger than the Air and Water Castes, though they are slightly shorter than the average 40k human. They pretty much compensate for this by giving their basic Fire Warrior a [[pulse rifle]], which is sort of like an automatic sniper-[[plasma]] gun, and employ heavily armed and sophisticated battlesuits for their elite infantry. Oh yeah, and [[Railgun]]s. Company-sized Tau forces are called "Hunter Cadres."

==== {{anchor|Earth|Earth Caste}} Fio (Earth) ====
The '''Earth Caste''' are the laborers and engineers; they are the "civilians" of Tau society. Their appearance can vary widely, though other Tau would describe them as "plain." They all have a stoic outlook, with little ambition other than to excel in their career of choice and work for the Greater Good. Unlike the Imperial worker classes, whose quality of life generally ''starts'' at working 14-hour days seven days a week while living off of dried recycled dung chips and goes [[Such is life on Volg|''downhill from there'']], the Earth caste is mostly concerned with technological planning and engineering as well as artwork which they incorporate into their creations. They are also scientists and work hand in hand with the Water Caste to develop new technologies (like the rail rifle).

The Farsight Enclaves field some Earth Caste pilots for their battlesuits, demonstrating their more flexible caste systems and/or their desperation for manpower but there are examples of Earth Caste work teams being able to defend themselves in a pinch.

==== {{anchor|Air|Air Caste}} Kor (Air) ====
The '''Air Caste''' are the aerospace specialists of the Tau. In more primitive times they served as messengers and couriers, and sometimes scouts/explorers, gliding on membranous anatomical wings like flying squirrels through T'au's atmosphere (although this might be a myth). When the Tau started exploring offworld, it was the Air Caste that took charge of the vessels traveling between the stars and became tall with super frail physiques due to zero-g living. Now the Air Caste are the Tau stellar navy/airforce/mailmen, piloting the Empire's various carriers, warships, and emissary cruisers. Air caste Tau tend to be tall and slender like runners or dancers, and this is frequently exaggerated by the years the Tau navy spends in low-gravity.

Despite their slender stature and lack of muscle mass, Air caste pilots are extremely resistant to G-force, making them excellent void and atmospheric fighter pilots (simultaneously, as small Tau voidcraft also double as atmospheric craft). They also, clearly, have engineer and military classes as they live in Air Caste cities made up of their own population; going to show that Castes have multiple cross overs for responsibilities rather than anything as rigid as the Farsight books describe.

==== {{anchor|Water|Water Caste}} Por (Water) ====
The '''Water Caste''' are the emissaries of the Tau. They are diplomats, merchants, and civil servants. The most open-minded Tau can be found among the Water caste, with some even showing individual ambition (but still for the greater good of the Tau Empire). When a new culture is encountered, the Water caste are sent in first to negotiate. If talks break down, the Water caste are withdrawn so that the Fire Caste can start negotiating with pulse weapon fire. Also, unlike their Imperial equivalents in bureaucracy, the [[Administratum]], they are brisk, efficient, and very good at their jobs. No dumping valuable ammo on an uninhabited dust world because no one signed the paperwork not to.

It's a lesser known fact that Pors also run the Tau intelligence and espionage network, and Por'Os and Por'Els from this branch are pretty much Tau Inquisitors except more competent, much saner, and not nearly as good at kicking asses personally. As of the second Damocles Crusade the Imperium has designated the Water caste as a primary threat above any other Tau caste. This is because the Water caste's skill in subterfuge, diplomacy and propaganda has cost the Imperium more worlds and manpower than the Fire and Air caste's military prowess combined. They even managed to totally outplay the Inquisition on its own field, which royally pissed them off, even turning an Inquisitor (O'Va'Dem) to their side, as seen in the novel ''Broken Sword''.

The Air Caste also do a quite a lot of things like leading exploration initiatives like the one that discovered the Kroot empire as it was getting rickrolled by the Orks, and fought for their liberation for 12 years.

==== {{anchor|Ethereal|Ethereal Caste}} Aun (Ethereal) ====
The '''Ethereal Caste''' are basically the philosopher-kings described by Plato in "The Republic". In theory, they are selfless and always focused on what is best for the Greater Good ("Tau'va") for all Tau without exception. The Ethereals are inspirational to all Tau caste members, and merely being near one will inspire a Tau soldier, engineer, pilot, or diplomat to work harder.

In the case of the Fire Caste, some Ethereals accompany hunter cadres in battle during important deployments so as to better lead/inspire the troops, which works because all Tau in the combat zone will fight to their bitter deaths. They also seem to have semi-magical powers (don't ask how they work, none of the Tau know themselves) that allow Tau around them to do special things, like running while shooting. The [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] theorizes that the respect the Ethereal Caste gets from all other Tau is caused by a pheromone. ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTAU....... The Tau laugh at this suggestion, of course.
Also, ''[[Xenology]]'' relates a story from a major, insectoid race called the [[Q'Orl]] which alleges that the [[Eldar]] stole one of their queens. Given that these queens have a magic, yellow, diamond-shaped sack that produces mind-control pheromone... well, let's just say the characters in the story figure it out quickly enough. There is a theory that the Ethereals themselves are also affected by their own pheromones, which could explain why they're so selfless and uncorrupted despite their absolute power (although being uncorrupted no longer seems to apply after 7th/8th edition).

This can also be supported by the (old as fuck and likely retconned) novelization of [[Warhammer_40,000:_Fire_Warrior|Fire Warrior]], where the Ethereal character has a pretty level head and chipper demeanor despite having been [[Anal_Circumference|repeatedly captured and tortured by both the Inquisition and Chaos, watching his diplomatic retinue chopped up by a Chaos Lord, and mind-raped by said Chaos Lord all in the span of roughly two days.]] Either he's a stoic old motherfucker, or he's just too busy tripping his blue balls on his own pheromones to give a shit.

8th ed has a particularly interesting story in it and it proves without a shadow of a doubt: the Ethereal caste does use some kind of mind-altering substance or influence on the Tau. During a meeting with Commander O'Ryn and Aun'Va (who is a solid hologram controlled by an AI at this point) in the planet of Junica, their location was ambushed by Chaos forces and Aun'Va (or the AI acting like Aun'Va) ordered O'Ryn to send her forces on what's essentially a suicide mission. O'Ryn, not seeing the point of throwing her and her soldiers' lives at such a hopeless battle, actually ''defied'' the command of an ethereal (and the space pope himself, no less) and retreated. It could've been an interesting and pretty terrifying critique of how manipulative a totalitarian system can be and that the Ethereals don't shy away from anything to keep the people in line. But no, it was explained with mind control, which is way lazier and honestly way less terrifying (that's because Phil Kelly wrote it). Yet, then there is another example of Aun'shi who hides his ridge crest so that none of the other Tau know he's an Ethereal.

You pick which is more likely- clearly GW can't.

O'Ryn was eventually declared a renegade and Farsight took her in, but it does indeed prove that the unflinching and unquestioning loyalty and fanaticism that the Ethereals' physical presence inspire on nearby Tau aren't due to their charisma or the Tau's indoctrination, and instead on something more sinister. To put this into perspective: O'Ryn has been the first Tau since Farsight to actively defy an ethereal's command and the main reason she was able to do so was because she was speaking to an AI-controlled drone, instead of the actual space pope.

...so it doesn't matter.

Additionally, in the novel Farsight: Crisis of Faith by Phil Kelly (detailing the Farsight Expedition) not only is a Tau Water Caste Magister possessed by a daemon of Tzeentch (which is bullshit), but the Magister is then banished [[Mary Sue|by Farsight carving a bloody hexagram into its chest with his bonding knife]] (Imperium Hexagrammic Wards don't even work that way, but fuck other writers, am I right phil?). Aun'Va uses mind control to have the Magister's superior kill herself. Why? Because he'd dared to say the truth out loud, that the Ethereals were eager to send Farsight off to Damocles so that the immensely popular golden boy won't become a challenge to their rule back home. The ambassador went to her death thinking the ever reasonable Ethereals would let her off with a slap on the wrist for what was basically a breach of etiquette, instead she was dominated into committing suicide for ''being the mentor of someone who'd cast the tiniest bit of doubt on Ethereal motives''.

...Which begs the question, "Why?" Why would the Ethereals care about revealing the truth about Daemons when the Tau have been fighting Daemons for hundreds of years? They don't have religion, they don't feed the Warp, daemons should have nothing to fuck-do with the Tau except as a speed bump to somewhere-else-ville. This replay of the Emperor's rule book is just more lazy writing.

Farsight originally lost his Ethereals and kept going because he though he knew better than them and because he was still butthurt from Arkunasha. He's guilty of believing he knows what is best for his fellow renegades, and he's probably not wrong... so he stays out beyond the Gulf so that he can continue the fight.

===Tau Names===
[[File:Tau_Lexicon_2015_ver.1.0.pdf|right|thumb|250px|A fanmade document that dives a little into Tau lexicon]]
Tau have ridiculously long, detailed and actually meaningful names. Their names contain their caste, rank, birth sept, and one or more nicknames earned by them through the course of their lives. Fluff does say that they ''do'' have birth names, but those are only used before tau earn at least one appropriate nickname, as a name given to them by comrades is considered more valuable than one just chosen by random at their birth. The nickname part and its importance surprisingly is actually taken from the Roman culture, which is weird, given most Tau culture tend to be based on China and Japan (except for their social and government structures which are copied almost verbatim from Plato's Republic).

Also, do note the lack of last names, which is expected, since Tau society pretty much have no institute of a family, with children being raised in centralized facilities apart from their parents. As a Tau grows, moves through ranks and achieves the respect of their comrades their name changes appropriately, switching the rank part, adding new nicknames and sometimes dropping the old and outdated ones. For example, when Farsight was still a lowly fire warrior, his name was '''Shas'La Vior'La Shoh''' (Fire Caste Private of the Hot-Blooded sept Inner Light), and at the "present days" '''Shas'O Vior'La Shovah Kais Mont'yr''' (Fire Caste Commander of the Hot-Blooded sept Farsight Skillful Blooded). How the fuck Tau bureaucracy is able to keep track of their population with their names constantly changing is a mystery, but it seems they have no problem with that, probably because they just track ID numbers when names are too much of an issue like most sane people who work with databases.

For the sake of convenience Tau often use shortened versions of names, almost always dropping the sept part and secondary nicknames, and if speaking within one caste the caste part too, so in the case of Farsight other fire warriors could refer to him as O'Shovah, while for example an Ethereal would call him Shas'O'Shovah (assuming Farsight allows this; given his seething hatred of Ethereals he's the type who'd force them to use his full name out of spite). Humans and other non-Tau often get this system wrong and shorten the names in a ways that make little sense: for example, Imperium's Taros invasion force thought the Taros' chief Ethereal's name was Aun'El, which was only his caste and rank, and as the book was mostly written from the Imperium's standpoint, we still don't know what his actual name was.

One final stroke of Tau naming is that as they abandon their true (birth) names it makes them even more resistant to sorcery and daemonic powers that often require the target's true name to amplify their effect or even make the spell work at all.

===Psychic/Chaos Defenses===
Tau as a species are comprised of psychic blunts. They cannot produce psykers and have limited innate resistance to some forms of psychic powers and daemonic bullshit. People often mistake this resistance to outright invulnerability, but in truth it's more akin to camouflage. Tau DO have souls, but their souls cast such a dim light in the Warp that they are, at best, indistinguishable from the spirits of non-sapients, and at times they even blend into the psychic background of inanimate objects. This may have something to do with how unemotional Tau are, as some of the more descriptive bits of fluff demonstrate how warp shenanigans like faint whispers and creeping feelings of "wrongness" may cause humans to freak out and try to run away immediately, the more calm and collected Tau don't notice anything strange at all. Likewise, if a psyker tries to mind-rape a Tau or a daemon tries to posses a Tau they'd find it hard to find a soul to target at all, but in the unlikely event that they were somehow successful, there would be even less resistance than with regular humans. Sadly while this trait is often shown in the fluff, it does not affect Tau crunch in any way aside from their total lack of psykers.

This innate defense is further strengthened by the Greater Good philosophy deeply indoctrinated into each Tau from childhood and reinforced through the subtle control exerted by the Ethereals. Tau'Va is the antithesis of all the creeds of Chaos, which makes Tau all but immune to its temptations, and only two Tau have ever actually fallen to Chaos. The first was the Water Caste member Water Spider, who was possessed by a Daemon of Tzeentch - although, rather amusingly, the daemon forced Water Spider to become obsessed with the truth, something abhorrent to the Water Caste. The second was [[Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior|Shas'la Kais]]. Though Kais was untained in the video game adaptation, the much better novelization had Kais getting an assist from Khorne throughout his adventure, though he was permanently scarred by Khorne's influence and the conflict. [[Grimdark|This left him permanently insane and hospitalized, unable to meaningfully respond to his friends and environment]].) That being said, the Tau have only just been exposed to the more material horrors of the galaxy; should they become jaded and start losing faith in the Greater Good (as inferred with giving up on indoctrinating certain species), well, that would be an entirely different situation. Their allies, including the Kroot, have sometimes been known to go all-in with Chaos worship, although Tau seldom take culture from their allied races.

8th Ed is here, and has confirmed that the Tau aren't immune to Chaos, just rather difficult for Daemons to spot. When the Tau started the 4th Sphere Expansion with their new warp drives they didn't take a note from the Imperials' tech and failed to invent the [[Gellar Field]] too, meaning they were fully vulnerable to the Warp's denizens. The entire experience was hilarious. First was the unpredictability of their warp drives (known as "slipstream technology" to them) that caused most of their expeditionary fleet to be destroyed due to unleashing massive tears in the fabric of reality, [[lulz|while being broadcasted to the Tau sept worlds, causing the Ethereals to rapidly evacuate their bowels as they scramble to censor the event for the wider populace.]] Those that weren't immediately torn up by the warp rifts were sucked into the Warp where a vast majority was either destroyed after drifting in the more unsavory parts of the Warp or by the various daemons mucking about.

Contact was lost, but the Tau managed to find the survivors later, nestled into several worlds that were the original target for conquest. The Tau that survived, however, were acting weird. Some of them had clearly rejected the Greater Good, while some worshiped a voice that they claim to be the Greater Good itself (which may or may not be a warp entity), while some were outright driven insane. A disturbing trend about them was their total [[Imperium|xenophobia and brutality]]. Any non-Tau who wasn't driven off from the 4th Sphere colonies were murdered because [[Chaos God|something]] was telling the survivors that the auxiliaries were the reason for their loss and torment due to their more powerful connection to the Warp.

That being said, they're still hard for Daemons to see, considering that the Fourth Sphere dove into the Warp unprotected and "merely" got off with plain Chaos corruption when most people who try that shit critfail their [[anal circumference]] roll and either gets torn apart by daemon cocks or becomes [[Chaos Spawn|a Chaos spaaauuuughgghblblblbbl]].

Also, the 8E Daemons Codex does mention one Tau agri-world that was cut off from supplies, eventually succumbing to the native faith revering a certain "Rainfather" - [[Rotigus]] Rainfather, a notorious [[Great Unclean One]].

As always, any inconsistency on how the Tau are, or aren't, affected by Warp exposure is entirely GW's fault.

==Alliances==
[[File:Illus4.jpg|280px|right|thumb|Unfortunately for some [[Slaanesh|deviants]] [[Extra Heresy|and heretical elements on]] [[/tg/]]. [[Not as Planned|This is what an actual canon Tau Female looks like.]] No boobs, no curves, no ass, no redeeming qualities other than having a face of your grandmother and the nose of a mutilated vag. Know the alien. Hate the alien. Purge the alien. The Emperor Protects! <s>This is an Ethereal though, so the other castes should be fair game.</s>]]
{{MattWard}}

In 6th edition, Tau are notable for being one of two factions (the other being Imperial Guard) who can ally with anyone except for 'Nids. Yes, this includes [[Wat|both Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemons]].

Their current level of naïveté led to a few... ''interesting'' alliances, to say the least.

First off, Tau ''can'' ally with [[Ork]]s, even though fluff-wise they are viewed as enemies of the Greater Good to be purged wherever encountered. Smaller Ork warbands (mostly [[Blood Axes]]) frequently act as mercenaries, of course, so the Tau might use them in that capacity. Plus, there might be fluff changes coming up (most notably, it was rumored that the [[Gretchin Revolutionary Committee]] would return in the new Orks codex; they, of course, would get along quite well with the Tau).

They are also battle brothers with both the Space Marines and Eldar, which has caused a large amount of headscratching on /tg/. The Eldar make a modicum of sense; after all, the Eldar are well known for being expert manipulators. A Tau-Space Marine alliance, though, would be odd, to say the least, since Tau and Space Marines are always going at it in the [[fluff]]. Of course, a minor [[Space Marine Chapter|chapter]] could always find an alliance with the Tau, or even [[Heresy|join the Greater Good]], but that seems far-fetched at best. Old fluff from back in the 3rd edition codex tells a story of a Tau commander letting an Apothecary remove the aul glands from dead Marines, establishing that the Tau are honourable warriors in the minds of this particular chapter. Isn't too hard to guess that someone at GW felt the battle brothers thing was a bit of a head-desk move, so they tried to fix it.

The weirdest part, though, is that Tau ''aren't'' Battle Brothers with the Imperial Guard, despite (or maybe because of) the existence of [[Gue'vesa]] (Imperial Guard defectors).

7th edition corrected all of this for the Tau, making them only battle brothers with themselves and certain allies of convenience, like Necrons and the Eldar, while the rest are desperate allies or, in the case of daemons and 'Nids, Come the Apocalypse. This effectively "fixes" the issue from the point of view of a butthurt puritan while still allowing for those who bought Tau models to include them as allies in their games.

8th edition totally destroyed any chance of Tau having allies in matched play games. Taudar is dead, thank fuck. It's almost like going around attacking everyone who refuses your offer of pseudo-enslavement is a bad way to make friends. Especially when you can't back it up.

==Tau Member Races==
[[File:Dynamic entry by majesticchicken.jpg|right|thumb|550px|Look up fuckers! You're invited to the latest imperial party and we're not taking "no" for an answer!]]
The Tau are the only faction that willingly accept other races into their ranks. Typically, the races are extended a hand from the Water Caste first, and if they still pose a problem or otherwise refuse to be reasoned with, the Fire Warriors are sent in. It should be noted that tau usually are not in haste of annexing the world, and if the aliens don't want to join right now but aren't immediately hostile and open to trade, Water Caste would slowly but surely convert them into a Greater Good to the point that one day they themselves would ask to join the Empire. The species, when annexed or conquered, are usually allowed to keep their planet, but must answer to the authority of the local Ethereal and possibly the local Shas'o. Most of them are fluff and don't show up on the tabletop, but it would get a little ridiculous if you could purport to play a 'single' 40k race that included, like, twelve different races.

* Demiurg - <s>[[Squats]] reborn.</s> NOT ANYMORE the Squats are back and not Demiurg at all! They are a race of space-faring miners specializing in ionic weaponry who serve the Tau with their engineering and mining abilities. They make an appearance in Battlefleet Gothic: Armada though, so that's nice.
* Galgs - NOT FROG/TOAD people, big internet snafu here. They have tentacles and chose not to fight the Tau when they realized they'd get steamrolled by the Fire Caste.
* [[Gue'vesa]] - Humans who have not only defected to the Tau, but chosen to take up arms and fight alongside them to serve the Greater Good. Rules for them are found in [[Forge World|Forge World's]] Imperial Armour Volume 3. (If the current trend goes on we may see Sisters join up with the Tau, <s>which might be an improvement for the Sisters.)</s>{{BLAM}}{{BLAM|HERESY!}} They also have planets with generations of humans that have never known the Imperium.
* Hrenian - Alien mercenaries employed for their skills as light infantry. No other information available. Probably [[Lizardmen#Skinks|Skinks]] In Space.
* Ji'atrix - A spacefaring race. No other information available. (Dammit, GW [[Writefag|writefags]].)
* [[Kroot]] - Predatory gene-assimilating avian humanoids. They are the first alien race to be actively recruited by the Tau as mercenaries, and are so regularly hired that they have officially progressed to being considered Auxiliaries of the Tau forces. They have colonization rights and can 'kroot-form' planets.
* [[Vespid|Mal'kor]] - Insectoid aliens, also known as Vespids, who are native to a gas giant planet within the Tau Empire. Serve as Auxiliaries and are considered in extremely high regard by the Fire Caste. They have colonization rights too.
* Morralian - Also known as "Deathsworn". No other information available.
* [[Nicassar]] - A voidfaring race of [[psyker]]s and the only psychically-gifted species in the Tau Empire. The Tau have carefully hidden them away from the Imperium due to their (actually justifiable) psyker-phobia. Were the second alien species to join the Greater Good and have been described by the Deathwatch as an Alpha threat because they can empathically create memories in even Space Marines (can make them think they remember their mother's face for example). Described as having big, bird like heads with beaks.
* Ranghon - No information available. No relation to these [[Rangdan Xenocides|guys]].
* [[Tarellian]] - These guys are basically [[Lizardmen#Saurus|Saurus]] IIIIN SPAAAAACE!!!!!! Not really part of the Empire, but rather mercenaries who will gladly fight humans and Tyranids on the cheap since the Imperium virus-bombed their home world and the Tyranids nommed their biggest colony.
* Poctroon - The first sentient species to be found by the Tau, [[wikipedia:Siege of Fort Pitt|they were "accidentally" driven extinct by Tau smallpox]], and their planet just by coincidence was a great place to set a Sept World; Bork'an.
* Nagi - Brain worms that, due to their horrific appearance and inability to communicate, were attacked by the Fire Caste. They managed to sort it out, though, and now they work with the Ethereals as advisors (because having brain worms about as "advisors" isn't a bad idea or anything). They have been shown in a few books so far, and were involved in a "mind-rip" (guess outright calling it "rape" was too much) of a space marine POW, while being so self-righteous and smug about their mental superiority they could give Eldar a run for their money. Apparently they can also at least perceive the Warp (which they call "extra-dimensional space"), and probably manipulate it as well, and know enough about it to outright refuse to go anywhere near demonically-tainted Agrellan when the Tau invaded it.
* Ji'atrices, Morralians, or Ranghons are probably other Warhammer Fantasy Races In Space, such as [[Lizardmen#Kroxigor|Kroxigors]] or Trolls, given the overall tendency of the Tau to incorporate Fantasy races missing from 40k.

The usually genocidal actions of the other races, most notably the [[Imperium]], also serve as a motivating factor for less-powerful races to join the Tau. While the Tau do seem a minor threat to the Imperium now, if the current policy continues, there will be more and more races joining up with the them if for no other reason than avoiding [[Exterminatus|extermination]]. Of course, the Tau are just coming to realize how vast and powerful the Imperium really is, and how a lot of their member races really ''are'' the victims of crazy, evil, fascist extermination protocols. Usually, the Imperium is entirely justified, though. There's always the chance that a species responsible for a "Hell World" or "Nightmare World" might try to join up with the Tau, and the damage that might be done before the Tau realize their mistake would be tremendous. Good thing the Tau haven't done anything stupid like leave a psychic species ali- oh wait. Well, at least they don't have Warp-sensitive brain worms in close proximity to their lead- oh wait...welp, they're fucked.

==Skub, controversy and hurt-butts==

Twelve year old [[fluff]] (from ''[[Dawn of War]]'', supported by [[Deathwatch]] supplements) has them controlling population growth and habitation of the rebelling humans on Kronus once they come under the rule of the Tau Empire. To be fair though, had it been anyone else they were revolting against, including the Imperials, those humans would just be dead.

The Tau have a few hundred planets after a handful were eaten by Tyranids (discounting allied held worlds and worlds with a minor presence). Despite this, GW writers and fanfiction nerds alike have this strange habit of treating them like a major faction. Most writers don't seem to realize the Tau are one of the smallest, most insignificant minor species in the galaxy. This isn't to insult them, they can always get stronger; it's just the plain truth, given the Tau Empire's current situation. Hopefully the Tau Empire will grow as time goes on, assuming the setting doesn't fall into constant grind never proceeding to the next year for decades ''again''.

One of the more controversial aspects of the Tau is that Games Workshop feels the need to make them seem viable as an army by having their power fluctuate wildly. For example, the Tau can easily subjugate Imperial Hive Worlds and deport its population so easily that it doesn't even get a footnote. You know, those planets in which the population of a single city shocked an Tau ambassador because the city's population was greater than the entirety of the Tau species? Imagine entire planets of those cities, cities in which everyone is an experienced killer (which is why Space Marines love recruiting from Hive Worlds), armed and ready to fling themselves at any invading xenos to purge them with extreme prejudice. These are the same worlds where the PDF alone would be large enough to give the entire Fire Caste a serious headache.

As an example of this, take the Battle of Mu'gulath Bay, known as the Battle of Agrellan to the Imperium. This was a fight over a Hive World which the Tau won, how? Using Riptide Battlesuits. According to GW, the Riptide's armor was impervious to nearly all anti-armor weaponry. The kicker though, is that '''''Deathstrike Missiles''''' ''did nothing'' when its shields were active. You know, the missiles '''''Titans are afraid of''''' and can vaporize armies? And can use Titan-killer warheads? '''Those Missiles'''. Such bullshit. There were like three or four of these suits, by the way.

Another example goes back to the Taros campaign in which a Tau stronghold was mysteriously unable to be blown to hell by sustained bombardment from Colossus mortars and then the Tau ''sallied out'' to engage the Imperial forces and won. In addition, a lot of fights are won by their opponents being uncharacteristically stupid. For example in both the Taros Campaign and the Battle of Agrellan the Imperium suddenly forgets how to defend itself and its supply lines during the second [[Damocles Crusade]] and engages the Tau using formations and tactics that cater to the Tau in the extreme (this is especially egregious in the finale). [[wat|There is even an instance in which an assassin forgets to use her gun to instantly kill her target]]. Even the Marines aren't immune to this sudden stupefying aura. Space Marine Terminators wielding storm shields are seen shot and killed because they were too busy telling each other to raise their shields up to block the Tau's shots [[derp|instead of ''just raising their shields up to block the fucking shots''.]]

There are numerous other things too. The Farsight Enclaves defending ''conquered'' worlds instead of just defending actual Tau worlds. Farsight being spared by a Bloodthirster for no reason. Not being wiped out by the Skitarii's radium weapons. The special ammo Space Marines can use that ignores armor or goes through shields and armor not even being mentioned or used. Invisible Shadowsun ambushing and killing a Raven Guard Chapter Master. Bravestorm somehow intercepting a Vindicare's bullet to save Farsight, and Darkstrider and his Pathfinders somehow finding and killing said assassin because he had a hunch that something was amiss (seriously). The list goes on and on, it's like Games Workshop made an entire faction for us to hate for being Noblebright, which pissed everyone off, so they changed the faction into ''Mary Sues'' instead.

Heck, they even [[Bullshit|cracked the Codex Astartes]] so they're familiar, in theory, with any tactic that an adherent to that text might use.

==In a Nutshell==
{{HurfDurf}}
;'''The Stated Reasons Why People Hate Tau'''
Weeaboo space confucianists — not grimdark enough.
;'''The ''Real'' Reason Why People Hate Tau'''
{{Powergamer}}
Long ago, the single thing that people hated most about the Tau was undoubtedly the [[Fish of Fury]] tactic. Years later people are STILL bitching about it. Fuck, even most Tau players felt it was bullshit. That and T'au are consistently considered [[Cheese]] by casual players who bitch and moan about how their army got blown off a featureless table by a Tau'Dar list in 6E and how you are [[That Guy]] for using them. Never mind that the Tau have been nerfed into oblivion in the last three editions and as of 9E they are strictly bottom-tier.

Still, back in the heady days of 6th Edition codex, the Tau were one of the shootiest armies in the shootiest edition of 40k ever. On top of that they had powerful abilities to bitchslap cheesemongers, having hard counters against any of the Wardex bullshit. More generally, the Tau battle philosophy even to this day is, "Deny your opponent the chance to interact with you," which is a good philosophy for real soldiers but can make for frustrating or uninteresting gameplay.

Of course there's also the fluff side of things, and as mentioned above the Tau are given massive amounts of plot armour compared to everyone else in the setting.

Listing the rest of the insane lore armor and other [[skub|interminable list of other assorted stupidities]] that would require their own separate page just to cover them all. Suffice to say for those who are more interested in the fluff their blatant titan grade plot armour can become somewhat infuriating.

;'''A Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
They are the one race that aren't complete dicks. Of course, their mind-influencing pheromones, psycho-indoctrination, and mass re-education facilities will just have to be ignored if you don't want destroy your wishful thinking for a half-way decent faction to exist in 40k. Even with the warts, it's saying something that they're ''still'' the nicest faction in 40k; they're just a regular oppressive empire, instead of a hyper-ultra terribad megadeath awful xenocidally oppressive empire, or some flavor of insane, omnicidal dystopia.
;'''Another Real Reason Why People Like Tau'''
Most races in 40k (''especially'' the humans) are themed around "feudalism in the future" with a big dose of societal and doctrinal regression. In other words, "we might be in space, but we have peasantry like medieval serfdoms and fight like crusaders with guns." By contrast, the Tau are themed around a real sense of futuristic progress. The Tau aim to create a proper post-scarcity economy (that's why they use robots for manual labor while the Imperium uses literal slaves) and theme their tactics around the modern US Military (the Tau would rather spend bullets than lives, while the Imperium is the opposite). As an interesting side effect, the Tau are capable of fitting into many other sci-fi universes without much trouble, such as ''[[Star Trek]]'' where they would be at home alongside other peaceful yet tyrannical Factions like the Federation. Compare that to the Necrons or Eldar which would be both Roflstomps and completely different from all other groups in that Universe (though they might fit in ''[[Doctor Who]]'').

In short: unlike the Imperium, the Tau are the best faction for scratching the future-tech itch of your favorite speculative fiction escapism. The Tau push for innovation and better technology also leads into our next point:
;'''The Real Reason Why People Play Tau'''
Arguably they have the most powerful guns in the game. Often twin-linked. Often on cool-looking robot battlesuits. [[meme|Also markerlights]]. Also [[Riptide|RAPETIDE]]. Tau players may also have a tendency towards sadism (or, as of 8th/9th, masochism).
;'''A Solid Reason People Don't Play Tau'''
They're fucking expensive. Seriously. On a points-per-pound level, they cost more than any other (plastic) army (we haven't even mentioned the financial aspect). This is doubly true if you like battlesuits, but of course you do because you're playing Tau.
;'''A Solid Reason People Do Play Tau Despite that Solid Reason Why They Wouldn't'''
Tau armies are one of the easier choices to paint. They're not quite on the level of the Custodes, but the generally "clean" appearance of Tau miniatures means it's not difficult to make their minis look good with novice painting skills.

==TL;DR==
<s>The good guys</S>
High-tech, Mech-loving alien race who are the ''least'' [[grimdark]] of factions. Can't melee for shit but can blow you back to the stone age with ranged weaponry if you have the misfortune of being downrange. You will either love them or hate them because of all this, and many neckbeards do feel the [[butthurt]]. For some reason Tau females are [[/d/|awkwardly sexualized]] by a non-insignificant minority of fa/tg/uys, which has shown up in some draw- and writefaggotry. As the saying goes: "You can't spell TAUNT without TAU."

== Warhammer Fantasy ==
Unlike most other factions in 40k, Tau have no clear analogue from [[Warhammer Fantasy]].

==Trivia==
[[File:Tau Ripoff.jpeg|thumb|right|300px|FOR THE [[Blood Ravens|GREATER THEFT]]!]]
* Some have said that Tau resemble the protagonist KYNE from the Amiga video game Brataccas, which was released in 1986. Tau were first added to Warhammer 40k in late 2001. Some would dismiss this as coincidence, but Games Workshop has a long history of ripping off designs from other games; [[Beastmen]] are [[Broo]] from [[Glorantha]], very large chunks of 40k are a little too similar to [[Judge Dredd]], and all of the Greater Daemon model designs are stolen from early [[Dungeons & Dragons]]. These properties are understandable as Games Workshop was still selling games of those IPs when Warhammer was first created, but Brataccas is an obscure game from a forgotten system that was quite forgettable even at release, even if Amiga games tended to get fantastic cover art. This being said another of GW's early products was also puzzles of of this style of '70's/'80's Sci-Fi art. The Tau cast system does resemble the Protoss caste from [[Starcraft]], which predates the release of the Tau by 3 years... You have the Templar (Fire/Air Castes) Judicators (Ethereals + Water Castes) and Khalai (Earth Caste). In addition to a rogue sub-caste in the Dark Templar (Farsight Enclaves). This is Ironic considering that GW originally was making a deal with Blizzard to make games based on their properties. GW asked too much/Blizzard didn't like the terms and left... to make Warcraft and Starcraft. Starcraft would have become a Rogue Trader RTS. It was probably a mistake on GW's part, as they REALLY missed out. Stealing the Tau from the Protoss was probably done because GW was still salty. Alternatively, Protoss were always intended to be Eldar in the 40K interpretation of Starcraft and any similarities to the Tau are coincidental. Which is then funnier when you realise the Protoss are based on the Eldar that the Eldar are ripped off of Tolkien and that the Eldar supposedly helped push/create Tau society.
* Tau are technically canon to the Marvel Comics universe, as the series Venom: Space Knight repeatedly used Tau vehicles for aliens in the scenery. In fact, they have the balls to even keep the Tau Sept symbol! Also, you can see what appears to be a Eldar tank, as well as a Necron. The irony of the ripoff masters Games Workshop getting ripped off is juicy, even more so when its realized that lawsuit-happy Games Workshop (who literally tried to copyright "pauldrons" while they plagiarized Eldar from Tolkien and had prior contention between [[Malekith|two very similar Dark Elf characters of theirs who even shared the same name]]) couldn't do shit about it because Marvel is owned by Disney, and nobody beats The Mouse™.
** GW and Marvel/Disney settled out of court. A bit sad, a true battle between Daredevil and She-Hulk versus the Ordo Legalitus would have been cool. Interestingly this deal ended with GW and Marvel publishing several 40k comics, starting with a [[Marneus Calgar]] comic in 2020 and a [[Sisters of Battle]] comic in 2021, so the Tau might be canon again after all...
* Gav Thorpe, author of the Last Chancers novel ''Kill Team'', [https://gavthorpe.co.uk/2017/06/26/the-origins-of-the-tau/ stated] that he was inspired by the Eldar article in ''White Dwarf 127'' to invent a new species called the Shishell (or more specifically the Shissellian League) and they were "Lizardmen In Space" with a society based around five castes – Earth, Air, Fire and Water, and a fifth called Spirit. Fast forward to 1999/2000 and GW was preparing to create a new army for Warhammer 40000. They decided to quietly dismiss the Shishell concept (because, like the Squats and Hrud who were also dismissed, they didn't want the game to be "Warhammer Fantasy in space") and then borrow the caste/element system to use as a foundation stone for the Tau's lore (who were originally called the Tao at that point in time).

==Notable Tau==
===[[Canon]]===
*[[Aun'Va]]
*[[Aun'Shi]]
*[[El'Myamoto (Sub-commander Darkstrider)]]
*[[Shadowsun|O'Shaserra (Commander Shadowsun)]]
*[[Farsight|O'Shovah (Commander Farsight) and The Eight]]
*[[Commander Puretide]]
*[[Shas'o Kais]]
*[[Commander Or'es'Ka|Shas'o Or'es'Ka]]

===[[/tg/ 40,000]]===
*[[Blue]]
*[[Faptau]]
*[[O'ren I'shi'ii]]
*[[Shlicktau]]
*[[Xeno]]

==See Also==
[[File:Marvel Tau.jpg|thumb|right|250px|FOR THE GREATER GROOT!]]
* [[Nicassar]]
* [[Sept V'iet]]
* [[Tau Quest]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior]]
* [[Tau Dark Heresy]]
* [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Tau (9E)|Tactics on how to play them.]]
* [[Tau Cadre Creation Tables]]
* [[Codex_-_Tau_Auxiliary]]
* [[Tau Diplomacy]]
* [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|<strike>Love Can Bloom 3:Golden Shadowsun</strike> NON-CANON FANFICTION GARBAGE]]

==External Link==
Tau Lexicon: *[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eaLKLz0jdBTk24QSJrc5GSjNZzPzUZF9/view?usp=sharing]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrHhS5IkRR0 A Typical Tau-Human conversation.]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbuPaCgdO50 Should one of your Tau actually kill anything tougher than a guardsman in melee, you are allowed to end the game in victory as long as you play this clip.]
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhXCQFxGqMM Theme of the T'au Empire. Admittedly, its actually pretty amazing, all things considered.

==Gallery==
<center><gallery>
Image:Tau1.jpg|Stealth suits are :3
Image:Firewarrior.gif|Fire Warriors are :3 too
Image:Tau Chibi Fire Warrior.jpg|Chibi, but not weeby.
File:TauGuela.jpg|Gue'la.
Image:TauOrigin.jpg|Ohhh GW.
Image:Tau.gif|In 40k, everyones' guns are huge.
Image:Tau Fire Warrior.jpg|A Tau Fire Warrior, the basic infantry unit.
Image:Tau Firepower Demotivator.jpg|The sad truth of 6th edition.
Image:combine.jpg|In /tg/, tau are the bad guys.
Image:Itsyourempiretoo.png|Propaganda. [[Nazi|Sound]] [[Communism|familiar?]]
Image:Never shall the tau!.JPG|Surrender... never shall the Tau.
Image:Tauassault.jpg|Tau are vicious melee fighters, no less able than [[Space Marines]]!
Image:1234622525817.jpg|In hindsight, attempting negotiations with Orks was probably a bad idea.
Image:Tau Problem, Astartes.jpg|What's that? We're not grimdark enough for you, Neckbeard?
Image:Tau Sympathizer.jpg|The Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer's entry on Tau players.
Image:Discotau.jpg|For the Greater Groove!
Image:Manta.jpg|Fun fact: if you have enough money to buy this, you have too much money.
Image:Tau cosplay2.jpg|Typical Tau player, engaging in typical Tau behavior. (Pretty badass cosplay, even got the hoof right)
Image:Tau Battlesuit vs Smurf.jpg|This Char Custom Battlesuit-clad Tau demonstrates his mastery of [[Weeaboo Fightan Magic]]. Also DYNAMIC ENTRY!
Image:E6abddad6c5999a1dbe6085d8614f051.jpg|Tau in close quarters combat barring some very lucky dice rolls.
</gallery></center>
{{Promotions}}
<center><gallery>
Image:TauKroot.jpg
Image:MARKERLIGHTS.png|MARKERLIGHTS!
Image:tau_firecleavage.jpg|Sweet [[Weeaboo|weeaboo]] [[Heresy|heresy]].
Image:Commissar Shadowsuns Goods by morganagod.jpg|DAT ASS.
Image:DAT_SHAS.jpg| A Fire Warrior appreciating DAT ASS.
Image:Tau ass.gif|A Greater Good we can all believe in.
Image:NOT FUCKING CANON.png| [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|THIS IS NOT FUCKING CANON!]]
Image:JoinTau.jpg|Some recruitment methodologies work better than others.
Image:Tau Chick.jpg|Few rarely seen Tau chicks. Maybe because Sisters are hotter.
Image:youtastefunny.jpg|Yeah, we all know the truth about their "greater good".
Image:Subcommander torchstar by sexual yeti-d9qal0l.png|Subcommander Torchstar, Farsight's personal fangirl.
Image:Tau_caste_nudes.jpg|Earth, Fire, Water, Air...Ethereal?!? SWEET MOTHER OF KHORNE!!! MY EYES!!!
Image:Laughing tau whores.jpg|S-shut up you filthy sluts! Among my people it is considered quite a handsome dick!
Image:Power Shopping.jpg|It's a well-known fact that the Tau Empire has some of the best shopping in the entire galaxy.
Image:Taugirlpile.jpg|Here we see Tau propaganda meant to entice men with their terrible, blasphemous, and supple soft skin, smooth curves, perky brea...er...ah...heretical alien bodies.
Image:TauHuman.jpg|Indeed, many humans have already embraced the Greater Good. (The individual with the primitive flashlight has been sent to re-education. Happiness is mandatory, Citizen.)
Image:greatertits.jpg|An attractive human female defector who for some reason has been equipped with a highly modified commander's battlesuit, perhaps as a devious ploy to compel desertion by the less loyal.
</gallery></center>

==Navigation==
{{Tau}}
{{Tau-Characters}}
{{WH40k-Factions}}
{{40k-Governments}}
{{Template:Important Species in 40k}}

[[Category: Xenos]]

Grimdark

2022-01-07T10:22:15Z

195.194.119.220: /* Grimderp */

{{Grimdark}}
[[File:P23436_p_v10_aa.jpg|300px|right|thumb|If your protagonist or antagonist isn't at least this [[edgy]], then you're probably doing Grimdark wrong.]]
[[Image:Lovepeace.png|thumb|right|It's totally the opposite of this.]][[Image:Inspector Grimgadget.jpg|thumb|right|Inspector Gadget, reimagined with a grimdark feel.]]
[[Image:Grimdark.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark versions of the TMNT. Their mentor is a Skaven.]]
[[Image:Grimdarkery.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark means war, and always endless, brutal war.]]
{{topquote|We are not men disguised as mere dogs, we are wolves disguised as men|Captain Muroto, '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''}}
{{topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

{{topquote|Tᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀɪɴᴅ ɪᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴅᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ɪᴛ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇɴ sʜᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ ᴏɴᴇ ᴀᴛᴏᴍ ᴏғ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʟᴇᴄᴜʟᴇ ᴏғ ᴍᴇʀᴄʏ ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴇᴛ... Aɴᴅ ʏᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀᴄᴛ ᴀs ɪғ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs sᴏᴍᴇ ɪᴅᴇᴀʟ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ, ᴀs ɪғ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs sᴏᴍᴇ... Sᴏᴍᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛɴᴇss ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ʙʏ ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ɪᴛ ᴍɪɢʜᴛ ʙᴇ ᴊᴜᴅɢᴇᴅ.|DEATH, [[Discworld|Hogfather]] (while explaining that since humans believe that it does, the way we believe Santa or the "Hogfather" does, we make it so it does.)}}

'''Grimdark''' is an adjective derived from the tagline for [[Warhammer 40k]], which states that "In the '''grim darkness''' of the far future, there is only war," and in some of the novels (at least a few of the [[Ciaphas Cain]] stories, for instance) it states straightforwardly, "in the '''grim dark''' future..." Whether this came after "grimdark" began to be popularly used as an adjective is not wholly clear (probably after). It is generally used to describe a dilapidated, dystopian "crapsack world" setting which it would really suck to live in, as say Somalia, North Korea, the North of England and the setting of Warhammer 40k itself. In fairness to the franchise and its defenders, this is because the published material primarily focuses on war and [[Chaos Gods|cults]] and other [[Daemonculaba|horrible things]]. There are supposed to be many pleasant and peaceful worlds and sectors in the Imperium, but they are mostly ignored as they are boring -- and when they DO appear in lore or fluff, they're usually to go from "0 problems" to "totally fucked", very quickly. It can also be used to describe artwork that has a ''grimdark'' feel, even if the setting itself would not normally be considered grim or dark, or something sinister or uncommonly threatening/intimidating in real-life. This often applies to fan-art and writefaggotry as well.

Depending on your own personal tolerances for grim darkness of course, it can be taken to the extreme, just like with all descriptive traits. There is a point in which it becomes more ridiculous than anything else, because everything is indefeasibly tragic all the time - the term for this being [[Grimdark#Grimderp|grimderp]], which is explained further below.

This is an accusation often leveled at Warhammer itself, and leads some to rail against "Grimdark" as a whole, decrying the concept as ridiculous attempts at [[edgy|edginess]] (typically by teenagers), and using the expression to refer solely to such over-the-top settings in a strictly pejorative manner. Others actually embrace this ridiculousness and run with it (including Warhammer 40K itself, due to being a much more obviously comedic setting [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|in early editions]]), insisting that the detractors or even the creators who take it seriously are making a mistake. Some people embrace the grimdarkness and mix it up with some humor (like painting Necrons with bright colors to make them look like edible candy figurines), especially if they are Ork players. But the schism between taking Warhammer's grimdarkness seriously or not is mostly visible with races such as the Tau, who are noticeably less grimdark ''visually'' than most of the other races and are either loved or absolutely hated for it (when not hated for being overpowered as shit). Meanwhile, another sizable percentage postulate that Grimdarkness lends greater moral and ethical complexity to a setting, based on [[Edgy|the fallacy that darkness always equals depth]]. Such people usually cite the works of Dan Abnett and many other Warhammer 40K writers to lend credence to such suppositions; these people are clearly ignoring that fact that most writers tone the grimdark WAY down. What, you didn't think the fact that the Imperium being an effective government, civilians having normal happy lives on par with the Scandinavians, Commissars who never *BLAM* their troops was odd? Needless to say, grimdark is [[Skub|a rather polarizing subject whose discussion often leaves little room for a middle ground]].

Speaking of, the polar opposite of grimdark is [[Noblebright]], a deliberate inversion of grim and dark nature where honor, chivalry, happiness and high adventure rule the day, as opposed to dying in a ditch from a supernatural plague as you run out of potable water and can no longer wait for the logistics department to process your dead comrades into something slightly more palatable before you start eating them. Oh, and being {{BLAM}}ed by a Commissar for even starting to look a little sad from these thoughts.

Although, it could be argued that 40K proper is actually Nobledark. Although the lore claims one man cannot make a difference and heroes are meaningless (Grim), we see the complete opposite of that actually happening in the lore. 40K fluff (40K, not just 30K) is crammed to bursting with heroes who made major differences. If anything, 40K seems to be about the difference one man ''can'' make rather than showing one man cannot make a difference. Even the events revolve around the Great Man idea of basically superheroes and supervillains moving the galaxy (and it's not just actual superhumans doing this). It is nonetheless a very dark setting, though.

== Common grimdark themes ==
*[[1984|Massive, imperialist, overbearing, bureaucratic, dystopian dictatorships]]; e.g. [[Imperium of Man|Nazi Germany clones]], [[Tau|Soviet Union/China clones]], or straight out examples of [[Paranoia|"Big Brother is watching you"]].
*Constant, never ever-ending warfare, usually as a horrific combination of outdated tactics and technology (And sometimes overly advanced technology). E.g., sending line infantry armed with single-shot [[Lasgun|Lasguns]] against a [[Bolter|Heavy Bolter]] nest.
*Horrifyingly large death tolls are perfectly normal. Genocide is also perfectly normal, and in many cases encouraged and espoused.
*Slavery is also perfectly normal, and sometimes considered a great necessity. Massive constructs are often built via slave labor.
*Everyone is racist towards non-humans/[[Eldar|elves]]/[[Mutant|mutants]]/[[Orks|fungus]]/[[Rak'gol|lizards]]/[[Slaugth|worms]]/[[Necrons|robots]]/[[Tyranids|aliens]]/[[Chaos|each other]]. Vice versa for literally every race.
*Speaking of xenophobia towards every species, those who express sympathy for a hated race and/or intermingle with said race, are usually publicly humiliated, tortured, and usually purged.
*Daily dose of [[HFY]]. [[Astral Knights|And]] [[Awesome]].
*[[Shadowrun|The vast majority are poor people who literally live in shit, pollution, crime]], and a plethora of [[Nurgle|all kinds of filthy diseases]], except for a [[Monopoly|few greedy upper 1% who own 99.9% of everything]].
*You, a poor bastard, are being farmed for shits and giggles by said few greedy upper 1%.
*Most of the poor bastards are being forced to work 23 hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, in factories and/or forced labour camps, until their bodies give out. Forever.
*They're probably making weapons and equipment for [[Imperial Guard|the military]] (which is where the rest of the poor bastards are).
*[[Age of Strife|Dark, disgraceful and recondite past]] covered with [[Alpha Legion|lies]] [[Imperium|propanganda]], [[Tzeentch|deception]] and [[Eldar|partiality]].
*The Higher Powers do indeed give you consideration, they're just malevolent as all fuck.
*Chronic backstabbing. Just like in real life relationships. (''Who hurt you?'')
*[[Ork Snipers|"Frie]][[Marines Malevolent|ndly]] [[Kharn|fire"]]
*[[Space Marines|Child]] [[Imperial Guard|soldiers]]. Just like in real life.
*Your morning alarm clock is the stray bullets you hope don't hit you, from [[Necromunda|the gangsters doing a drive-by on their enemy who happens to be in the same district]] to whom you don't even belong to or like.
*Status quo is god. [[Nurgle|Literally.]]
*[[Tzeentch|Change is worse]].
*[[Cyberpunk|Cybernetics and cyborgs]]; the less human, the better.
*[[Commissar|Daily forecasts reguarly call for a 80% chance or more of *BLAM*]].
*[[Judge Dredd|Police]] [[Adeptus Arbites|brutality]].
*Even minor crimes can have major punishments.
*[[Inquisition|Being innocent or even a victim of crime can be counted as a crime]]. All participants in a crime, whether perpetrator or victim, are charged.
*[[Inquisition|Government agencies that are always there to fuck you over]] at the slightest hint of [[heresy]].
*Did I mention that the [[Inquisition]] commits planetary genocide 24/7?
*The [[Erebus|cock]][[Dark Eldar|suckers]] responsible for most of the shittiness are not only getting away with it, but are surviving and thriving, without becoming major targets for the [[noblebright]] forces.
*Torture that makes the CIA look like saints.
*[[Call of Cthulhu|Sanity checks]].
*Criminally insane delusional psychotics tortured in filthy mental asylums (in case of no/failed SAN checks).
*[[H.P. Lovecraft|Disgusting, horrifying, tentacled eldritch abominations]] that are often the cause of aforementioned criminal insanity.
*Rape. Just like in real life. ([[/d/|And often by said tentacled Eldritch Abominations]].)
*Surgery without anesthesia.
*[[Cannibalism]], in three forms:
*# For power (embracing the myth of "you are what you eat").
*# For food value; sometimes this is concealed by callous authorities as some other kind of food; sometimes, it's just a biological, cultural or desperation thing.
*# For the sheer fun of it.
*Want chemotherapy or some other expensive treatment? Well, you have to eviscerate that old dropout student of yours in order to pay.
*In fact even surgery without anesthesia is a luxury available only to wealthy or important ones, as are all other forms of medicine. 99% of people are expected to die when they fall sick or get injured. That is when they don't get executed FOR falling sick or getting injured.
*[[Fleshcrafting|Human experiments]]. [[Fabius Bile|Sometimes willingly, but most of the time not]]!
*Zombie plagues.
*Ritual cult sacrifices.
*Massive amounts of blood, gore, guts, pain and hatred.
*No personal opinion or choice. Only the illusion of it, in which you probably end up an [[Magnus|unwil]][[Mortarion|ling]] [[Rubric Marines|sla]][[necron|ve]]. Or...[[Chaos spawn|something worse]].
*Anti-intellectualism.
*...and it's justified because even an instant of unprotected thinking risks mass destruction.
*PTSD.
*Nihilism.
* Racism is actually right.
*Gothic and emo aesthetics (with the help of tons of ''"decorative"'' skulls).
*There are no "good guys". Everyone's a jerk, including yourself. ''Especially yourself.''
* Everyone is evil either because they’re just plain monsters or because they are trying to survive which makes everyone evil to everyone else.
*[[Tau|The guys everyone refer to be "good" or "nice"]] are actually just ''the least'' evil bunch, and would still make your average high fantasy/sci-fi arch-villains look like saints in comparison.
*The REAL good guys are either [[Lamenters|the ones (usually) mostly hated, and are going to get fucked over beyond human recognition usually without any logical reason]] or [[Salamanders|too few to make any difference]].
*Aforementioned "good guys" are only "good" because they do care about their allies and civilians, and generally try to make the place less shitty for those they care for. But they still wouldn't hesitate a second before doing pretty horrible things like [[Shadowrun|terrorist actions against "The Man"]], [[Warhammer 40k|killing a defenseless xeno child]], etc...
* The aforementioned defenseless xeno-child needed to be killed either because it was guaranteed to grow up to be a monster, would grow to compete for resources needed for survival, would be corrupted, was already a monster, or any number of reasonable justifications that would leave a modern man in frustrated tears trying to justify not killing it. Welcome to Warhammer 40,000.
*Magic is [[Warp|inherently malevolent]] and actively seeks to [[Cenobites|corrupt]] and [[Khorne|destroy]] those unfortunates 'gifted' with magical abilities. And everything around them at the time.
*You either die a [[Sanguinius|worthy death]] or you live long enough to see yourself becoming something that [[Mortarion|you've]] [[Perturabo|always]] [[Fulgrim|hated]].
*Everyone will most likely die in the end. Especially the ones important to and including the main character.
*Always polluted, never sunny.
*No ice cream. No lollipops either.
*Death or suicide will only make things much, much worse in [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] levels, as a hive of disgusting, incomprehensibly evil supernatural daemons are waiting patiently to eternally torment your un-life and roast your soul alive day and night forever and ever, again and again and again and again.
*Tremendous potential for offensive/dark comedy/[[lulz]].
*[[God-Emperor of Mankind|And if you ever, EVER try to change this shitty world or try to help one person just a little, you will probably suffer terrible consequences,]] because altruism is a dying philosophy. (And because your reasoning is flawed.)
*Life sucks.
*There's only war.
*You're probably going to get eaten by Tyranids.
*no gf
*Good luck and [[Dwarf_Fortress|have fun.]]
*Even using the wrong calendar is [[heresy]].

== Stuff considered Grimdark ==
{{cleanup}}
[[File:Tyrus.jpg|400px|thumb|A world where the only way to beat grimdark is by introducing something even grimmer and darker]]
[[File:The_grimdarkian_by_ironshrinemaiden_d1i73bl.jpg|400px|thumb|[https://www.deviantart.com/ironshrinemaiden/art/The-Grimdarkian-91030161| The Grimdarkian, by IronShrineMaiden]]]
* '''''[[Warhammer 40,000]]''''' (Naturally, coined the term).
* '''''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]''''', <strike>but less than you'd think. It's a lot closer to nobledark</strike> until the world [[Derp|was]] [[Bullshit|actually]] [[End Times|destroyed]]. Now, [[Age of Sigmar]] continues it and is, slightly, better in so much that it is unlikely to be destroyed, though [[Warhammer Meta-Setting|that may imply an even worse eternal stalemate]].
* '''The World Wars''', especially the Western Front of WW1, the Eastern Front of WW2, and everything involving WW2 Japanese army/navy and PoWs/civies.
* '''The countless wars of the 1990s in Africa''', including, but not limited to: The Rwandan Genocide, Liberian child soldiers, Sierra Leonean amputations, slave labor in the Congo, etc.
** Post Colonial Africa in general until the 21st century and even then there's not particularly nice places like Somalia.
* '''''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'''''
* '''''[[Dark Sun]]'''''
* '''''End of War'''''
* '''''Blood''''', The main character is a undead wild west gunslinger who has to bring down a dark god's cult!
* '''Shakespeare's tragedies''', especially ''Macbeth'' and ''Hamlet''.
* '''''[[1984]]'''''
* '''''Soylent Green'''''.
* '''''[[Paranoia]]''''' (though used for parodying 1984).
* The majority of the tragedy genre of stories.
* '''''[[RIFTS]]'''''.
* The '''''Half-Life''''' universe after the resonance cascade.
* '''''Portal''''' once you get past the memes.
* The Helghast from the '''''Killzone''''' universe.
* The '''Kerberos''' trilogy, but special mentions to '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''. A series of films that basically gave birth to Killzone singlehandedly (Seriously, look at the comparisons between the Helghast and the film's Protect Gear, [[Original character, do not steal|it is ''blatant'']]). Set in an alternate-history where Japan was occupied by Germany rather than America at the end of WW2. In Jin-Roh, the nation is constantly in social turmoil with left-wing communist terrorist guerillas using children as bomb couriers against two police force of Japan: the normal-looking police force (Backed by the Japanese KGB/CIA hybrid) and the '''ORIGINAL''' Helghasts called the Kerberos Panzer Cops. Jin-Roh is a political thriller film that largely talks about the problems of the "Good guy, bad guy" dichotomy and how juvenile it is for stories to portray these things in real life. All of the films have a downer ending, so if you are looking for a happy ending, you're gonna get dissapointed. Despite what [[/pol/|some people]] [[SJW|may argue,]] the Kerberos trilogy is a condemnation of all extremist ideas and actions. Its a Mamoru Oshii film of Ghost in the Shell fame, what do you fucking expect.
* Everything in '''''Gears of War'''''. The fact that the primary weapon in the series features a [[Chain Weapon|Chainsaw bayonet designed to utterly rip out the innards of anyone unfortunate to be at the receiving end]] is already by itself Grimdark.
* Everything in the Resistance universe.
* The MachineGames '''''Wolfenstein''''' games. The Nazis crushed the Allies in 1947 with insane technology and won World War II. The setting pulls no punches in depicting how nightmarish the world would become if the Nazis were free to enact their racist and reactionary ideology to its fullest. Manhattan was nuked off the earth, London is now a slum filled with humiliating monuments to the Nazi victory (and a giant robot that literally crushes any uprisings), indigenous peoples in Africa and South America are being exterminated wholesale, there are concentration camps on the Moon, Hitler has been deified, and untermensch live in hiding and constant fear for their lives.
* '''''[[Blame!]]'''''.
* '''''Devilman'''''. (especially CRYBABY)
* '''''[[Berserk]]'''''
* '''''[[Goblin Slayer]]'''''.(Pretty much [[Berserk]] if it was set in a Dungeons and Dragons world)
* '''''[[Emergence]]'''''. (177013)
* '''''[[Kingdom Death]]''''' (Makes 40k's setting seem pleasant and cheerful).
* '''''Eastenders''''' (especially at Christmas).
* '''[[Grimdark Songwriting]]'''
* '''''[[Don't Rest Your Head]]'''''
* '''''SLA Industries''''': Imagine if the Emperor was not only still walking around, but was a callous buisnessman with a permanent skeleton face and no bling armor. Imagine a civilization that exists almost entirely to strip mine itself in the name of consumerism, with snuff television being the primary source of entertainment and anyone trying to do buisness not on SLA's pay roll being branded a "Soft Company" to be exterminated. Oh, and truly horrid aliens that were thought extinct centuries ago are now making a comeback AND occult fuckery of varying flavours is manifesting in increasing amounts in Mort City, SLA's capital.
* '''''The Matrix'''''
* '''''[[World of Darkness]]''''', with special mention going to [[Wraith: The Oblivion]], a game so bleak it's rumored to have actually caused fits of chronic depression in players.
* '''''[[CthulhuTech]]'''''
* '''''[[Call of Cthulhu]]''''', depending on how you do it.
* Everything from '''''[[H.P. Lovecraft]]''''' and the '''''Cthulhu Mythos''''', though this can vary when you add in other Mythos writers like August Derleth.
* Playing mortals in '''''[[Exalted]]'''''
* '''''Neon Genesis Evangelion''''' (Especially End).
* '''''Muv-Luv''''' Often compared to 40k in how bleak and brutal the series is.
* '''''[[Midnight]]''''' setting for D&D.
* '''''[[FATAL]]'''''.
* '''[[Rebecca Black]]'''.
* '''''I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream'''''. Just the title itself should give you a clue on how horrific the game is. (The video game is terrifying, especially with its endings, and the short story it is based on is even more horrifying). Humanity has been wiped out except for five people, who are trapped inside a complex controlled by a misanthropic, reality-warping supercomputer keeping them alive to torture them.
* The '''Medieval Dark Ages''' that Warhammer 40,000 was originally based on.
* '''''[[The Witcher]]'''''. Racism, genocides, dozens of monsters that want to eat your face whenever you enter a random forest. Or cave. Or ruins. The video game adaptation even features a medieval Hitler running the [[Inquisition|Witch Hunters]], a fanatical order of [[Black Templars|racist scumbags dedicated to wiping out both mages and non-humans]] in the name of the Eternal Fire. Meanwhile, the neighboring empire starts a series of wars against northern kingdoms (where the series takes place), in which both sides descend into scorched earth warfare, all the while backstabbing their allies and generally being a colossal wall of dicks to the point that close to 70% of civilian population in war-zones died from raiding, famine and occasional outbreaks of extradimensional plagues. To add insult to injury, the whole world is doomed due to the (slowly) encroaching Ice Age, and the only person that could save it took two glances at this shitshow and decided to fuck off to a parallel universe and let them all die, ''because it would be a mercy''. (To be fair, though, she comes back, if only to save her adoptive mother and father from said Ice Age, as she still maintains her 'fuck the rest of humanity' attitude.
* '''''Dark Souls'''''. The entire ''world'' is ''dying''. Specifically, most of the population is undead, you die constantly, and you have to fight enemies larger and filthier than you are, [[Heresy|including a naked bitch with a spider vagina]]. Also, [[Extra Heresy|FAKE TITS]]. Stuck in an infinite loop where a hero constantly saves the world, and everything goes back to normal before hitting another grimdark cycle every thousand years. Compare with nobledark and check your mileage.
* '''''Drakengard''''' and its related franchise: '''''Nier'''''. Basically, the "god" in this setting is a massive dick so he infects humans with zombie aids out of boredom and watch them kill each other for the [[lulz]]. Caim (the player), the former prince of a fallen kingdom (due to his parents being killed by a black dragon) had to fight the zombie army. He unironically [[rip and tear|enjoys slaughtering any living things]] after waging a bunch of other conflicts and lost his ability to speak after he made a pact with a dragon in exchange for companionship and power (in Drakengard, making such a pact with another creature makes you lose a certain part of you). He had to team up with a blind pedophile priest, a baby eating elf witch, and a ageless shota. His sister unknowingly to him is a crazy incest bitch, driven mad by the pain she endures because she was forced to become a "Goddess of the Seal", some kind of administrator chosen by the "god" to maintain space and time. The job sucks, she had to be separated from her family and she's unable to kill herself because her caretaker would prevent that from happening. And to top it off her parents die tragically. And then you have the villains. Manah, an abused 8 year old child descended from one of the evil clone sister's brother from the prequel, was controlled by the eldritch forces of "the watchers" (read: the dick head "god" himself) who are in charge of the zombie armies with humanity's extinction being their goal. Due to the influence of the watchers group on the Empire kingdom of its setting, the world is engulfed in flames and corpses. The true ending for the game is that everyone except Caim dies and he somehow end up moving a magical doomsday device created by the god to other world (Tokyo Japan of our world to be exact), detonate it and doom the human race. It is said that Drakengard as a series has a fuck ton of timelines and a timeline was born from each of the endings with each ending being bad, or if not worse than the previous. Surprisingly the ending mentioned above is consider canon and it is where the sequel Nier took place (after 1462 years no less) with more grimdark ensuing. Drakengard 2 was pretty bright light since it was directed by a different director but is still part of branch timeline while Drakengard 3 is the prequel retelling how the god tries to destroy the world by sticking an evil parasite flower on some psychopathic girl. Each time the girl died it creates an evil clones of her that will try to rule the world with their evil song magic. Obvious, it's also grimdark since it led to the tragic grimdark rape sauce that is the plot of the first game.
** In '''''Nier''''', the world sets 1462 years into the future. After our "hero" and his dragon fucked up the world by killing and detonating the doomsday device, it release some kind of magical evil virus that mindraped and turned people into salt if they don't submit. After countless grimdark conflicts involving child soldiers, human experiments and more resource shortage, the scientist decided to separate the rest of the survivors souls (gestalt) from their bodies, hoping they could outlast the pandemic. But of course all these attempts are futile failure because Nier, our "hero" ended up killing the only thing that could save humankind, dooming them all to extinction.
*** Finally we have '''''Nier: Automata''''', 8480 years later, where new androids were created by the last human survivors. One of the Nier's companions Emil, a bizarre magical weapon created from some crazy experiment (he is over 8480 years old or so at this point) had to clone himself over 9000 times just to fight the aliens, which not only made him lose his mind and memories but also his sanity. Oh and the humans that escaped to the moons turn out to be long dead. When the rest of androids find out, they proceed to kill themselves in a batshit frenzy. To make this sound even more painful and tragic, the androids have the human concepts of pain and emotions programmed to them, making their death even more painful to be felt.
* '''''Mass Effect''''': While its universe overall is hardly grimdark overall, the Reapers and what happens to "harvested" individuals is some of the sickest forms of grimdark possible. During the Reaper War, trillions of people across the galaxy were vaporized, dissolved slowly, and/or converted into cyber zombies or brainwashed slaves. And that's just the latest Reaper War. The Reapers have committed so much galactic genocide beforehand, they turned it into a "regularly" scheduled event and made the galaxy their farm/laboratory.
** There are many other forms of Grimdark in the relatively Nobledark/Noblebright universe of Mass Effect, one of the most notable being the Genophage, a bioweapon deployed against the Krogan race as to halt the Krogan Rebellions. This bioweapon was basically a massive, permanent genetical Fetus Deletus that drove Krogan birthrates down extensively and creates a lot of stillborns, leaving them vulnerable to extinction.
* '''''Killzone''''', again. The Second Extrasolar War alone deserves its own page of Grimdark: Humanity and their alien descendants, the Helghast, engage in a near-racial war of genocide, more genocide, and even more genocide. Technology has devolved in many areas, and battles turn into endless slaughters as hundreds of thousands of men and women are thrown into a Verdun/Stalingrad hybrid scenario. What's even more horrible is how literally '''everyone''' is evil. Not just the Helghast. Literally all of humanity is warped. The Earth-based UCN? Corrupt and bureaucratic. They want to strangle all their colonies with an iron fist and they intentionally keep the colonial military, the ISA, weaker than it otherwise could be so the centralized military could easily crush them if they rebelled, (UCN cruisers for example are basically dreadnoughts in comparison to those of the ISA), which has caused more than a few problems for the ISA when fighting the Helghast. The Vektans? Hypocritically imperialistic, believing the Helghast deserve to perish for their militarism and (failed) invasion of their planet. The Helghast? Racist, imperialistic genocidal maniacs, believing themselves to be "superior" and even some thinking they need to kill every human in the universe, for "Helghast Purity".
** The Helghast are a literal representation of a society and people warped by Grimdarkery: The planet of Helghan is inhospitable, forcing almost all its inhabitants to wear gas masks. Society is highly fascist, militaristic, and any form of dissent is met with "reeducation" (A bullet to the head), while the government itself is highly nepotistic, where opportunistic scumbags manipulate Helghast Nationalism for their self-benefit. Also, technology and living standards in the civilian sector is extremely poor, as the majority of the advanced technology went over to the military.
** The fanbase of the series is certainly odd though due to the fact that this concept that everyone is evil has went completely over their heads and due to the blatantly unfair treatment of the Helghasts (kind that makes the Treaty of Versailles seem all fair and good by comparison) in the lead up and aftermath of the First Extrasolar War, they have a tendency to see the Helghast, despite being the antagonists, [[derp|as the good guys]]. Their totalitarian society and the fact that the Helghast commit more or less every warcrime known to man apparently didn't make it obvious that this is not so.
* '''''Gears of War''''', again. Decades of civil war, genocide and weapons of mass destruction has turned your home planet into a quasi-dead world. The human race is close to extinction, women are reduced to birthing machines, your government is an uncaring fascist scumbag, the weather is often rain consisting of razor sharp ice crystals that could cut you into ribbons, you're fighting a never-ending war with genocidal monsters from the underground and the world is literally '''dying''' from super fuel.
**To make matters even worse. Even before the Locust War, humanity was locked in a near 80 year war between two rivaling superpowers over the aforementioned super fuel. The COG and the UIR. Both governments are ruthless, imperialistic, fascistic, communistic bastards of a government whose war crimes will make the likes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany look like amateurs. When even the Locust have a point by calling us out for being exactly the same genocidal monsters as they are, you know Gears of War is fucked. Oh and the planet is called Sera, or Ares when said backwards.
* The '''''Resistance''''' series, again: Humanity is losing a brutal war of genocidal attrition against a parasitic alien species, the Chimera. Russia, Asia, and nearly all of Europe has been converted into a desolate wasteland, suitable for the Chimera species. Whatever is left of humanity has been driven into cave dwellings. Humans captured by the Chimera are converted into a Chimera Hybrid (Basically the Chimera equivalent of [[Arco-flagellant|Arco-Flagellants]]).
* '''''Hellgate London'''''.
* Most of '''David Bowie''''s songs about 1990.
* World Devastators in '''''[[Star Wars]]'''''. Seriously, if you read about them without knowing that they are from Star Wars, you could easily mistake them for something from 40k. And we're not talking about Star Wars Legacy and the genocide of the Mon Calamari.
* The first two '''''Hellraiser''''' movies
* '''''Event Horizon'''''
* '''''GANTZ'''''
* '''''[[Cyberpunk 2020]]'''''.
* '''''[[Shadowrun]]'''''. While not the worst in the grimdark department, Shadowrun definitely has its moments (the Renraku Archology Shutdown being a prime example); for instance the oppressive megacorporations reducing people to an identification number, with people not having one ([[Derp|for... reasons]]) don't exist legally.
* '''''[[Hellsing]]'''''... just all of Hellsing... Though it can easily slide into grimderp. (A little girl seeing her mother killed while hiding in a closet? Yeah that's intense. In a moment of desperation, shove a rod into the guy's eyeball, only for him to not be mortally wounded? That's pretty unfortunate. Said guy deciding to fuck the corpse as his smashed eyeball hangs from the socket? That's just silly.)
**'''''Drifters''''', by the same author. The protagonists are a bunch of [[murderhobo|kill-happy murderhoboes]] drawn from various psychos from all throughout history into [[Isekai|a generic fantasy world]] who have decided to [[Great Crusade|save the world by conquering it, one country at a time]]. One of the major powers of the setting turns out to have been founded by ''Adolph friggin' Hitler''. Even Joan of Arc, who IRL was noted for being a pacifist, is warped into a bloodthirsty psycho. The [[BBEG]], who wants to kill all humans (and is noted to be a step up from his subordinates, who want to kill [[Necron|everything]]) is all but outright states to be ''Jesus''.
* '''''Bioshock''''' and '''''Bioshock 2''''' (as well as '''''Bioshock Infinite''''', though it comes hidden behind a smiling facade of barbershop singing and the Fourth of July).
* Anything from the '''''[[Xeelee Sequence]]'''''.
** The Interim Coalition of Governance for example, is such a grim-ridden shit-hole that they make the Imperium of Man look like pussies filled with sun-shine and rainbows in comparison and make the [[Adeptus Custodes]] shit themselves in collateral fear. Despite achieving time travel, conquering the entire Universe through xenocide that would make the Necrons look like children and shooting Neutron Stars at .99c at the speed of light, The ICoG is still a minor nuisance compared to the Xeelee and their enemies, the Photino Birds. Stephen Baxter was able to construct the insignificance and petty malevolence of Man in a few books better than GeeDubs more [[Matt Ward|questionable]] [[CS Goto|authors]] did in decades. [[tl;dr]] the IoM wishes they would be as cool as the ICoG. A small example is a soldier, Pirius invents an incredible way of outmaneuvring the enemy and does a huge impact on the war: [[awesome|he captures a Xeelee ship]]. Turning back time and going to the past, he is...sent to a penal unit guaranteeing death. Literally for thinking outside the box.
** All of Steven Baxter's works arguably qualify. '''''Evolution''''' can be summed up as "humanity almost overcame its flaws, fixed the damage it did to Earth, and ushered in a [[noblebright]] future, and it might have worked, but [[Rocks_fall,_everyone_dies|just then a supervolcano erupted, wiped out human civilization, and everyone died]]. The end. There's even a chapter in the middle of the book outright stating it. Also that humans [[Imperium|are nothing but vicious bastards who rape, kill, and destroy everything they touch]] and have been ever since our ancestors were rats under the feet of dinosaurs, but other animals aren't much better.
* '''North Korea''', which is essentially [[1984|"Real Life Oceania"]], a totalitarian nightmare almost completely isolated from the rest of the world with a leader whose name you are literally forbidden from saying without the prefix "supreme leader". Universal conscription is in place for men with service lengths of over ten years from age 17 to 30 (for comparison, in South Korea, where compulsory military service length is also among the highest in the world, the service length is 21 to 24 months depending on the chosen branch). The country has no access to the internet and only has it's own intranet with government controlled websites. Long gone are the days when the government had any interest in making the country good. Now all they care about is simply staying in power, no matter how much poverty and how many famines the rest of the country has to suffer for it. And if you get on the government's really bad side, you and at least 2 other generations of your family get sent to prison camps to be executed or become the playthings of the prison guards until you die.
* '''''The Goon''''' comic series by Eric Powell (because circus hillbillies, werewolves with midget hand phobias, and the Zombie Priest are the least of it all).
* '''''Children of Men''''': A future where humans are no longer fertile and going extinct, and then someone finds a pregnant woman and nearly everyone in the world fights over her.
* '''''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''''' AKA Game of Thrones: Good guys screw up monumentally or never win, the only people who get ahead are amorally manipulative assholes and everyone is going to be massacred and enslaved by the evil ice elf necromancers in the end. And if they somehow survive, then another war for the Iron Throne will happen after the winner gets their revenge-boner satisfied and later, their kids would need to clean up the wankstains.
* '''''Dishonored''''' - Grimdark, and steampunk. Only in the "Kill fucking everyone" ending though.
* '''''Dark Seed''''', Grimdark to the core! the first game is about the main character being fucked in the head. Hr giger's artwork helps too.
* '''''[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|X-Com]]''''' (The remake and the original, as a parody of the G.I. Joe Badass stereo type, you're struggling with funding and even your gods in human form, some of whom make certain chapters of Astartes weep, can get fucked over by Sectoids!)
* '''''Puella Magi Madoka Magica'''''. Being Meguca is suffering.
* '''''[[Adventure Time]]''''''s backstory.
* '''''Path of Exile'''''. The game's setting is basically a documentary on the corruption of [[Roman Empire]]. Basically there is this continent called the Wraeclast. [[Tomb Kings|The land is pretty much cursed with undeath]] and [[chaos|mutation]] due to Thaumaturgy aka magic in the form of gems that grants ability, which came from the beast, some kind of eldritch abomination living in the mountain and the source of all this evil magic shit. Many great Empire rose and fell on the continent with their own fucked up and downfall. [[Fall of the Eldar|The first empire: The Vaal were somekind of Aztec, Mayan inspired Empire who loves to sacrifice people for power, so much that they were responsible for corrupting the beast, which partly responsible for what Wraeclast is today]]. After that, a new Empire called "the Eternal Empire" was built on top the former and began outlawing Thaumaturgy and gems for the next 1000 years, until a tyrant was throne after he cheat a death maze trial and was killed in a rebellion staged by Voll, who is obsessed with the old purity ideal and decided to trust Malachai, a previous evil asshole Thaumaturgiest employed by the previous Emperor to destroy the beast, the source of all magic (in detail, Voll was convinced by Malachai into thinking that only those who study Thaumaturgy could destory Thaumaturgy). Obviously, [[Nagash|Malachai ended up betraying Voll as well as everyone in the Empire, as well as the godamn world by merge with the beast and unleash a series of cataclysm that made what Wraeclast is today, and the bastard achieve a twisted sense of immortality where he is now but a evil monster living inside the beast, who is obsessed with creating nightmarish monsters]].
**Despite the Voll's fucked up, part of the Empire survived in the form of an island nation south called Oriath. [[Imperium of Man|It was ruled under a Theocratic government. Following the laws of purity with an iron fist, where they reject impurity so much that anyone who reject their doctrines is met with either slavery, death or exiled to Wraeclast (which the player came to be)]]. [[Nazi|They are also racist, dressed in stylish uniform fashioned with eagle, gold and the typical red armband, all the more reinforce their real life counterpart]]. [[Roman Empire|Since they inherit the previous empire's slavery culture, they enslave a group of archipelago tribal minority known as the Karui, serving as the Rome equivalent of barbarian tribe slave race for Oriath and oh boy, how Oriath loves to oppress the shit out of them, using them for free labor, torture them, experiment them and putting them in the grand arena as gladiators entertainment]]. They also worship this golden figure with red eyed [[Emperor|called Innocence, who is the major god of Oriath, the Templar's most beloved GOLDEN subject of worship]] and they believe themselves to be the most pure and "innocence" while calling others like [[heresy|the karui and the heretics to be impure and "Sinned"]].
***As if things are not bad enough, later game where after the player killed the beast, it awoke the gods from the slumber. Gods, who were once mortal but sold their humanity for power in order to ascend. As a result, the gods are no better than the humans, most them were downright psychopath(there's a god called Yugul who was once a scholar obsessed with fear that he study about it so much he eventually ascend to godhood, became somekind of four leg walking mouth thing), mentally depressed ([[genestealers|there's this insect goddess called Ryslatha who is afraid of loosing her children that she makes everyone hers by having her parasite control everything that moves]]) or just a downright bloody warlords (the Karui wargod, who is the one to encourage his tribes man to stop being peaceful and tell them to go kill shit and babies, which are actually Ryslatha's and is therefore responsible for her ugly transformation). Although some gods were good, they ended up being corrupted by their followers for fuck how longs while the beast forcing them to slumbering away. After their returning, some human made contact with them through their mind radio advertisement, and were made to become their followers, where they were [[chaos|granted mutations (or blessing, some would say)]] and went on their own ape shit rampage across the world to claim their own territories or invade others. Most of the Karui slaves in Oriath ended up getting the worst mutation of all since [[Angron|they worship this Kitava god (an evil Karui god whom was repeatedly punished for his gluttony, yet despite its mouth being mutilated in such way for him to stop consuming anything, he still does and even managed to reach godhood) in order to free from their slavery and shitty treatment from their Templar tormentor]], [[Khorne|all the more powered up Kitava with their desires for vengeance and blood. The slave's faith for Kitava is so overwhelming that not one on Oriath is safe from Kitava's power]], even the Templar, after their god Innocence that had been recently decimate by the player are now vulnerable to Kitava influences, that they switched side without a second thought, easily giving up their old faith like the asshole heretic they had always been. The only god who managed to retain its sanity from all this madness is called Sin, Innocence's brother who is this creepy black winged figure that could make everyone thought of angels of death whenever he pops up. Despite this, he is smart enough to realized the danger of godhood and create the beast in order to force them asleep (this includes his wife and daughter, whom were also deities like him, and were also corrupted that they had to be put down by the player because even Sin finds it painful to kill his own kin and lover). Even after the player has killed all the gods, Wraeclast remains the same, Thaumaturgy and gems still exist, but at least Oriath is no longer rule by an extreme religious organization, right?
* '''''[[Space Station 13]]''''' : Space paranoia simulator. Some might not consider this game grimdark, but the lore is set in a dystopian future where capitalism and unforgiving bureaucracy rules the universe, your life is expandable, and the media is controlled; your only choice is working until you die, or getting killed by either rival corporate operatives, space wizards, cultists, deathsquads or spies posing as your co-workers.
* '''''Barotrauma''''' : Inspired by Space Station 13, centered on a submarine crew in the underground oceans of Europa. Crew members are expendable, you're ''always'' outgunned, the submarine is almost [[Death World|constantly under attack by massive sea creatures]], and most missions are much more likely to end in disaster than success. Also, you explode as soon as you step outside the sub.
* '''''[[Pokemon Tabletop Adventures]]''''' (optionally).
* Original '''''Grimm's Fairy Tales''''' ("Hansel and Gretel", for example).
* '''''Alien''''' (as in the biomechanical, parasitic, acid-blooded brainchild of Ridley Scott and the late H.R. Giger).
* '''''[[Halo]]''''' (the setting of Halo is one grand scale of a Cosmic Horror Story centered around absolute hopelessness and bleakness of a Universe governed by hyper malevolent gods. Our good guys, the UNSC? It's a semi-authoritarian 'Big Brother is Watching You', fascistic style government that have no qualms dumping nukes on a civilian population if rebellion is sighted. The UNSC also have no problems dicking over their only alien 'friends' to benefit humanity, while also being bogged down in a political quagmire. The Covenant are ''much, much worse'', while anything from the Forerunner trilogy is just a high concoction of Nightmare Fuel inside a depressing milkshake.
**Now with [[Halo#Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command|newly added fluff in the Tabletop Games and other books,]] Halo is going eerily straight down the WH40K route. [[Space Marines|Covenant now having different chapters and sects,]] [[Warp|Slipspace shifting more like space hell,]] [[Inquisition|the UNSC/UEG sending secret police to silence and torture innocents]] [[Abbadon|and an ancient Eldritch A.I. of malevolent aura that shares the same name to a certain armless failure.]] Seriously we ain't making this shit up!
* '''''[[Battletech]]'''''.
* '''''Factorio'''''. Subtle, but, lone human, aliens want to kill you, everything you do makes smog, and your goal is to cover the world in industry, concrete, machines, and gun turrets. The world isn't dead when you arrive, but you're damn well going to kill it yourself or die trying.
* '''''Kane & Lynch.''''' Sweet Emperor, Kane & Lynch. Forget your GTAs and Paydays. In it, you control two murderous middle-aged fugitives, one of which is explicitly mentally troubled, and not in a funny way. The kind of true underworld scum that can only be described as genuinely repulsive. That, plus the fact that nothing ever goes right for anyone in the story just adds to it.
* '''''Attack on Titan''''' (You cannot win, ever. And if you do, you've probably lost all your friends, who've been eaten by giant freaky Mutants, who don't even need food. Yeeeah).
** To put things bluntly, it turns out even the Titans are perpetually suffering, the whole setting runs on a system of human sacrifice and cannibalism that would make the Aztecs proud, this is a series where facing the apocalypse does ''not'' bring out the best in humanity but instead remains as fractious, self-destructive, and divisive as ever (which is honestly one of the points of the story), and the leaders of humanity make the [[High Lords of Terra]] look competent. Things are such a clusterfuck with no hope of change that one of the characters has decided the only way things can get better is to wipe out every human that isn't a member of their ethnic group, and what's worse the plot seem to be proving them ''right''.
* '''''Metro''''' series (both the books and games, but mostly in the books, where the last known humans are hiding in underground subway tunnels, and when not trying to finish each other off are fighting endless hordes of [[mutant]]s [[/b/|and other, much worse things]]. Also, if you're one of the stalkers, the few brave ones that head to the surface to [[Blood Ravens|loot anything they can find]], you risk [[Tyranid|being eaten by flying daemons]]. Hell, it even has [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Metro-2033-Dmitry-Glukhovsky/dp/0575086254 the same "abandon all hope" vibe in the intro], just like 40k. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.)
** Note as the books go on the grimdarkness does tone down by showing the areas outside of the city to be in much better living conditions and other metros.(though not all the books are written by the same author).
* '''''Madness Combat''''' - no regret, no remorse, no reason, only [[Khorne|madness]].
* '''''LISA the RPG.'''''
* '''''The Darkness''''' videogames. Fairly average if utterly spoiled gangster is almost killed and inherits an ancient lineage of shadow monsters that feed off of shadows. Said gangster then decides to go on a revenge-killing spree against his uncle who ordered the whole thing while also fighting off the will of the monsters and protecting his girlfriend.
* The first two '''''Hyperion''''' books.
* '''''Elfen Lied''''' (where the next step of the evolution of mankind is a group of schizophrenic homicidal mutant girls with invisible tentacle hands and a hair-trigger temper who will either kill you in the worst way possible or [[Genestealer|infect you with their gene to increase their numbers]].)
* Most of '''Stephen King's''' works.
** As the joke goes, some people say that Stephen King's works are so fucked up they should come with a content warning. The reply is that they ''do'' have a content warning, they have the words "written by Stephen King" on the front.
* '''''S.T.A.L.K.E.R.''''' You travel a desolate landscape filled with mutants in all the horrific varieties, failed science projects (courtesy of the secret cabal of scientist settled there after USSR' s dissolution), anomalies that you often can't see and kill you instantly and a lot of renegades/bandits/fanatics/zombies. Your gear breaks all the time, resources are scarce and your goal is to get to the [[Wikipedia:Chernobyl disaster|highly dangerous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant]], which is also protected by lots of fanatics with the best gear available. If you make it through that hellish place that is The Zone, you'll likely get one of the 5 really grimdark endings, and if you paid a lot of attention to certain seemingly useless items along the way, you may get one of the other two grimdark endings. The rest of the world largely ignores what's happening inside The Zone, aside from a few scientists that study the deadly phenomena and the international military that maintains a cordon around The Zone so the nasty stuff doesn't get out and sometimes send expeditions inside, killing everything and everyone in sight. Also, [[Meme|A NU CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE]].
* '''''The Slenderman Mythos''''' (HE ALWAYS WATCHES).
* [[Dante|Dante "you hurt my feefees so I'll put you in hell" Alighieri]]'s '''''[[Warp|Inferno]]'''''. Put simply short, God is a fucking Sadist. If you suffer from depression/PTSD so much that you commit suicide, God will mutate you into an immortal tree that still feels pain and is constantly torn apart by harpies forever. How merciful. Sinners who committed Gluttony are punished by being eaten/mutilated alive by Cerberus, who transforms your corpse into slowly regenerating shit mud, all while a costant snowy rain (or rainy snow) hits your head; after being whole again, thou art eaten while trying to flee in despair, and it starts anew.But that's not the worst punishment. How about being under constant fireball rain in a desert for loving a person of the same gender? And being annihilated by snakes, then rebuilt? Or you find funnier being stuck in the ice? For ever. Because some old dude called Minos decided so.
* The '''''F.E.A.R.''''' series (even the third vanilla-by-comparison game is fucked up).
* '''''Total War: Attila''''' (Unlike the previous Total War titles, which were about your faction's rise to power from small backwater city/tribe/country into a mighty empire able to boss around its neighbors into doing your bidding, this one is about the decline of your faction as you desperately try to survive the onslaught of the Huns, who's sole purpose in the game is to worship Tengri by burning, pillaging, and raping their way through the known world. Particularly if you are the Romans. Winning is defined by being the last guy standing who gets to clean up the rubble and dead bodies, trying to rebuild their world after Attila destroyed it. Seriously, even the music sounds depressing and foreboding as fuck.)
* '''''[[Darkest Dungeon]]'''''. Your ancestor awakened some kind of God that is pretty much Cthulhu's brother and sent you a letter before killing himself, asking you to mop up the huge mess he created. Enjoy sending parties of 4 adventurers ranging from badass lepers to sickle-wielding jesters to their deaths in cultist-infested ruins, sewers filled with mutated cannibalistic pigmen, sea caverns serving as anthropomorphic sea creatures and forests corrupted by evil. And I'm not going to talk about the Darkest Dungeon itself. Also, have fun dealing with those bandits that are raiding the Hamlet for which you spent a fuckton of resources in upgrades.
* '''''The Day After''''', and its worse Brit counterpart, '''''Threads'''''.
* '''''Lord Of War'''''. The worst is that it's based on real events.
*'''''Now and Then, Here and There'''''. The DARKEST [[Isekai]] ever made. Period. Imagine if you will, that you were isekai'ed into a world that took direct inspiration from the ''Rwandan Genocide''. Yeah, we are in that type of territory here boys. The setting takes place in an alternate world, ''10 billion years'' into the future where the sun is about to go into a red giant and whatever scraps of humanity are fighting each other for the last remaining sources of water. Expect a lot of child soldiers, child abuse, child torture, child rape and ethnic cleansing to a scarily realistic degree. This is a post-post-apocalyptic world that is designed to break the viewers. It is an anime darker than 40k despite the 'happy' ending due the sheer levels of nihilism and unforgiving horrors of human depravity. As such, it is one of the few isekais that /tg/ could respect.
* '''''[[SCP Foundation]]''''' universe as a whole is borderline grimdark, as many aspects of the Foundation are mixed between absurd comedy, derp, and pure grimdark. At its very worst, the SCP Foundation has things that make the [[Daemonculaba]] look nice by comparison. Above all: [[Inquisition|Secure. Contain. Protect. Imagine a semi-totalitarian world power, funded by world governments to capture and contain anomalous entities, objects and locations so that the rest of mankind can live in a world that makes sense.]] We're talking animate statues that move when you blink (predating that episode of [[Doctor Who]]) and a creature that kills anyone that sees its face in ''any'' form. One of the most Grimdark anomalies is a girl pregnant with something that could cause the end of the world if it is ever born and the only way to stop it from being born is to regularly put her through something unimaginably horrible (The author has said that they never will reveal what exactly it is but it probably involves [[Rape]]) and periodically erase her memories to make sure she doesn't get used to it. And not all of these threats can be contained or stopped and are roaming free to harm innocents. And some of the captured SCPs are not necessary hostile or evil, but are still imprisoned in a worse case scenario. Oh, and the apocalypse has already happened several times over, whenever it does humanity is replaced with clones, and they have lost track of how many times they have done this. You can't even escape by dying, as the most of the possible afterlifes are just as bad if not far worse. While the SCP Foundation tries to avoid being outright bad guys, they are willing to do ANYTHING to keep the world normal and most of the other factions are morally grey at best, and the few good guy factions tend to cause a lot of unintentional harm. But still, [http://www.scp-wiki.net/black-white-black-white-black-white-black-white-black-white Secure. Contain. Protect.] Just another day at the office.
* '''''Shisha no Teikoku''''', the Empire of Corpses. Steampunk, Grimdark, Zombies, Cross-References and Conspiracies everywhere. It has even become possible to ressurect the dead, giving them their soul and intelligence back, but only 2 characters profit from it in the end, while everyone else stays a slave.
* '''''[https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/ The Eternal War]''''', as the name suggests
* '''''[[Dystopian Wars]]''''', as the name suggests
* '''''Clockup Games''''' where you get a firsthand look a sex cult and their destructive side effects.
* '''''World War Z''''' (the book). After zombies overran most of the world, many people had it so bad that they simply lost the will to live. Fighting in the Paris Catacombs with weaker weapons that wouldn't cause a cave-in due to hazardous gasses everywhere. Russian soldiers rioting over unfair treatment and enforced secrecy ordered under pain of death to kill one in ten of their own squadmates - with rocks - to teach them the price of freedom and democracy. Which they then happily traded away. The survival of the human race hinged on governments following a plan including elements of eugenics and leaving settlements of people behind as zombie bait. People resorted to cannibalism to survive in Canada. North Korea entirely vanished without a trace. Pakistan and Iran nuked each other. After the war officially ended, there are still loose zombies wandering around, Russia has started a breeding program to deal with severe underpopulation, several species are extinct, and diseases thought to be wiped out are coming back en masse.
* '''''Space Runaway Ideon'''''
* '''''[[Isekai|Re:Zero]]'''''
* '''''Uzumaki'''''. Basically a Lovecraftian horror manga where a seaside town gets [[rape]]d by spirals. Not as weird as it sounds. Or maybe it is as weird as it sounds but not as bad. Also has enough body horror to put most [[Chaos Spawn]] to shame.
** Pretty much anything by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junji_Ito Junji Ito.] Except ''Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu''.
* '''''[[Doom]]'''''. Demons from Hell have overrun Mars and Earth. You are the lone space marine capable of anything. Somewhat of a subversive case of grimdark: it's not you who is afraid of demons, [[awesome|it's the demons who are afraid of you]]. Commence with the [[Rip and Tear]].
* '''''Armored Trooper Votoms''''', an old-school mech anime. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Mankind has been at war for so long that even the computers created to direct strategy don't know what the goal is]]. War isn't glorious either, most of the first arc is about a squad that goes rogue and raids their own side's armory to find some loot. While the mech designs aren't pretty or fancy, they are more industrial and utilitarian than many contempoaries, being repurporsed exo-suits. The main character is a [[Perpetual]] done right, through a mix of natural regeneration abilities, skills and nigh supernatural luck; unlike, you know, [[Vulkan]], who was just handed something that should have probably belong to all Primarchs just so that he could make [[Horus|some]] [[Sanguinius|people]] [[Ferrus Manus|jealous]]. Take notes, [[Games Workshop|Gros Wotour]], take notes...
* The '''''Prototype''''' games. New York City is infected with a virus created by a generically-unethical corporation called GenTek that mutates people into mutant zombies and/or fucking huge deformed beasts. A secret division called Blackwatch is sent to brutally contain the virus, except it turns out they originally created the virus as a way to purge minorities. This may sound like Resident Evil but the resemblance ends here because you play as Alex Mercer (Prototype 1) and James Heller (Prototype 2), both of them infected by a strain the virus and became superhumans who can shapeshift and gain someone's memories by consuming them (read violently absorbing them into their bodies) and can grow weapons like claws or a blade arm.
* Saw: [[Cegorach|I just wanna play a game.]]
[[File:Digimon_Tamers_Nope_Nope_Nope!.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[RIP AND TEAR|It was going to be a kids show they said. It was going to be as whimsical as Pokemon they said...]]]]
* '''''[[Digimon: Digital Adventures|Digimon Tamers]]'''''. (Digimon as a franchise is noted to be surprisingly dark and adult for a kids anime in the 'Mon' genre, but Digimon Tamers is exceptionally depressing even by the series standard. Children attempting suicide, child abuse, attempted murder on a child, multiple on-screen deaths of major characters, torture, psychological mind rape on a young girl, PTSD on said young girl, eldritch abominations, horror and psychological horror. You think Tamers would have a happy ending? Lolnope, Tamers has a bittersweet ending in which the main kids lose their Digimon partners ''for ever''. This is what happens when you allow a guy notorious in psychological horror anime to do a kids show. There is a reason why Tamers is considered the Neon Genesis Evangelion for kids.)
** '''''Digimon Adventure Tri''''' (aimed towards adult fans of the series) takes Tamers up a notch in just plain creepyness. Deaths, assisted suicide, infanticide of Digimon babies, psychological damage, grief-induced madness, corruption, attempted genocide, racial supremacy, racism, immense property damage with collateral damage and attempted rape from the series' former mentor and teacher becoming a creepy sexual predator molesting one of the main characters and choking another one to near death (Both female by the way). Digimon doesn't fuck around.
* Most good 'Real Robot' anime/video games. Further discussion will result in [[skub]].
* '''''Full Metal Alchemist''''': The World is coated by a side of Noblebright at the beginning but morphs into 1984 the more you watch/read. The world Amestris starts out as fine and dandy (despite being a fascist military Dictatorship (the head of state is literaly called [[nazi|führer]])), then it morphs into a world where the Main Country (Amestris.) is at constant war with almost all it's neighbors commits Genocides Left and right and Murder's anyone who finds out the dark truth.
* '''''Shin Sekai Yori''''' also known as From the New World is a novel by Yusuke Nishi (and it has an anime adaptation, which is freaking awesome, everyone should watch it). Basically it's a dystopian story with people using magic to run their society instead of machines in a world that has deliberately regressed to the medieval level. Every child who doesn't manifest magical abilities by a certain age is killed, and all existing non-magical humans have been genetically engineered into a slave-race of mole-people so long ago they've forgotten their origins. The magical people are instead engineered to commit unwilling suicide should they use their powers to harm another human (mole people are fair game, though), and those of them who are too strong and can't manage to control themselves become Lovecraftian abominations.
* '''''Bloodborne''''' or the love child of Dark Souls (gameplay) and Lovecraftian mythology (its main inspiration for setting and theme). Another masterpiece from FROM software and Hidetaka Miyazaki. TLDR, the game is a mix of elritch horrors, omnipotent creatures which are fundementally gods and Dark Souls, though this time there is no fire to link, only FEAR.
* '''''Bet On Soldier/Iron Storm''''': WW1 got extended by 80 years, leading to a world where war is everything (including a televised past time), peace is considered a horrifically dissident ideal and there is a shadowy cabal behind the scenes plotting to make the war last forever.
* Noir in general, from Raymond Chandler's novels to games like This is the Police.
* '''''Magical Girl Site''''' (so grimdark it makes Meguca look Noblebright)
* '''''Wanted'''''. A comic book series which inspired the 2008 action flick. The villains won the war against the heroes and completely erased them from reality. The world of Wanted is one of the most horrific comic book series as it deconstructs the 'action macho man' of the superhero genre and insults the reader (As in break the fourth wall) if they ever felt like rooting for the 'protagonist'. How bad is Wanted? Crime is not only rampant but is actually part of the law, enforced by the Fraternity (Justice League for bad guys), and the only way to even have the closest thing to a 'safe and happy life' is by murdering your next door neighbor out of paranoia. Furthermore, as the world is cut up into sections and ruled by different supervillains, you will most likely be born in a country ruled by either a psychotic bastard who shoots children for shits and giggles, a Lex Luthor archetype who hungers for more unrestrained power, a literal Nazi from the future who wants another Holocaust, or a megalomaniac and sociopathic Chinese emperor who makes Mao Zedong like a chump or a completely immortal 'President-for-Life' Mugabe expy that will probably rule for eternity.
** Our 'protagonist' is a sociopathic, violent, sadistic rapist who assassinates people in ridiculous violent manners that makes the Punisher, Konrad Curze and Batman look like Constable Care in comparison. His first 'character development' was shooting his neighbor in the face because he was too damned nice... yeah... our 'heroes' are literally no different than the villains at all. If you could even call them 'heroes'. While characters in WH40K and Gears of War commit atrocities usually because they have a reason, idea or dogma behind their actions, the villains of Wanted commit them because [[Lulz|they felt like it.]] Don't even get us started with the supervillains who are so repulsive that they are barely redeemable. Wanted is one of those franchises that just makes you ''feel'' like a bastard for even trying to root for anyone. In terms of the moral scale, if DC is the classical Black and White franchise and Marvel is the classical Grey and Gray franchise, than Wanted is the classical Black and Black franchise. [[Chaos]] wishes it could be this efficiently evil.
* '''''Grim Dawn'''''. In a world called Cairn there is magic, monsters, and humans using 19th century tech. A group of mages failed some sort of ritual and accidentally called in a ghost called an Aetherial, setting off a chain of events that would lead to the "Grim Dawn". They invaded the world by possessing many creatures and humans for their own world domination plan, and the ensuing chaos allowed the Cthontic Cult (Mix Khorne and Slaaneshi pain cults) to come out of the shadows just as the Aetherials started getting shit done. This results in a never ending struggle between humans and multiple otherworldly powers. An optional meeting with a god from the universe tells the player that there are many gods watching this world and none of them, him included, gave a shit about their followers since this is just one of many realities they observe and the tragic event is nothing more than a normal day for him. So players have to fight through undead ([[Tomb Kings|who are cursed to forever linger in the world, only to get back up as soon as they are defeated]]), a land corrupted by the aether's green shit that is as harmful as the warp itself, and a crimson forest filled with Cthonic Cultists. The factions of the 'Good Guys' aren't much better either. There is either a necrophiliac ice ninja that will enslave the dead or a pretentious templar order whose god is just as bad as the others. The only hope lies in survivors from the aetherial encounters that gained unnatural powers which may potentially corrupt them in the process. Nothing will ever change though since the world now is filled with horrifying creatures and humanity is reduced to pockets of bandits squabbling over the pitiful remnants of their civilization. Invasions are still going strong despite your efforts at the very end of game and other gods are ready to back stab, corrupt, raid and torment every living creature in the world for their own selfish needs.
** The new expansion '''''Ashe of Malmouth''''' adds more grimdark and even a rare instance of sick fuckery in modern video game. The city Malmouth is said to be the first place hit with Aetherials forces so the entire place is nothing but a fucked up zombie town with buildings made out of human flesh. But before the player can get to that "fun party" however, they would need to cross the jungle, bog place of Ugdenbog, a wild swamp and evil infested shithole filled with cannibals and witches that got gangbang from both the Aetherials and Cthontic forced during the grim dawn. You are even allow to side with the local cannibals in Barrowholm (a much lesser evil mind comapre to the Cthontic and Atherial mind you). Once you got to Malmouth, the true sick fuckery begin. The local Aetherials had spare a few human survivors just so they could hunt them down and replenish for their needs of flesh. What's worst is that they have abducted local females (especially younger one) and use them as breeding cattle to produce more "test subject" and "soldiers". Doesn't that sounds like [[Daemonculaba]]? It also means that the enemies like Aetherial Scamp and Aetherial Imp, those little shit that are the size of a child you fought are actually.....yeah, I'm done with this shit.
* '''Peter Watts'''. Brutal neuropunk sci-fi horror, as bleak as H. P. Lovecraft but with a list of scientific citations at the end to let you know just how realistic it really is. Hits you with a world-ending catastrophe and then manages to make it a thousand times worse -- an alien invasion DURING a hard-takeoff singularity, for example. Sociopathy and post-human augments abound. [http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm Also, the books are free!]
* '''''Armored Warfare'''''. Terrorist/ultra-nationalist/anarchists with tanks, corporations that rule and enslave large portions of the world and the rest of the world might as well be a wasteland, as far as we know.
* Pandora from the '''''Borderlands''''' games. A whole planet covered in tonnes of rubbish, industrial equipment, pollution and debris from mining operations by huge intergalactic corporations. A classic example of unregulated capitalism where the few inhabitants (mostly from the abandoned mining operations) fight for survival against hideously mutated and highly dangerous wildlife and go completely mental in the process. What little rational civilisation there is is constantly under attack from all sides, including by the Hyperion corporation which wants to purge the planet of all life and start again from scratch. To do this the [[BBEG]] has built an army of robots and seeks to awaken an ancient, all-powerful, immortal, alien warrior ([[Derp|which, as it turns out, is very easy to kill]]). Pandora is essentially a [[Death World]]. [[Herp|And people still go and live in this shithole]] just to search for hidden caches of [[Pretend|ancient alien technology]]. TL;DR Australia on steroid with alienz lmao.
* '''''Call of Duty: Black Ops 3'''''
* '''''Homefront''''' (the game, not the similarly-named but unrelated movie)
* '''''Made in Abyss'''''. It is one of those [[Trap]] anime/manga that fools unsuspecting viewers into watching a cute, whimsical Studio Ghibli esque show filled full of wonder and adventure....what the series '''WON'T''' tell you is the amount of Grimdark it would throw at you at the most unsuspecting turn. You want to see cute moe loli children getting tortured, horribly disfigured, experimented on, brutally killed, discarded and abused? Made in Abyss got your back! You want to see a [[Deathworld]] so extreme it even kills you when you think of trying to escape? Made in Abyss is completely centered around that! You want to see a society run on child labor, in which death and injury is so common that a 12 year old knows how to amputate an arm and be unfazed by dead bodies? Made in Abyss is proud to include these! You want to see a [[Nazi|Josef Mengele Cosplayer]]/[[Awesome|Evil Daft Punk]]/[[Furry|Super Furry Loli Fetishist]]/[[Meme|Completely Best Dad EVAR!]] as the main villain? Made in Abyss is a proud sponsor of this! You want to have a deep and dark philosophy on how deep one's humanity can go before completely losing it and what counts as truly human before succumbing to the human excess of wants, needs and pride? Made in Abyss have plenty to showcase this! You want to see what would happen when Laputa's Flying Castle and Madoka Magica fucked Berserk? Made in Abyss is the end result of their sweaty lust! You want to hear absolutely beautiful music and see eye-poppingly gorgeous art which is contrasted against the raw, brutal and savage realities of the setting? Made in Abyss would win over you! You want to get emotionally attached to a bunch of [[Furry|moe furries]] and [[Fist of the North Star|cry manly tears]] without feeling too dirty? Don't worry, we in /tg/ can tolerate it... just about...
* '''''Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'''''. A manga/anime film made by Hayao Miyazaki, yes you heard us right. The man who was the main founder of Studio Ghibli and gave us childhood gems such as Tortoro, Spirited Away and Ponyo, gave us a Science-Fantasy Epic of the brutality of war. Sure there was Princess Mononoke, but that was basically a spiritual sequel to Nausicaa. The setting of Nausicaa is centered around a post-apocalyptic [[Deathworld]] in which humanity had nuked itself back into the early renaissance via kilometer tall, biomechanical, nuclear-firing [[Exterminatus|GOD-WARRIORS.]] Most children don't make it to adulthood and the remaining human civilizations are on the verge of collapse due to scarcity of resources and the ever growing encroachment of the Sea of Death/Corruption, a forest of highly toxic fungal jungles and incredibly violent mega-insects that goes [[RAGE|completely anal if you dare pluck a 'Shroom or two.]] To make matters worse, [[Adeptus Mechanicus|the state of technology has been declining over the years either due to loss of knowledge]] [[FATAL|or the sheer amount of dead children failing to reach the proper age to spread such knowledge.]] Nausicaa, especially the manga, does not shy away from human slavery, biological WMDS, genocides, nuclear holocaust, a gratuitous amount of inferred and overt infanticides, inquisitorial purging and the likes. By far the most mature and grittiest of Miyazaki's works. The one main thing that Nausicaa stands out from the rest is its titular character. Princess Nausicaa is an actual pacifist and a self-impose Jesus archetype. Yet despite such [[Noblebright]] characteristics, she is an absolute '''''BADASS'''''. Nausicaa may hate fighting and war, but she is not afraid to split some heads open and gut your belly empty. She is also a surrogate mother for a giant walking WMD and a surrogate big sister for a psychic boy with the [[PROMOTIONS|assets to boot;]] this gives her extra brownie points for being [[Awesome]]. Seriously, Merida and other Princesses has nothing on this chick.
**Because of the fact that Nausicaa for all intents and purposes, kickstarted the foundation of Studio Ghibli in the first place, its influence had a profound impact on Ghibli's future works. It basically was the progenitor of every Ghibli trope imaginable. You got the strong female heroine and her equally strong and capable male deuteragonist? check. A setting based upon fantastical elements and a blatant anti-war/pro-environmentalist message? check. Giant, awesome planes? check. Scenery populated by eye-candy artwork? check. A quirky, animal side character? check. The bad guys being revealed to be either not so evil/misunderstood/have morally grey beliefs? check. Furthermore, Nausicaa influenced other works such as the Chocobos from Final Fantasy being a complete copy of Nausicaa's Horseclaws, as well as the God-Warriors being the main inspiration of the motherfucking ''EVAs'' (Seriously, the main creator behind Evangelion first got the idea after animating the God-Warriors for Nausicaa. Seriously look it up, the resemblance is uncanny).
** Another studio Ghibli film called '''''Grave of the Fireflies''''' is far worse. The plot of film is "A pair of orphans starve to death in Japan at the end of WWII." That is the entire plot. This movie utter torture to watch and a great reminder of why war may be fun in games but is the worst thing imaginable in real life.
*'''''[http://www.synthiciderpg.com/ Synthicide]'''''. "When robots are gods, killing humans is fair game." In the deep darkness of the far, post-mutagen virus future, Human life is worthless (Murder and theft against them and each other is entirely legal), murder of sentient bots (Who are given free-range to torment humans with impunity after being let go from service to the major faction that makes them), however is one of the greatest offenses, and one the PC's are bound to commit at some point in their careers. Also, everything has a black and white color pallete.
* '''''Destiny/Destiny 2''''''s backstory. Basically, there was a very short-lived race of people called "The Krill" which lived only ten years on a planet called Fundament (fair note, Fundament is a gas giant, and Jupiter's orbit takes 10 years. So the Krill may have lived to a few hundred). There was a ruler called the Osmium King, and a traitor named Taox killed him. His daughters, Xi Ro, Aurash, and Sathonna took a ship to the planet's core where they met the Worm Gods, or Ahamkara. What happened is that the [[Khorne|Worm Gods grant immortality, but in order to become immortal you have to kill or the worm will eat you]], this was called The Sword Logic, and the Krill were re-named The Hive after killing that fucking traitor Taox. They proceeded to exterminate every living thing in the galaxy, [[Xeelee Sequence|harboring xenophobia and militarism which would make the Imperium look tolerant and pacifist in comparison]]
* The aftermath of '''''Avengers: Infinity War'''''. After the [[Rubric Marines|battledust]] settles, no one really wins at the end of the movie. Even the villain, who won, was badly injured and the victory was very costly.
* '''''Spec Ops: The Line''''', due to disguising itself as a run of the mill shooter, but disregard for orders and going in all guns blazing in quest of "becoming a hero" and "saving everyone", unlike most FPS, rather realistically leads from bad to worse, resulting in the player committing vile acts and outright war crimes. At the time of its release, its atmosphere and presentation made it a standout. Due to being heavily reliant on the player having no foreknowledge that it'll drown them face-first in the horrors of war, the game has undergone a sort of "Rosebud effect", and at worst can be considered grimderp. Granted, even then it's far less so than the examples below, and can be considered a period piece of sorts whose themes retain relevance.
* '''''The Suffering''''' and '''''The Suffering: Ties that Bind'''''. Two messed up stories about an unwell guy who may or may not have murdered his family tries to survive the worst prison in all of Maryland while it's being infested by nightmarish creatures symbolic of the countless atrocities committed on it (Being not only a prison, but also the former site of a WWII POW camp run by a paranoid lunatic, an old-timey mental institution run by an...eccentric who still haunts the place, and a puritan village that saw it's own recreation of the Salem Witch Hunts). The sequel sees the man in equally worse surroundings as Baltimore has it's own infestation of the monsters symbolic of the city's corruption and is now haunted not only by two deranged murderers, but also a figure from his past who supposedly know the truth about his family.
** In ''Ties That Bind'', it's implied that ''every'' city of decent size has the potential to be turned into a haunted hellscape. Because humans are shitty and have been doing shitty things to each other for all of recorded history, and hence ''every'' city has a number of bloodsoaked ghosts created by atrocities and desperate for vengeance.
* The first two seasons of '''''Animals of Farthing Wood''''', a animated series for kids ''infamous'' for having graphic depictions of violence and a death rate of major characters on par with Game of Thrones. Though somewhat at the low end of the Grimdark spectrum, the fact this show was for kids earns it major points for being grimdark. The third series noticeably toned down on the Grimdark elements and ended up being the least well regarded. Notable deaths in the series include but are not limited to:
** '''''The Pheasants''''', a couple of, well, pheasants who die at a farm in an extremely cruel manner. First, the wife is forced by her husband to take his watch and is spotted by the farmer, then shot. The husband, overcome with grief, elects to go back and find Adder, hoping to atone for causing his wife's death. Instead, he sees the cooked corpse of his wife and breaks down in tears, unable to pull himself together and is also shot dead by the farmer.
** Three baby mice are born in one episode. The very next episode they are all killed onscreen by a shrike, a bird infamous for impaling its prey, [https://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/2016/10/9nsgawb.png/ as seen here].
** The hedgehogs, while trying to cross a road, have to fight not to curl up into a ball... but eventually, the husband goes crazy, unable to stop himself from curling up, and his wife elects to stay with him, leading to both their deaths when a lorry runs them over.
* '''''Ava's Demon''''', a webcomic who's cutesy style doesn't hide how fucking dark this world can be. For starters, in the opening itself, a planet is destroyed by Silent Scavengers, which are Tyranids and Necrons mixed together, then the main character ends up impaled when they crash land, her soul going to turn into space dust until she agrees to help the demon who's been possessing her since she was born to get revenge on TITAN, who can at best be described as the God-Emperor if he were every negative stereotype about the Imperium taken to the extreme and then some. How bad is TITAN? It's implied he turned a star into a black hole solely because of its planets inhabitants wouldn't do what he wants. And trust us, things can only get worse in this setting.
* '''''Dragon Ball Z: History of Trunks'''''. Could just be expanded to Trunks' timeline in general. Dragon Ball has always been known as a sort of noble bright anime, but ''this'', damn. Everyone is either dead, dying, or living in fear of two walking machines of pure evil. And then when Trunks does actually take care of his enemies, another more powerful one shows up and just sends everything back to the way it was. Even the parody of this movie is oddly depressing.
* '''''Power Rangers RPM''''' plays with this trope, being what is effectively ''Terminator'' meets ''Mad Max'' "for kids." It is still Power Rangers, and does still have its fair share of comic relief, but this is also the season where a young girl is brainwashed into becoming a child soldier for Skynet and HAL 9000's demented love child, while also having her humanity stripped away and replaced with cold metal. That's not even starting to mention the fact that most of the planet is wiped out, with billions dying over the course of what seems like a few weeks.
* '''''Postal'''''. Not the sequels, which play the violence for laughs and topical humor, or the crap Uwe Boll movie, just the first game and it's remake (''Postal Redux''). Once you get past all the shock and outrage of being a forefather of the [[Satanic Panic|"Ban Violent Video Games"]] movement, you'll realize that this game is genuinely fucked up with its imagery and the protagonist is a mentally unwell individual.
* '''''Resistance : Fall of Man.'''''
* '''''Romero's "Dead" series''''', especially the later entries. ''Night'' is grim for the heroes, even if the overall story ends somewhat happily with the zombies taken care of. On the other hand, ''Dawn'' and ''Day'' are much darker, with zombies overrunning society, and though both end on positive notes, the journey there is a grim fight for survival. Most of the heroes die in ''Dawn'' (all of them if you count the depressing alternate cut), and in ''Day'' most of the characters, even the heroes, are hateful, unhinged, and/or just plain crazy.
* ''''' Requiem for a Dream'''''. If you have seen this movie, this is self-explanatory.
* '''''Blakes 7'''''. The BBC broadcast this against coronation street. And it was written by Terry Nation. It opens with a show trial after the hero gets set up to join a terrorist cell post mind wipe, gets accuses of paedophilia, and then exiled to the world of warhammer where Brian Blessed is king of the cult of scientology. Then you get 4 seasons of basically terrorists fighting the evil space empire, with the worlds most sarcastic computer, special effects that make your mates larp when they were 14 years old look high budget (ffs the federation are armed with caulking guns and some pipe). It's fucking GLORIOUS.
* '''''The Promised Neverland'''''. An anime/manga about a bunch of cute children raised in a nice orphanage, that is really a farm set up by demons who raise the children as food. Hence the "Neverland" part of the title, the children don't grow up, because they are killed by monsters. A handful girls get to survive until adulthood by getting selected to act as mothers to children, but they are still prisoners who can't leave the farm. If they are unlucky they will have to watch over their own children until the day they are killed.
** The world outside the farms is even worse. A thousand years ago the world was divided between humans and demons. The children are in the demons' half. Demons used to hunt humans until the two sides made a truce where the world was divided in two halves to keep peace and humans were handed over to the demons to farm as food and the wealthy family of humans who made the deal are out to kill the escaped children to uphold it. Demons actually need to eat humans or they degenerate into mindless animals that attack everything in sight, except of the demon nobility thanks to them consuming blood that removed the need. And they still insist on hoarding the best quality human meat for themselves while leaving the commoners to feed on meat from humans raised on factory farms where the humans are force fed until they die. This inferior quality meat isn't enough to keep demons from degrading and so the demons' human allies are doing horrifying expirements to produce better quality meat. Something could have been avoided if the demon nobility didn't make sure that only they were free from dependence on human meat as means of maintaining their control with their supply of meat, because as you can probably tell, they don't care about the commoners.
* '''''Dorohedoro'''''. Described by its own author as "a song with really dark lyrics, but a melody that's so happy that you want to dance to it". So happy grimdark? The title can literally be translated as "from shit to shit". Seriously, the setting wouldn't look out of place among a 40k [[hive world|underhive]]. The entire setting is a massive slum, with horrible pollution, mass poverty, and human body parts polluting the waterways. Your options for living are being a normal human, living in poverty and treated like toys, lab rats, and livestock by the various magic users. Or being a [[psyker|magic user]], and either be lynched by the terrified normies or captured by other magic users and boiled down to make drugs. And if you're a magic user, regardless of how good you are when you die you're [[Warp|guaranteed to be sent to hell to be tortured by devils for all eternity]] ([[Daemon Prince|unless you become a devil yourself]]). Or being a devil, and worry about being [[Tzeentch|screwed over by your boss for shits and giggles]] or eaten by Store, who is implied to be an angel and treats devils the same way devils treat mortals. Or being said boss, [[Necron|and dick around with people for all eternity because you're absolutely bored with existence]], can't die, and are horribly lonely since you can't form a meaningful bond with anyone else. Of course "your options" being metaphorical in this sense, since you are either born a normal human or magic user and can't change who you are (which is a major plot point for several characters). Three of the most moral people in the entire setting are a mob boss and two different flavors of serial killer. Even when the normal people manage to fight back by [[God-Emperor|creating a god through the merger of thousands of souls of those killed by magic users]], it immediately tries to kill ''everyone'' just to end its suffering. The only time the weather changes in the series is when it rains, which causes magic users to fall sick because it's the manifestation of the will of said god and if you're a magic user it ''hates'' you. Well, at least the food is good.
* '''''Lobotomy Corp/Library of Ruina'''''. Two games made by a Korean game studio named Project Moon, and well known for its dark setting. [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2098034966 I have decided to leave most of the detailed explanations to this guide here to avoid further paragraph bloat.] To put it simply, the first game: '''Lobotomy Corp''', is about a corporation trying to harvest energy from monsters that are extracted from humanities collective subconsciosness: Abnormalities. Each Abnormalities has special powers to mess with people's mind or just straight up kill people in a very gruesome way and the corps' employees has to suppress them. [[SCP Foundation|Does that sounds familiar?]]/Read Wonderlab, and it gets even worse. SPOILER ALERT: It turns out the energy is not only used to power every other corporation's devices, it is also used to power up some kind of positive energy beacon that spread its power aka Light to everyone in the city just so they could feel hope and be "saved". The plAn failed several times due to the failure of containing and suppressing Abnormalities. The reason why the plAn can be carried out despite its constant setbacks is all thanks to a certain time control technology that could rewind the time back before the incidents happened. Which means, the guy that has to manage this shithole has to go through this tiresome process of witnessing his employees' death again and again until he finally reaches a satisfactory conclusion. The employees that die are revived from every time rewind without ever remembering their death, but not the manager, nor the Sephiroth, whom are [[Dreadnought|brain jar robots]] that oversee their own departments in the Corp. As you play through, the difficulty spikes as the suffering from constant rewind has made the Sephiroth lose their minds which leads them from time to time to throw fits, forcing the manager to calm/supress their ass down. There was this robotic AI waifu assistant Angela that was created to help managing the place. For some reason, she was given the ability to feel emotions just so she could experience the same cruel passage of time and the scenery of Abnormalities killing the employees, driving her nuts. It was made all the more painful for her since she can perceive time in even slower rate, making her existence all the more painful. As the game progresses and the difficulty spikes even futher answers can now be given as to why is it the founders of the Corp decide to go through all this tragedy and torture to save the unknowing masses blind to their suffering and why exactly do the the city people need to be saved?
** Now things starts to get interesting in the second game: '''Library of Ruina'''. Turns out everyone living in the city has become "ill", as in mentally depressed/suffering from disease of the mind due the constant needs to meet certain demands for their jobs everyday, up to the point they could not have any free will to do anything they like.
*** More lore is dumped in the second game as it explains that world they lived in is controlled by Corporations: '''Wings''', who holds the most power and are forcing everyone to pay expensive taxes or else get fucked by their schemes. Their unfair demands create an enormous circle of poverty, forming countless '''Backstreets''' where death and crimes became the norm. In order to pay their unfair expensive tax, people resort to other ways of earning steady incomes. Some become a '''Fixer''', mercenary policemen who would fight for anyone for the right price (Note: there is no functional police department in the setting). Some become part of the '''Syndicates''', the Fixers' criminal counterpart who earn their keep by doing crime instead. Note that neither Fixers or Syndicates members have any choice but to keep climbing their ranks. Sure the higher their rank, the better their living conditions become, but it is a never ending grind that will eventually result in their deaths or depression to the point of suicide due to the amount of killing they've done.
*** Moving on to the upper class. Rich people live in '''The Nest''' and are well educated. But just like the Fixers and the Syndicates, they are not free from paying taxes and are also forced to climb their own social ladder in order to survive. Not to be mentioned the dangers of Backstreets still exist in some isolated areas of The Nest. Worse still is that the corporations they've worked for can and will use them as test subject to test their super precious technology: '''Singularity''' and see how much they get fucked up. They are basically office wage slaves with higher mortality rate.
*** Speaking of Singularity, it is a form of futuristic, magic-like technology (nanomachines, teleportation, laser, etc... you could only see from a typical scifi-movie) own by The Wings. Each Wing has their own Singularity and despite their usefulness however, they are still complicated technology, which can led to horrible accidents if it were mishandled, yet they were treated by The Wings like money tree. Sometimes a Wing could fell and left its Singularity sold on the market, to be purchase by other Wings. The catch being any instructions or informations regarding this Singularity had fell along with its Wing, meaning the buyer has no idea how it works other than knowing what it is truely capable of on surface or through some easy testing. Despite not knowing how to really using it however, the buyer [[capitalism|insisted on profiting it by making merchandises from it or marketing it as some kind of super transportation]]. For example: W-Corp's train are capable of transporting passengers to their destination in 10 seconds. What really happens is that the train entered into some kind of warped dimension and stucks inside for 2000+ fuckoff years. During that time, some of the passenger's body functions just stopped functioning, as they become unable to feel pain or hunger as the "time" for their body just stopped. What really happened was that T-Corp collaborate with W-Corp by using their time singurarity put the passenger's biological timer in stasis, ensured their survival in this seemly endless journey (T-Corp gets to profit from this remember). After 100 days, the passengers began tear each other apart out of boredom and insanity, to the point they eventually tearing themselves into bits that merges with one another. Case in point we don't talk about [[Chaos Spawn|Love Town]]. The crazy part is that the dimention portal Singularity is the purchased one, and thus W-corp has no idea how to fucking use it, yet used it on civilians anyway, but it is only because they can cancel out their own ignorance by using their own Singurarity, that is Material Restoring. By the time the train arrives, the W-Corp's agents came and restoring passengers using their Singurarity. Just like at L-Corp, using their biometrics, they restore the passengers body state to the time when they only experienced 10 seconds on the train, as if [[Just as Planned|nothing ever happened]]. Rich investors and other corporation's board chairman do knew about this, yet refused to speak out, not that they care since W-corp introduce them to the expensive option of first-class passenger seat (aka cryo stasis tube) for them if they are so afraid of even experience a train ride to hell, even though they won't remembered a damn thing when the train ride ends. The plebs can fall apart in the train and patch back up for all they care! So yeah, so much for dangerous technology. They are but a mere capitalism scheme, where corporations band together to juggle around the lives of innocents for a few cashes.
*** By letting a bunch of morally corrupted gold diggers handling such a dangerous technology, who is there to control them? meet '''The Head''', aka the shit heads that put everyone in their misery. They are the ones with absolute power in the setting. Not even the Wings wishes to fuck with them, for they have the best combat force out of them all, and being the [[Great Horned Rat|giant rat that made all the rules]]. It is hinted that they intended for the humans to suffer under the stresses of survival and death, as if they were treating the humans in the city like test subjects inside a vivarium they had created. In the games' ending, it was revealed they have [[Imperial Truth|strong obsessions with philosophies that defines humanity]] and [[Men of Iron|dislike for machines that look and act like humans]]. Although not much about them has been revealed yet, those little details is enough to label them as some kind of [[nazi|facist organization with an extremist ideology]]. They were known for shaping the world that is today with their armies of '''Arbiters''', aka [[Officio Assassinorum|Singularity-infused assassins]](which may or may not be comprised of hags). They are so powerful, one of them could take on everyone in the Wing and evict the Wing. Other than Arbiters, they have their own super fixers called '''The Claws''', who are comparable to a high grade Fixers with benefits of being mass produced. They also have the '''The Eyes''', aka '''The Beholders''' agents (or some kind of spirit/demon/telescreen hologram as it was revealed) that [[1984|report The Head for any potential tax evaders as well as any potential threats by surveillance the masses]]. No one fucks with The Head. NO ONE.
** And all these examples are just the tip of the iceberg to show how Grimdark life is in this setting. It gets potentially worse as '''Distortions''', which are related from the first game's Abnormalities, are monsters from the minds of an individual rather than humanity as a whole and due to the failed results of the plAn from the first game are now roaming the city to further spike up the mortality rate, making everybody's live even more miserable. Despite that, the Fixers still demand payment to kill them (which a new association was created to deal with them according to the ending/read Distortion Detective) and The Head refuses to even lend a hand in dealing with them (because distortions are considered a product of humanity, which is much more tolerable when compared to robots who act like humans). Oh and it is impossible to not live in the city, for the outside lies the '''Outskirts''', where monsters, robotic death machines and other abominations created from fail experiments reside. It is a wasteland composed of pretty much everywhere but the city, caused by the constant resource wars from the past and it is literary impossible for humans to lived in there. Even if it could, it would be filled with hostile exiles, outlaws or whatever godforsaken engineered intelligent species.
*** Interestingly, the setting's corporation culture could be a nod to the modern day capitalism in South Korea (It is a Korean game after all), and it in general shows how shitty life is under capitalism with the taxes and all that. Just slightly better to its Northern Communism brother I suppose.
** Further more the third upcoming game '''Limbus Corp''' has promises of further progressing the storyline and give more world building.
* '''''Warframe's lore.''''' What's so dark about Warframe? You're a space ninja which just chops stuff up and shoots right? Oh you're DEAD wrong. The main characters, the Tenno, are children survivors of an accident when a ship tried to use a metaphysical realm called [[warp|The Void]] to perform a faster-than-light jump to Tau Ceti (which was previously terraformed for their arrival). And what do we know about using metaphysical realms to travel faster-than-light? It goes [[Gellar Field|fuckingly bad]], invest in a warp drive.
**The Tenno were discovered by the Orokin, [[that guy|pansy hedonistic little faggots]] which sent them there, and were treated like absolute shit. To get an idea of just how awful the Orokin were, imagine the repressiveness, feudal structures, and lack of regard for human life found in the Inperium of Man… with a tech level comparable to the Dark Age of Technology. The only person who treated the Tenno with absolute respect was a scientist called [[this guy|Margulis]]. When the robots sent to terraform Tau Ceti, the Sentients, evolved intelligence and came back to anally rape the Orokin, their built-in weakness was void stuff, which the Tenno were full of. After a victory over the Sentients, the Tenno [[rape|bitchslapped the Orokin and bludgeoned them like the fucks they are]].
***The Orokin are just a bunch of [[Marines Malevolent|shitbags in general]]. They treated Tenno, Lorist healers, and Grineer like absolute shit until they need their help. They execute scientists when they fail to produce results, because a GREAT way of increasing productivity is executing a scientist who is doing the work. And the way they maintain their immortality is by capturing children, and mind-raping them to download their own consciousness into theirs. The reason that they couldn't control the Warframes and needed the Tenno to do so is because they [[that guy|lack basic human empathy]], they just abuse and torture everyone under them.
**The Grineer were slaves to the Orokin which are now free, and are now absolutely terrorizing the system. They're a bunch of rotten clones which are highly augmented, and they kill everyone who isn't them, which aren't any better. Oh, and dialogue implies that they process their dead into corpsestarch.
***The Corpus are the second faction, being greedy money-grubbers who care only for profit, and imprison a colony of debt-bondage slaves called "Fortuna", just to rub it in, and so on. Oh, and said Solaris are people whos HEADS have been stuffed into their torsos so they can easily reposes their limbs and organs for dept that is passed through the generations. Oh, and ya not able to pay with your limbs alone? They will scoop your brain out of your skull and shelve it for a set ammount of time... or the rest of your natural lifespan. As you are awake and lost in your thoughts.
****And, of course, this is done to kids, severing their necks and replacing them with a connector to more esily stuff their heads into their scooped out torsos once they are old enough to lug around a wrench. Pretty much all Post-Orokin civilizations are pieces of shit.
***And if evil bureaucrats, and shitty clones who want to kill everything that isn't them bad enough, we have the Infected, which are a [[Tyranids|hive mind of twisted forms that kill everything they can stick their bloody tendrils into]], bottom line is, Warframe is a shitty place.
* '''''[[Unhallowed Metropolis]]''''', a game representing probably the outer limits of how Grimdark you can go without sliding into Grimderp.
* ''''Fragged Cyberpunk''''': A prequel to the more optimistic Fragged Empire. Fragged Cyberpunk focuses on the twilight years of humanity as Habsburgian levels of genetic erosion and degradation leave it only a few centuries of life, while the powers that be, that could cure it do not bother and instead focus their efforts on terraforming hospitable worlds for their new, engineered super species. All the while herding humans into cramped cities on dead planets that are effectively concentration/death camps for what remains of mankind.
* '''''Clive Barker''''' in general. His works include Hellraiser, Rawhead Rex where an ancient god of male sex eats kids, the Midnight Meat Train where an ancient cult feeds people to an underground society of monsters so New York isn't destroyed, and... let's just say there's a reason he's basically a BDSM enthusiast given way too much handle.
* '''''[[EYE: Divine Cybermancy]]''''' (Basically, Wh40k with French people)
* '''''Half-Life''''', a video game series which helped revolutionize FPS games, has a surprisingly dark story and lore. In the first game, you play as Gordon Freeman and defeat an invading alien race after an accident you helped indirectly cause. Then comes the second game, where it turns out the alien boss you killed in the last game was keeping the Combine at bay, a race of inter-dimensional conquerors who bulldoze Earth in a matter of hours and occupy it, running the planet’s resources dry and slowly driving mankind to extinction while irreparable damage is done to the ecosystem, with a steadily losing resistance and Gordon’s old boss overseeing everything the Combine does. You come back and help turn the tide in the fight... but throughout all this, guiding your every action, is the G-Man, an enigmatic figure with Tzeentch levels of planning and manipulation. Ultimately, every action you take is for his benefit. You cannot make any real choice because he will make it for you. In other words, no matter what Gordon or anyone else does, the G-Man will always be right there, waiting in the wings, to slightly... adjust it to his benefit. And there’s almost nothing that can be done to stop him.

== Grimderp ==
{{topquote| Why don't people band together to fix things? Because GRIMDARK. Why hasn't an external system supplanted the current, barely functioning one? Because GRIMDARK. How does such a woefully inefficient system manage the logistical nightmare of endless total war? Because I murdered a baby seal, that's why! You should feel bad.|Terrible Writing Advice (The GRIMDARK Episode)}}

Grimderp is what happens when a writer takes grimdark so far that it goes [[derp]]. The writer puts something in that makes the setting more grimdark, but it's generally reliant on at least one party involved [[Fail|suddenly abandoning all sense of reason and logic]], or else caused by a lack of forethought on the implications of how the element interacts with the world. Many long-runner grimdark works will become this sooner or later, as either the setting or the cast's morality (rather a usually extreme lack thereof) will induce complete and utter apathy in the audience and cause them to give up out of sheer pointlessness. Most "dark" anime/manga tend to be more or less grimderp, as attempts to attract mature audiences ends in violence, blood, and sex without consequence (at BEST, mind you. [[Rape|At worst...]]), all in gratuitous quantities.

To be clear, grimderp is not just that something is "dark" or that a character behaves stupidly. Human beings make dumb, short-sighted, irrational, and morally objectionable decisions all the time, just crack open about any book on human history. Grimderp is when a character breaks character to do something they would normally never do or engage in behavior that is logistically impossible [[Gav Thorpe|("there are as many elves as the plot demands")]], simply "because it's dark". To put it in another way, it is basically the author(s) writing dark things for the sake of [[Edgy|edginess]]. The end product often comes out as painfully juvenile and sounding like something out of a 13-year-old fanfic that thinks adding barbwire coated in feces to everything makes something 'deep'.

That is not to say it is impossible to make an absurdly dark fiction without straying off course into grimderp territory. The post-apocalyptic short story, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison avoids the grimderp label due to the historical context the story was written in as well as the philosophical debate on the idea of cruelty as presented through AM. Is AM a spiteful, cruel monster or a product of man's penchant for violence and warfare trapped in its own database prison? Another example that avoids this title would be Stephen Baxter's [[Xeelee Sequence]], whose entire ethos is a critique and ruthless deconstruction on the entire [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] and [[Cthulhu|Cosmic Horror]] tropes whilst still crafting an unbelievably depressing multiverse. So yes, it is possible to write pure concentrated grimdark, but it should be done with a level of delicacy and self-awareness for it to be seen as legible.

* The Last of Us: Part 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed The Last of Us, is Grimderp in its purest form: Characters prolong suffering simply out of the blue. Basic logic is thrown out as countless characters dive headfirst into a rabbit hole of violence, suffering, and depression, often to the point of [[Edgy|literal edginess]].
* The Dothraki of "[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]". We are asked to believe that an entire culture can sustain itself by raiding settled people (when the Mongols and Plains Indians they're based on hunted and herded large animals), and then ''killing and not even selling or eating the livestock'', eating horses whenever possible despite borderline worshipping them and relying on them as beasts of burden or war steeds, solve literally all their disputes with murder and defeat their enemies with mass charges (despite real nomads having small populations, and winning battles with cavalry skill and/or surprise). At the point where the story says that "a wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull occasion" and mentions warriors casually raping dancers (the first fight to the death started over two warriors wanting the same dancer), the whole thing just looks like an [[edgy]] [[Magical Realm]] based on "hordes of eastern savages" clichés.
* [[My Little Pony|Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons]] is a fanfiction about magical ponies so grim, dark, and derp that it would almost be comical if it wasn't so fucking horrifying. With characters that get shit on (both figuratively and literally) more than the [[Lamenters]], and with a world so bleak (and missing the point of Fallout, FiM, ''and'' the original Fallout: Equestria) that an heroing <s>seems like</s> WOULD ACTUALLY BE the happiest ending (<s>Assuming it will end, it probably never will as long as there's enough cybernetics to keep rebuilding the constantly-dying protagonist)</s> HOLY SHIT IT ACTUALLY ENDED!), it's the prime example of how to make readers stop giving a fuck about the story at all.
* On that note, 90% of all grimdark fics are grimderp since writers are under the impression that [[Edgy|just making things dark makes it good writing]]. There are exceptions, but they are rare, because Sturgeon's Law is a thing. On the flip side, however, [[DOOM: Repercussions of Evil|certain examples]] have reached the apotheosis of Grimderp and become gut-bustingly hilarious.
* Warhammer 40,000 gets called out as this by some. Certainly it's a valid criticism of certain parts, but as we said earlier, [[Skub|you could argue about what is and is not grimderp in 40k for weeks without conclusion.]] For example, the Imperium is excessively self-destructive and tyrannical to its own people, but in the hands of a good writer, it's meant to underline how corrupt and desperate the Imperium has become without the Emperor's guidance, and how even those who are neither incompetent nor malicious still have to make brutally difficult choices. In the hands of a lesser writer, it's unnecessary evil purely for the sake of evil. We should call our next book "[[C.S. Goto|Darkness of Darkest Dark!]]"
** Historically, the Grail myths drift, not from [[Ecclesiarchy|Christian sources]], but Celtic ones (and beyond the Celts, older civilizations), and a typical feature of these myths happens to be the healing of a King through forces of restauration and regeneration (i.e. to put one in touch with his sources, with his roots), and the King was typically seen in agrarian societies as the King of a land, avatara of a Sky-Father, and [[Alarielle|the Queen as the Earth Goddess]]. The [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Psychic 101|Geokinesis psychic discipline]] has a power called '''Earth Blood''' who would do just that; if only [[Adeptus Custodes|someone]] let Librarians enter the Imperial Palace to do some Perceval style healing.
**[[Khornate Knights]]
**The [[Grey Knights]] (who seem to get this a lot, really) equipment and how it is made. Specifically, every bolt shell that the Grey Knights use is consecrated by the blood sacrifice of a righteous man or woman in a borderline Khornate ritual (and it has to be a ''good'' person, not just anyone. How the Imperium determines if someone is sufficiently "good" or not remains an open question). Those Aegis armors? Made from thousands of psykers (including ''children'') burned in a furnace to channel their power to the armor. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people have to die to make ''one'' Grey Knight combat-effective. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] as to whether it is grimderp or not, as it raises the question of where the Grey Knights find enough good people to consecrate all of the bolter rounds they go through every battle (especially in the 41st millenium, of all places).
**[[Gellar Field]]s being powered by the dreams of a comatose psyker being used as a battery (which also burns out and has to be replaced regularly). While very dark, it crosses the line into grimderp when one realizes 1) that Gellar Fields were said to be invented long before psykers began appearing among humanity, and 2) psykers are apparently rare enough in the Imperium that the Imperium has [[Black_Ships|an entire institution]] dedicated to rounding up psykers and bringing them back to Terra to make use of them, like making [[Astropath]]s or feeding the [[Astronomican]] and the [[Golden Throne]]. And according to recent editions the Black Ships are just barely meeting the quota to keep the [[Golden Throne]] going, so it's not like there are a lot of spare psykers around to be made into Gellar Field batteries.
**Originally, the [[Black Templars]] were treated as refusing to suffer the witch no matter who they were, to the point of refusing to ally with any Imperial instutition that made use of them. This got retconned to only hate ''enemy'' psykers in 6th edition after it was pointed out it would be really hard for the Black Templars to do anything if they refused to tolerate Astropaths or Navigators, and thus have no Warp travel or faster-than-light communication.
**[[Imperial_Worlds#Agri-World|Agri-Worlds]]. Seemingly in response to the common fandom sentiment that [[The_Imperium_of_Man#However.2C_is_the_Imperium_really_that_bad.3F|most worlds in the Imperium are actually quite decent places to live]], just so long as you don't get invaded by [[Orks]], [[Chris Wraight]] in ''Lords of Silence'' outlines a typical Agri-World, describing a horrific hellscape wracked by permanent Dust Bowl conditions and so much pesticides that the sky turns orange and it is not safe to walk around outside without a biohazard suit, and goes on to say that all Agri-Worlds are like this. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] within the community. Some say that this practice is perfectly acceptable grimdark, and that unsustainable farming practices aren't exactly unusual in human history (look at slash-and-burn farming practices in Brazil, or aquifer use in the United States). However, what people find issue with is the claim that ''all'' agri-worlds are invariably like this, when [[Your Dudes|the fact that conditions on various planets in the Imperium vary massively from world to world as needed for the plot and there is almost no standardization]] has always been considered one of the big selling points of the setting (not to mention contradicting descriptions of Agri-Worlds in [[Ciaphas Cain]] and the [[Last Chancers]]). The other aspect that people tend to find unbelievable is that the Imperium is claimed to not even use crop rotation in their Agri-Worlds, simply farming the same crop over and over again until the soil gives out and the planet becomes a [[Death World]]. The Imperium may have lost a lot of its ancient knowledge, but crop rotation as a practice goes back to the freaking ''Stone Age''. [[Derp|Its absurd to see knowledge that basic being lost in the horrors of Old Night]], or not been rediscovered in the time after. This also means the Imperium would literally have run out of planets thousands of years ago if this was true.
** The nature of how Imperial ships work has caused a great deal of [[skub]]. Namely the fact that the weapons of Imperial ships are loaded by hundreds of chem-bulked, rabid slaves dragging them into place while being whipped, the exertion being so great that many die frothing at the mouth by the effort or have their hands crushed by chains. They do this completely by hand, hauling the munitions across the ship with chains. This despite the fact that hydraulic power systems have existed since the 18th century. They don't even use inclined planes or levers, something which humanity has been using to haul large objects where they want them to go since the days of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and Easter Island. Or they could literally just use a [[Chimera Transport|Chimera]] or a team of grox to do the job, you know, the reason why humanity built large vehicles and domesticated large animals? Meanwhile the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] is using autoloaders, and is deliberately go keeping the technology from the rest of the Imperium so they will have an advantage in case another civil war ever breaks out. Some say this is perfectly acceptable grimdark, others say that this is just too ridiculously inefficient to take seriously, even for the Imperium.
**The Marneus Calgar comic has caused a shitstorm with the recent revelations that the average life expectancy of the BEST place in the Imperium is in the mid-thirties, which is fucking [[FAIL|'''STUPID''']]. Because that means that the life expectancy of other non-Ultramar worlds are drastically shorter, which makes the machinations on how the Imperium is run, fucking unsustainable. If child mortality rates are ''that high'', then entire worlds would have quite literally run out of humans especially in warzones, while entire sectors' worth of economies would collapse or stagnate as more kids die before they grow up and be a productive member of society. This creates a drain in resources and long-term stability; it was already considered unsustainable during MEDIEVAL times, so you could just extrapolate this to a million worlds and the Imperium should collapse under its own inertia and weight by this point. I don't care how 'disposable' human life is, it is still a resource and the [[Emprah]] fucking hates wasting resources. We get that the comic writer is trying to shoehorn even more feudalist themes in the comics, but the problem is, this is not Krieg we're talking about, but fucking ''Ultramar''. So either the author does not know what sense of scale is, or that he does not understand the works of [[Roboute Guilliman|Guilliman]] because Grandpa Smurf [[Rage|'''WOULD. NOT.''' let this shit fly under the radar.]] The author has confirmed, however, that it was added to make Ultramar feel more grimdark. To give you some context, Somalia in the mid 1960s has a higher life expectancy than this. This is not grimdark, this is just fucking stupid that breaks the suspension of disbelief. It is one of the few things that both 4Chan and Reddit concurrently agree upon as fluff breaking.
**To be honest, the whole idea of humans being the "teeming multitudes" faction [[Imperial Guard|winning battles by sheer weight of numbers]] and which [[Skaven|breed quickly and are easily replaced]] is kind of silly if you know anything about human reproduction. Among species on Earth, humans are notable for being one of the ''slowest'' reproducing species out there. It takes nine months for a human to gestate to maturity in the womb, more than any other animal aside from elephants and whales, and even after birth humans take longer to reach maturity even compared to our close relatives the Neanderthals and ''Homo erectus''. Additionally, it takes a huge amount of parental care to care for a child and raise them to functional adulthood, more than any other animal. On top of this, pregnancy is incredibly crippling for human females, and women have a one in three chance of dying in childbirth if giving birth without any external aid or midwives (as would be the case for a citizen of the underhives), something almost no other species has to deal with. The way our species generally works is we breed incredibly slowly but live an incredibly long time and invest a lot of resources to make sure those few that are born survive to adulthood, which basically makes us the [[elves]] of the animal kingdom. Barring some major technological breakthrough like artificial wombs or genetic engineering to reduce the crippling side effects of human pregnancy or long adolescence, humans are unlikely to be able to outbreed anything. And while some factions in the Imperium do have access to artificial wombs (like the [[Mechanicus]], most of humanity in 40k are shown to still reproducing the old fashioned way. Even if humanity starts out with a huge population it can throw at any problem, that population is going to be depleted pretty fast because humanity [[Eldar|can't replace their losses]]. Even if are the greatest resource the Imperium has, they're still trying to fight a war of attrition against foes including [[Daemons|ones who can't even be properly killed]] and two races who can easily outbreed humanity; [[Orks|one reproduces by fighting]] and [[Tyranids|the other are a rapidly reproducing horde of space locusts who go from conception to combat-ready within a Terran week]]. However, fans tend to ignore this because of the whole “to be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions” thing that is part of the general lack of regard for human life that makes 40k 40k, so people give it a pass.
** Some 40k sources claim that millions if not billions of guardsmen are killed EVERY SECOND. Even with the scale of the imperium taken into the account, having many times the current population of the Earth die every minute would be ridiculous for the whole of Imperium, let alone just the Imperial Guard.
**[[Deathwatch|Watch Captain Artemis]] saying [[Heresy|better to let the galaxy burn and allow the Imperium to fall to Chaos than allow the xenos to live]], right before [[Battle_of_Coheria|fucking up an eldar ritual that would have awakened Ynnead early and fucked over Slaanesh]], indirectly [[Gathering Storm|causing all of the ruckus of 8th Edition]]. Granted, while this does come from the [[Deathwatch]], who tend to be rabidly anti-xenos even by the Imperium's standards, this is for ''Chaos'', the Archenemy, the [[Big Bad Evil Guy]] of the Warhammer 40k setting, the one faction that even the notoriously xenophobic Imperium will begrudgingly admit is a bigger threat than the xenos and will team up with them to fight against it. A loyalist saying they ''prefer Chaos'' over anything, even as the lesser of two evils, should be grounds for an insta-[[BLAM]]ing and a red flag for Chaos corruption. And no, Watch Captain Artemis was not [[BLAM]]-ed for this, nor is this treated as the beginnings of his corruption and a slow fall to [[Chaos]]. And so a loyalist Space Marine managed to [[Fail|single-handedly save Slaanesh]]. Seriously, Chaos champions have been elevated to [[Daemon Prince|Daemon Princehood]] for less.
** The whole thing reached the lowest point by 3rd edition, considered the Darker and Edgier version of 40k, this is when some of the silliest things mentioned in this wiki were added or accentuated, after that 40k required more than 5 EDITIONS of fluff update, novels, characters and additional background to finally come back from "we no longer care" to an actual war with stakes and actual chances for all sides involved.
* [[Star Wars]]: Although Star Wars is 40k's high fantasy twin. There has been a few grimderp things that came out recently in Canon that has given 40k a run for its money. According to Canon, specifically the novel Ashoka, the Galactic Empire forces farming worlds by gunpoint to harvest a particular breed of crop to be used as rations for their troops. The problem? These crops were specifically designed to [[Wat|soak up every bit of nutrients on the planet until it becomes sterile.]] Meaning that the particular farming world is only capable of harvesting the crops a few times [[FAIL|''AT BEST'']] before it becomes a sterile death world. Let's put this in context here, the Galactic Empire is currently fighting a galaxy-wide insurgency and being a galaxy-wide government, the GE NEEDS a sustainable way to produce food in order to keep its giant military well-fed for long-term campaigns. So forcing farming worlds to produce crops that intentionally leave their worlds sterile after a few farming cycles is just fucking [[EPIC FAIL|'''STUPID'''.]] Because realistically, the GE would have quite literally, ran out of food in a decade, collapsing due to galaxy-wide famine. [[FAIL|This shit is so fucking stupid and retarded that it makes the abovementioned IoM agri-world farming practises look eco-friendly in comparison.]] Even if they did something somewhat reasonable like restricting this practice to worlds that sided with the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone Wars as a punishment, it's just spiteful beyond all reason.
** Seriously, this is a level of grimderp surpassing the [[Skub|Yuuzhan Vong]]; sure, they were be a race of machine-hating, masochistic religious zealots, but even they had organic technology to compensate, some were capable of pragmatism and they didn't make unsustainable food sources... and this is before they overhauled their society.
* [[Drowtales]]: The whole series is Grimderp on steroids, but there are a few particularly nauseating examples: nothing like the protagonist [[Mary Sue]] of innocence and purity blowing up the light elf MILF slave called Maya in an argument with a rival, an argument in which she feels morally justified right after buying a fighting slave which was doomed to die in underground Arenas even most Drow find disgusting, ran by a complete monster of a drow, regularly visited to watch slaves die, that's right, by the protagonist Ariel. Maya dies crying in her native tongue about "what she did to deserve this", crying she'll never see sunlight again. Protagonist feels a bit bad about a few days, and only that when she sees a few naked light elf slaves for sale, reminiscing Maya's face. Years pass and she thinks all the slavery and needless murder isn't so cool... just before visiting a surface colony who was taken from humans. She and her lesbian lover have an orgy on the settlement they just conquered by massacre. After a blissful after-sex sleep, the settlement is counterattacked by desperate humans coming to save their kin... which are promptly murdered by the half-light half-dark elf paladin of Sharess (Yes, a [[Mary Sue]] worshipping a total [[Baldur's Gate]] rip-off) who is all high and righteous when she is burning innocent humans who wanted to save their kin from slave traders about to buy the survivors. The protagonist's lesbian empath Drow (yes, with a length of purple hair paint, straight out of Deviantart) friend berates the cornered humans with a lame excuse line of "I feel your pain, why don't you take your survivors and run?!" when the said humans scream in desperation to save their families from the town's locked buildings, die horribly and our "I'm glad my clan Sarghress prevents slavery, let's shake hands and feast on the food we just plundered!" protagonist shakes hands on it. It's not even depressing, it's plain fucking logic diarrhea with enough depressive themes to OD an edgy 13 year old. (considering the authors were that old when they started...)
* Jeph Loeb's run on [[/co/|Ultimate Marvel]]: people dying brutally (most well known being Wasp getting eaten by the Blob) and completely gratuitously (Dr. Strange is killed the one page he shows up on and is completely forgotten afterwards), lore rape worst than anything Ward ever did (the heroic Pyro is now a rapist version of the mainline Marvel Pyro with no explanation, Thor going from new age hippie to mainline-style viking with no explanation... at least that last one is kinda cool). Overall it was so bad it effectively made the Ultimate Marvel universe (with the exception of Spider-Man and his cast) completely unusable. Small wonder that years later, Marvel thought smashing it and the main Marvel universe together would be a good idea.
* Koutetsujou no Kabaneri, an anime with a similar premise to the already-grimdark ''Attack on Titan'': It's set in (presumably feudal) Japan, where people are hiding behind walls and communicate with each others using trains to travel from town to town, and trades the giants and horses for guns and [[zombie]]s. Several of the characters have moments of team-killing ineptitude that end up prolonging the conflict far longer than it should:
**The [[samurai]] don't bother with armor and generally aren't very combat-savvy when it comes to zombies, and their [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies turn any defense against a wall breach into an utter clusterfuck. The antagonist is [[Abaddon|an absolute failure AND wanted for crimes against humanity]], being a [[Edgy|pretentious Che Guevara wannabe]] [[Chaos Pretty Marines|with pink hair]] and wielder of an ugly-yet-somewhat effective [[Sword|sabre]]. He also has a devoted following despite being thoroughly unable to grasp the basics of warfare and its ethics (he thinks children are cowards for not being able to fight monsters that ambush and run through trained adult fighters with ease, and [[What|considers destroying one's own resources and castles to be a viable strategy]]). Meanwhile, the main protagonist has found not one, but TWO miracle solutions that would allow mankind to fight back against the zombie plague, but no one will listen to him, especially not the main antagonist, both because of the above and because ''of course they wouldn't'', it's <s>grimderp</s> GRIMDARK.
**Ironically, Ancient Shintoism (a main religion of that period) has the only known anti-[[Nurgle|zombie]] deities: ''Kukuri hime no kami'', a goddess of purification ([[Reasonable Daemonette|''despite'' being rather sado-masochist]]) whose followers would bind a corpse with ropes, place a big stone on the chest and bury it (coffins are optional). [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Insane as it was]], it was the most common form of burial in the Jomon period, and never went completely out of date through all the medieval period. Despite the rites being a perfect defense against [[Dark Souls|an undead invasion]], apparently they didn't take in this setting. Three guesses why.
*Most dark fantasy/"Ryona" hentai like Redo of a Healer (see [[Edgy]] for details), Kuroinu, Maggot Baits and whatever bargain basement hentai game developer puts the heroines through horrifying rapes, tortures and debauchery with no way to escape, all for little more purposes than to degrade, humiliate and mind-break them.
* [[FATAL]]
* [[Black Tokyo]]
* Teenagers bad attempts at recreating stuff they like such as Creepypasta's.
* About half of Garth Ennis's work goes so far around the bend that, if you don't stop caring about anyone in the story and put it down first, it becomes compelling or hilarious. Practically all of his original stories are drowning in grimderp (and author ax grinding). Prime examples include;
** The Boys: Almost every superhero is an irredeemable sexual deviant and loose cannon whose only crime fighting accomplishments come from corporate PR lies, and the story's protagonists are little better.
*** Surprisingly averted with it's Amazon Prime adaptation. By actually making most of the heroes less unambiguously rotten, cutting down the childish silliness, making the violence less gratuitous and more justified, and making the Boys themselves more human, the series actually manages to be WAY darker than the comics. Hell, Billy Butcher actually contemplates MURDERING A CHILD in the series, which is something the way more psychotic Butcher of the comics would not.
** Crossed: One of his most infamous creations. Most of the world is dead or turned into [[Slaanesh|murder-raping sadists]] á la the Reavers from Firefly due to a virus with a visible symptom being boils forming a cross pattern on the infectee's face. Showing any courage will get you killed or turned into one of the aforementioned murder-rapists, and there are survivors that are just as fucked up as the infectees. Supposedly a dig at arm chair survivalists, it's now mostly remembered for being edgy for the sake of edginess and being overall boring as hell.
* Hatred: Remember how your family told you that GTA was breeding criminals and that games created "monsters"? Well, Hatred tries to cash in on that by making a game dedicated to killing innocent people and making a "parody" out of those reactions, but [[FAIL|fails miserably]] to do that. This is because not only is our main "hero" a complete asshole with literally nothing redeeming about him, but most of the gameplay consists on you shooting unnarmed civilians and members of the policy/military that are '''extremely''' easy to beat, and coupled with the monochrome colors the game becomes ''very'' boring in a ''very'' quick pace. And unlike these old games that caused oh so much controversy, Hatred doesn't even have that good old orkish humor and tries to [[Serious Business|take everything inside it seriously]], which makes the "Grimdark" aspect come off as ''very'' dumb.
* [[Carl Sargent]]'s total rape of the [[Greyhawk]] setting in ''[[From The Ashes]]''. Something of a unique case in that the grimdark was well-done; it's that he had to fuck over the game's oldest and most-beloved setting (see the article for details) to do it that made it Derp.
* Most of the anti-[[HFY]] content in the [[World of Darkness]], especially the unmitigated misanthropy in parts of [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]. Humans vary from 'Idiotic sheep permanently at the bottom of the food chain' to 'Apathetic fools responsible for most of the world's ills' to 'Cackling, moustache-twirling villains', civilization and all its fruits are EVIL!, and the tribe of bestiality-born werewolves that want to exterminate the human race down to pre-Stone Age levels are presented as heroes that're unequivocally morally justified in their actions (both in and out of setting, if some of the Apocalypse scenarios are anything to go off). [[FAIL|Yeah.]]
* Anything made by biggest hack in Hollywood, <s>Zack</s> Hack Snyder.
* LifeWeb: A complex SS13 spinoff taking place in a cave fortress of a neo-medieval world in the far future, combat is more lethal, and it claims to explore subjects like murder, corruption, rape(with no regard for age), torture, cultism and general human suffering. In reality, the themes it "explores" just means "it's in the game and you can do it" and it's a farce on every level possible.
* The ''Hearts of Iron IV'' mod ''The New Order: Last Days of Europe'' has numerous dystopian "failstates", but the most notorious is the SS Ordenstaat Burgund, also known as Burgundy. Covering northeastern France and Belgium, Burgundy is ruled by [[Nazi|Heinrich Himmler and the SS]] as a giant concentration camp. Its sole purpose is genocide, first on the local and ultimately on the [[Exterminatus|global]] scale. When it isn't killing its own inhabitants, it's backing SS agents throughout the Third Reich's sphere of influence to further its cause of EEEVIL. Economic minister Oswald Pohl even points out that killing massive swathes of the nation's population just for not being Aryan isn't sustainable, but Himmler regards such criticism as treason. Realistically, Burgundy should have collapsed on itself before the game started, but it can stick around regardless. Playing as it is as difficult and miserable as you'd expect from a Holocaust management sim.
** Recent updates have focused more on the "derp" than the "grim", apparently as a reaction to Burgundy's pre-rework supervillainy. Unlike before, where it could last into the '80s [[Plot Armor|because the plot would break otherwise]], nü-Burgundy experiences [[Not As Planned]] moments on a near-[[Abbadon|FAILbaddon]] scale. Himmler [[BLAM|shooting Oswald Pohl]] for his "treason" not only tanks the economy but also makes economic management ''impossible''. Over time, the slaves, French and Belgian collaborator legions, and even Burgundy's own ministers will eventually get fed up and rebel. If Himmler purges them, ''literally everyone else'' will rise up in an event called the "Burgundian Spring". Even in the rare event that Himmler actually gets his nuclear Holocaust, it ultimately fails; the "pure" Aryans he chose to preserve emerge from their bunkers...and peacefully join post-apocalyptic society without issue. Why? Himmler told them that only true Aryans would survive the nuclear holocaust, so they assume that [[Derp|all the survivors are Aryan ''by definition'']], [[Wat|even if said survivors are Jewish or black]].

== Grim Tragedy ==
Naturally in a universe such as 40k, the grimdarkness of the setting would mean nothing if not tied into the ironic tragedy of the lore. This includes:

*[[Imperium|A species]] so afraid of the dauntless perils of Chaos that they will brutally harass and execute entire populations out of mere suspicion, all to stop the spread of ruin while indirectly strengthening those who seek to destroy them (''particularly'' Chaos). They, as a people, have progressed massively in population, technology and power since their species conception, yet they, more than anyone else, have lost one vital element: their humanity.

*[[Eldar|A race who]] was once at a zenith of civilization and prosperity, capable of bending the very Gods to their will. But by their own hand reduced themselves to scattered isolated fleets and colonies always on the run; their pompous and arrogant leaders hide behind a dwindling sense of security based in superiority over other races who are far more successful and perhaps destined to be greater than they ever were. [[Dark Eldar|A number among them]], after their unholy and insidious near-demise, continue (with oblivious glee) to empower [[Slaanesh|the very being that brought them to ruin]] in order to save themselves.

*[[Orks|A race of creatures]] who possess the brightest "potential"; with near mastery over the psychic, near-natural physical perfection and almost limitless numbers from their highly successful methods of reproduction... And yet they are genetically restricted by an unquenchable thirst for conflict which drives each to idiocy, leaving them hopeless of advancing beyond simple barbarians.

*[[Necron|An ancient people]] who were so envious of their neighbors' lifespans that they were ready to cripple the entire galaxy just for the sake of petty superiority - a superiority neutered by their unwitting transformation into metaphorical and literal automatons. They are now mindless machines who, bar few, care nothing of their past and seek only one thing: Conquest. And those who still have their personalities are either insane, demented, depressed, brooding, psychotic, or any combination of these in various proportions.

*[[Tau|A newborn race]] who innocently believes that there can be peace and acknowledgement among each other. Unfortunately the sinister methods they employ hoping that it is for [[Greater Good|something better]] is slowly, but steadily driving them into the decadence that plagues the other species. In doing so they become proof, both of the fact that [[Horus|anyone]], [[Emperor|no matter their intentions]], can be corrupted, and also of the kindness that the rest have forsaken for damnation and despair...

*The fact that, despite tens of thousands of years of knowing nothing but war, these peoples are woefully unprepared for what is to come. No matter how many regiments can be raised or Craftworlds restored, what is out there is [[Tyranids|all consuming, diabolical and numberless...]] Unless, they are themselves on the verge of extinction, and as such, desperately trying to cross over the great void between galaxies, which implies fighting against [[Ork|invincibles foes]] and [[Ultramarines|fate dodging cheaters]] unnaturaly empowered by the grief of an [[Games Workshop|unspeakable Eldritch Abomination beyond the cosmos]]. The good option is that there are a thousand galaxies worth of the fucking bugs; the bad option is that there are billions upon billions of galaxies worth of the fucking bugs. The worse option is that billions upon billions galaxies worth of what is essentially the perfect organism is running away from something worse.

== See also ==
*[[Noblebright]]
*[[Edgy]]
*[[Eversor]]
*[[Lamenters]]

== External Links ==
* [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/grimdark KnowYourMeme has examples from outside of /tg/]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQAWBeFnkg8 Trope Talk: Grimdark], a analysis of the "Grimdark" style of storytelling and why it works (and why sometimes it doesn't)
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Grimdark

2022-01-07T10:18:00Z

195.194.119.220: /* Grimderp */

{{Grimdark}}
[[File:P23436_p_v10_aa.jpg|300px|right|thumb|If your protagonist or antagonist isn't at least this [[edgy]], then you're probably doing Grimdark wrong.]]
[[Image:Lovepeace.png|thumb|right|It's totally the opposite of this.]][[Image:Inspector Grimgadget.jpg|thumb|right|Inspector Gadget, reimagined with a grimdark feel.]]
[[Image:Grimdark.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark versions of the TMNT. Their mentor is a Skaven.]]
[[Image:Grimdarkery.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark means war, and always endless, brutal war.]]
{{topquote|We are not men disguised as mere dogs, we are wolves disguised as men|Captain Muroto, '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''}}
{{topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

{{topquote|Tᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀɪɴᴅ ɪᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴅᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ɪᴛ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇɴ sʜᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ ᴏɴᴇ ᴀᴛᴏᴍ ᴏғ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʟᴇᴄᴜʟᴇ ᴏғ ᴍᴇʀᴄʏ ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴇᴛ... Aɴᴅ ʏᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀᴄᴛ ᴀs ɪғ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs sᴏᴍᴇ ɪᴅᴇᴀʟ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ, ᴀs ɪғ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs sᴏᴍᴇ... Sᴏᴍᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛɴᴇss ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ʙʏ ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ɪᴛ ᴍɪɢʜᴛ ʙᴇ ᴊᴜᴅɢᴇᴅ.|DEATH, [[Discworld|Hogfather]] (while explaining that since humans believe that it does, the way we believe Santa or the "Hogfather" does, we make it so it does.)}}

'''Grimdark''' is an adjective derived from the tagline for [[Warhammer 40k]], which states that "In the '''grim darkness''' of the far future, there is only war," and in some of the novels (at least a few of the [[Ciaphas Cain]] stories, for instance) it states straightforwardly, "in the '''grim dark''' future..." Whether this came after "grimdark" began to be popularly used as an adjective is not wholly clear (probably after). It is generally used to describe a dilapidated, dystopian "crapsack world" setting which it would really suck to live in, as say Somalia, North Korea, the North of England and the setting of Warhammer 40k itself. In fairness to the franchise and its defenders, this is because the published material primarily focuses on war and [[Chaos Gods|cults]] and other [[Daemonculaba|horrible things]]. There are supposed to be many pleasant and peaceful worlds and sectors in the Imperium, but they are mostly ignored as they are boring -- and when they DO appear in lore or fluff, they're usually to go from "0 problems" to "totally fucked", very quickly. It can also be used to describe artwork that has a ''grimdark'' feel, even if the setting itself would not normally be considered grim or dark, or something sinister or uncommonly threatening/intimidating in real-life. This often applies to fan-art and writefaggotry as well.

Depending on your own personal tolerances for grim darkness of course, it can be taken to the extreme, just like with all descriptive traits. There is a point in which it becomes more ridiculous than anything else, because everything is indefeasibly tragic all the time - the term for this being [[Grimdark#Grimderp|grimderp]], which is explained further below.

This is an accusation often leveled at Warhammer itself, and leads some to rail against "Grimdark" as a whole, decrying the concept as ridiculous attempts at [[edgy|edginess]] (typically by teenagers), and using the expression to refer solely to such over-the-top settings in a strictly pejorative manner. Others actually embrace this ridiculousness and run with it (including Warhammer 40K itself, due to being a much more obviously comedic setting [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|in early editions]]), insisting that the detractors or even the creators who take it seriously are making a mistake. Some people embrace the grimdarkness and mix it up with some humor (like painting Necrons with bright colors to make them look like edible candy figurines), especially if they are Ork players. But the schism between taking Warhammer's grimdarkness seriously or not is mostly visible with races such as the Tau, who are noticeably less grimdark ''visually'' than most of the other races and are either loved or absolutely hated for it (when not hated for being overpowered as shit). Meanwhile, another sizable percentage postulate that Grimdarkness lends greater moral and ethical complexity to a setting, based on [[Edgy|the fallacy that darkness always equals depth]]. Such people usually cite the works of Dan Abnett and many other Warhammer 40K writers to lend credence to such suppositions; these people are clearly ignoring that fact that most writers tone the grimdark WAY down. What, you didn't think the fact that the Imperium being an effective government, civilians having normal happy lives on par with the Scandinavians, Commissars who never *BLAM* their troops was odd? Needless to say, grimdark is [[Skub|a rather polarizing subject whose discussion often leaves little room for a middle ground]].

Speaking of, the polar opposite of grimdark is [[Noblebright]], a deliberate inversion of grim and dark nature where honor, chivalry, happiness and high adventure rule the day, as opposed to dying in a ditch from a supernatural plague as you run out of potable water and can no longer wait for the logistics department to process your dead comrades into something slightly more palatable before you start eating them. Oh, and being {{BLAM}}ed by a Commissar for even starting to look a little sad from these thoughts.

Although, it could be argued that 40K proper is actually Nobledark. Although the lore claims one man cannot make a difference and heroes are meaningless (Grim), we see the complete opposite of that actually happening in the lore. 40K fluff (40K, not just 30K) is crammed to bursting with heroes who made major differences. If anything, 40K seems to be about the difference one man ''can'' make rather than showing one man cannot make a difference. Even the events revolve around the Great Man idea of basically superheroes and supervillains moving the galaxy (and it's not just actual superhumans doing this). It is nonetheless a very dark setting, though.

== Common grimdark themes ==
*[[1984|Massive, imperialist, overbearing, bureaucratic, dystopian dictatorships]]; e.g. [[Imperium of Man|Nazi Germany clones]], [[Tau|Soviet Union/China clones]], or straight out examples of [[Paranoia|"Big Brother is watching you"]].
*Constant, never ever-ending warfare, usually as a horrific combination of outdated tactics and technology (And sometimes overly advanced technology). E.g., sending line infantry armed with single-shot [[Lasgun|Lasguns]] against a [[Bolter|Heavy Bolter]] nest.
*Horrifyingly large death tolls are perfectly normal. Genocide is also perfectly normal, and in many cases encouraged and espoused.
*Slavery is also perfectly normal, and sometimes considered a great necessity. Massive constructs are often built via slave labor.
*Everyone is racist towards non-humans/[[Eldar|elves]]/[[Mutant|mutants]]/[[Orks|fungus]]/[[Rak'gol|lizards]]/[[Slaugth|worms]]/[[Necrons|robots]]/[[Tyranids|aliens]]/[[Chaos|each other]]. Vice versa for literally every race.
*Speaking of xenophobia towards every species, those who express sympathy for a hated race and/or intermingle with said race, are usually publicly humiliated, tortured, and usually purged.
*Daily dose of [[HFY]]. [[Astral Knights|And]] [[Awesome]].
*[[Shadowrun|The vast majority are poor people who literally live in shit, pollution, crime]], and a plethora of [[Nurgle|all kinds of filthy diseases]], except for a [[Monopoly|few greedy upper 1% who own 99.9% of everything]].
*You, a poor bastard, are being farmed for shits and giggles by said few greedy upper 1%.
*Most of the poor bastards are being forced to work 23 hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, in factories and/or forced labour camps, until their bodies give out. Forever.
*They're probably making weapons and equipment for [[Imperial Guard|the military]] (which is where the rest of the poor bastards are).
*[[Age of Strife|Dark, disgraceful and recondite past]] covered with [[Alpha Legion|lies]] [[Imperium|propanganda]], [[Tzeentch|deception]] and [[Eldar|partiality]].
*The Higher Powers do indeed give you consideration, they're just malevolent as all fuck.
*Chronic backstabbing. Just like in real life relationships. (''Who hurt you?'')
*[[Ork Snipers|"Frie]][[Marines Malevolent|ndly]] [[Kharn|fire"]]
*[[Space Marines|Child]] [[Imperial Guard|soldiers]]. Just like in real life.
*Your morning alarm clock is the stray bullets you hope don't hit you, from [[Necromunda|the gangsters doing a drive-by on their enemy who happens to be in the same district]] to whom you don't even belong to or like.
*Status quo is god. [[Nurgle|Literally.]]
*[[Tzeentch|Change is worse]].
*[[Cyberpunk|Cybernetics and cyborgs]]; the less human, the better.
*[[Commissar|Daily forecasts reguarly call for a 80% chance or more of *BLAM*]].
*[[Judge Dredd|Police]] [[Adeptus Arbites|brutality]].
*Even minor crimes can have major punishments.
*[[Inquisition|Being innocent or even a victim of crime can be counted as a crime]]. All participants in a crime, whether perpetrator or victim, are charged.
*[[Inquisition|Government agencies that are always there to fuck you over]] at the slightest hint of [[heresy]].
*Did I mention that the [[Inquisition]] commits planetary genocide 24/7?
*The [[Erebus|cock]][[Dark Eldar|suckers]] responsible for most of the shittiness are not only getting away with it, but are surviving and thriving, without becoming major targets for the [[noblebright]] forces.
*Torture that makes the CIA look like saints.
*[[Call of Cthulhu|Sanity checks]].
*Criminally insane delusional psychotics tortured in filthy mental asylums (in case of no/failed SAN checks).
*[[H.P. Lovecraft|Disgusting, horrifying, tentacled eldritch abominations]] that are often the cause of aforementioned criminal insanity.
*Rape. Just like in real life. ([[/d/|And often by said tentacled Eldritch Abominations]].)
*Surgery without anesthesia.
*[[Cannibalism]], in three forms:
*# For power (embracing the myth of "you are what you eat").
*# For food value; sometimes this is concealed by callous authorities as some other kind of food; sometimes, it's just a biological, cultural or desperation thing.
*# For the sheer fun of it.
*Want chemotherapy or some other expensive treatment? Well, you have to eviscerate that old dropout student of yours in order to pay.
*In fact even surgery without anesthesia is a luxury available only to wealthy or important ones, as are all other forms of medicine. 99% of people are expected to die when they fall sick or get injured. That is when they don't get executed FOR falling sick or getting injured.
*[[Fleshcrafting|Human experiments]]. [[Fabius Bile|Sometimes willingly, but most of the time not]]!
*Zombie plagues.
*Ritual cult sacrifices.
*Massive amounts of blood, gore, guts, pain and hatred.
*No personal opinion or choice. Only the illusion of it, in which you probably end up an [[Magnus|unwil]][[Mortarion|ling]] [[Rubric Marines|sla]][[necron|ve]]. Or...[[Chaos spawn|something worse]].
*Anti-intellectualism.
*...and it's justified because even an instant of unprotected thinking risks mass destruction.
*PTSD.
*Nihilism.
* Racism is actually right.
*Gothic and emo aesthetics (with the help of tons of ''"decorative"'' skulls).
*There are no "good guys". Everyone's a jerk, including yourself. ''Especially yourself.''
* Everyone is evil either because they’re just plain monsters or because they are trying to survive which makes everyone evil to everyone else.
*[[Tau|The guys everyone refer to be "good" or "nice"]] are actually just ''the least'' evil bunch, and would still make your average high fantasy/sci-fi arch-villains look like saints in comparison.
*The REAL good guys are either [[Lamenters|the ones (usually) mostly hated, and are going to get fucked over beyond human recognition usually without any logical reason]] or [[Salamanders|too few to make any difference]].
*Aforementioned "good guys" are only "good" because they do care about their allies and civilians, and generally try to make the place less shitty for those they care for. But they still wouldn't hesitate a second before doing pretty horrible things like [[Shadowrun|terrorist actions against "The Man"]], [[Warhammer 40k|killing a defenseless xeno child]], etc...
* The aforementioned defenseless xeno-child needed to be killed either because it was guaranteed to grow up to be a monster, would grow to compete for resources needed for survival, would be corrupted, was already a monster, or any number of reasonable justifications that would leave a modern man in frustrated tears trying to justify not killing it. Welcome to Warhammer 40,000.
*Magic is [[Warp|inherently malevolent]] and actively seeks to [[Cenobites|corrupt]] and [[Khorne|destroy]] those unfortunates 'gifted' with magical abilities. And everything around them at the time.
*You either die a [[Sanguinius|worthy death]] or you live long enough to see yourself becoming something that [[Mortarion|you've]] [[Perturabo|always]] [[Fulgrim|hated]].
*Everyone will most likely die in the end. Especially the ones important to and including the main character.
*Always polluted, never sunny.
*No ice cream. No lollipops either.
*Death or suicide will only make things much, much worse in [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] levels, as a hive of disgusting, incomprehensibly evil supernatural daemons are waiting patiently to eternally torment your un-life and roast your soul alive day and night forever and ever, again and again and again and again.
*Tremendous potential for offensive/dark comedy/[[lulz]].
*[[God-Emperor of Mankind|And if you ever, EVER try to change this shitty world or try to help one person just a little, you will probably suffer terrible consequences,]] because altruism is a dying philosophy. (And because your reasoning is flawed.)
*Life sucks.
*There's only war.
*You're probably going to get eaten by Tyranids.
*no gf
*Good luck and [[Dwarf_Fortress|have fun.]]
*Even using the wrong calendar is [[heresy]].

== Stuff considered Grimdark ==
{{cleanup}}
[[File:Tyrus.jpg|400px|thumb|A world where the only way to beat grimdark is by introducing something even grimmer and darker]]
[[File:The_grimdarkian_by_ironshrinemaiden_d1i73bl.jpg|400px|thumb|[https://www.deviantart.com/ironshrinemaiden/art/The-Grimdarkian-91030161| The Grimdarkian, by IronShrineMaiden]]]
* '''''[[Warhammer 40,000]]''''' (Naturally, coined the term).
* '''''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]''''', <strike>but less than you'd think. It's a lot closer to nobledark</strike> until the world [[Derp|was]] [[Bullshit|actually]] [[End Times|destroyed]]. Now, [[Age of Sigmar]] continues it and is, slightly, better in so much that it is unlikely to be destroyed, though [[Warhammer Meta-Setting|that may imply an even worse eternal stalemate]].
* '''The World Wars''', especially the Western Front of WW1, the Eastern Front of WW2, and everything involving WW2 Japanese army/navy and PoWs/civies.
* '''The countless wars of the 1990s in Africa''', including, but not limited to: The Rwandan Genocide, Liberian child soldiers, Sierra Leonean amputations, slave labor in the Congo, etc.
** Post Colonial Africa in general until the 21st century and even then there's not particularly nice places like Somalia.
* '''''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'''''
* '''''[[Dark Sun]]'''''
* '''''End of War'''''
* '''''Blood''''', The main character is a undead wild west gunslinger who has to bring down a dark god's cult!
* '''Shakespeare's tragedies''', especially ''Macbeth'' and ''Hamlet''.
* '''''[[1984]]'''''
* '''''Soylent Green'''''.
* '''''[[Paranoia]]''''' (though used for parodying 1984).
* The majority of the tragedy genre of stories.
* '''''[[RIFTS]]'''''.
* The '''''Half-Life''''' universe after the resonance cascade.
* '''''Portal''''' once you get past the memes.
* The Helghast from the '''''Killzone''''' universe.
* The '''Kerberos''' trilogy, but special mentions to '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''. A series of films that basically gave birth to Killzone singlehandedly (Seriously, look at the comparisons between the Helghast and the film's Protect Gear, [[Original character, do not steal|it is ''blatant'']]). Set in an alternate-history where Japan was occupied by Germany rather than America at the end of WW2. In Jin-Roh, the nation is constantly in social turmoil with left-wing communist terrorist guerillas using children as bomb couriers against two police force of Japan: the normal-looking police force (Backed by the Japanese KGB/CIA hybrid) and the '''ORIGINAL''' Helghasts called the Kerberos Panzer Cops. Jin-Roh is a political thriller film that largely talks about the problems of the "Good guy, bad guy" dichotomy and how juvenile it is for stories to portray these things in real life. All of the films have a downer ending, so if you are looking for a happy ending, you're gonna get dissapointed. Despite what [[/pol/|some people]] [[SJW|may argue,]] the Kerberos trilogy is a condemnation of all extremist ideas and actions. Its a Mamoru Oshii film of Ghost in the Shell fame, what do you fucking expect.
* Everything in '''''Gears of War'''''. The fact that the primary weapon in the series features a [[Chain Weapon|Chainsaw bayonet designed to utterly rip out the innards of anyone unfortunate to be at the receiving end]] is already by itself Grimdark.
* Everything in the Resistance universe.
* The MachineGames '''''Wolfenstein''''' games. The Nazis crushed the Allies in 1947 with insane technology and won World War II. The setting pulls no punches in depicting how nightmarish the world would become if the Nazis were free to enact their racist and reactionary ideology to its fullest. Manhattan was nuked off the earth, London is now a slum filled with humiliating monuments to the Nazi victory (and a giant robot that literally crushes any uprisings), indigenous peoples in Africa and South America are being exterminated wholesale, there are concentration camps on the Moon, Hitler has been deified, and untermensch live in hiding and constant fear for their lives.
* '''''[[Blame!]]'''''.
* '''''Devilman'''''. (especially CRYBABY)
* '''''[[Berserk]]'''''
* '''''[[Goblin Slayer]]'''''.(Pretty much [[Berserk]] if it was set in a Dungeons and Dragons world)
* '''''[[Emergence]]'''''. (177013)
* '''''[[Kingdom Death]]''''' (Makes 40k's setting seem pleasant and cheerful).
* '''''Eastenders''''' (especially at Christmas).
* '''[[Grimdark Songwriting]]'''
* '''''[[Don't Rest Your Head]]'''''
* '''''SLA Industries''''': Imagine if the Emperor was not only still walking around, but was a callous buisnessman with a permanent skeleton face and no bling armor. Imagine a civilization that exists almost entirely to strip mine itself in the name of consumerism, with snuff television being the primary source of entertainment and anyone trying to do buisness not on SLA's pay roll being branded a "Soft Company" to be exterminated. Oh, and truly horrid aliens that were thought extinct centuries ago are now making a comeback AND occult fuckery of varying flavours is manifesting in increasing amounts in Mort City, SLA's capital.
* '''''The Matrix'''''
* '''''[[World of Darkness]]''''', with special mention going to [[Wraith: The Oblivion]], a game so bleak it's rumored to have actually caused fits of chronic depression in players.
* '''''[[CthulhuTech]]'''''
* '''''[[Call of Cthulhu]]''''', depending on how you do it.
* Everything from '''''[[H.P. Lovecraft]]''''' and the '''''Cthulhu Mythos''''', though this can vary when you add in other Mythos writers like August Derleth.
* Playing mortals in '''''[[Exalted]]'''''
* '''''Neon Genesis Evangelion''''' (Especially End).
* '''''Muv-Luv''''' Often compared to 40k in how bleak and brutal the series is.
* '''''[[Midnight]]''''' setting for D&D.
* '''''[[FATAL]]'''''.
* '''[[Rebecca Black]]'''.
* '''''I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream'''''. Just the title itself should give you a clue on how horrific the game is. (The video game is terrifying, especially with its endings, and the short story it is based on is even more horrifying). Humanity has been wiped out except for five people, who are trapped inside a complex controlled by a misanthropic, reality-warping supercomputer keeping them alive to torture them.
* The '''Medieval Dark Ages''' that Warhammer 40,000 was originally based on.
* '''''[[The Witcher]]'''''. Racism, genocides, dozens of monsters that want to eat your face whenever you enter a random forest. Or cave. Or ruins. The video game adaptation even features a medieval Hitler running the [[Inquisition|Witch Hunters]], a fanatical order of [[Black Templars|racist scumbags dedicated to wiping out both mages and non-humans]] in the name of the Eternal Fire. Meanwhile, the neighboring empire starts a series of wars against northern kingdoms (where the series takes place), in which both sides descend into scorched earth warfare, all the while backstabbing their allies and generally being a colossal wall of dicks to the point that close to 70% of civilian population in war-zones died from raiding, famine and occasional outbreaks of extradimensional plagues. To add insult to injury, the whole world is doomed due to the (slowly) encroaching Ice Age, and the only person that could save it took two glances at this shitshow and decided to fuck off to a parallel universe and let them all die, ''because it would be a mercy''. (To be fair, though, she comes back, if only to save her adoptive mother and father from said Ice Age, as she still maintains her 'fuck the rest of humanity' attitude.
* '''''Dark Souls'''''. The entire ''world'' is ''dying''. Specifically, most of the population is undead, you die constantly, and you have to fight enemies larger and filthier than you are, [[Heresy|including a naked bitch with a spider vagina]]. Also, [[Extra Heresy|FAKE TITS]]. Stuck in an infinite loop where a hero constantly saves the world, and everything goes back to normal before hitting another grimdark cycle every thousand years. Compare with nobledark and check your mileage.
* '''''Drakengard''''' and its related franchise: '''''Nier'''''. Basically, the "god" in this setting is a massive dick so he infects humans with zombie aids out of boredom and watch them kill each other for the [[lulz]]. Caim (the player), the former prince of a fallen kingdom (due to his parents being killed by a black dragon) had to fight the zombie army. He unironically [[rip and tear|enjoys slaughtering any living things]] after waging a bunch of other conflicts and lost his ability to speak after he made a pact with a dragon in exchange for companionship and power (in Drakengard, making such a pact with another creature makes you lose a certain part of you). He had to team up with a blind pedophile priest, a baby eating elf witch, and a ageless shota. His sister unknowingly to him is a crazy incest bitch, driven mad by the pain she endures because she was forced to become a "Goddess of the Seal", some kind of administrator chosen by the "god" to maintain space and time. The job sucks, she had to be separated from her family and she's unable to kill herself because her caretaker would prevent that from happening. And to top it off her parents die tragically. And then you have the villains. Manah, an abused 8 year old child descended from one of the evil clone sister's brother from the prequel, was controlled by the eldritch forces of "the watchers" (read: the dick head "god" himself) who are in charge of the zombie armies with humanity's extinction being their goal. Due to the influence of the watchers group on the Empire kingdom of its setting, the world is engulfed in flames and corpses. The true ending for the game is that everyone except Caim dies and he somehow end up moving a magical doomsday device created by the god to other world (Tokyo Japan of our world to be exact), detonate it and doom the human race. It is said that Drakengard as a series has a fuck ton of timelines and a timeline was born from each of the endings with each ending being bad, or if not worse than the previous. Surprisingly the ending mentioned above is consider canon and it is where the sequel Nier took place (after 1462 years no less) with more grimdark ensuing. Drakengard 2 was pretty bright light since it was directed by a different director but is still part of branch timeline while Drakengard 3 is the prequel retelling how the god tries to destroy the world by sticking an evil parasite flower on some psychopathic girl. Each time the girl died it creates an evil clones of her that will try to rule the world with their evil song magic. Obvious, it's also grimdark since it led to the tragic grimdark rape sauce that is the plot of the first game.
** In '''''Nier''''', the world sets 1462 years into the future. After our "hero" and his dragon fucked up the world by killing and detonating the doomsday device, it release some kind of magical evil virus that mindraped and turned people into salt if they don't submit. After countless grimdark conflicts involving child soldiers, human experiments and more resource shortage, the scientist decided to separate the rest of the survivors souls (gestalt) from their bodies, hoping they could outlast the pandemic. But of course all these attempts are futile failure because Nier, our "hero" ended up killing the only thing that could save humankind, dooming them all to extinction.
*** Finally we have '''''Nier: Automata''''', 8480 years later, where new androids were created by the last human survivors. One of the Nier's companions Emil, a bizarre magical weapon created from some crazy experiment (he is over 8480 years old or so at this point) had to clone himself over 9000 times just to fight the aliens, which not only made him lose his mind and memories but also his sanity. Oh and the humans that escaped to the moons turn out to be long dead. When the rest of androids find out, they proceed to kill themselves in a batshit frenzy. To make this sound even more painful and tragic, the androids have the human concepts of pain and emotions programmed to them, making their death even more painful to be felt.
* '''''Mass Effect''''': While its universe overall is hardly grimdark overall, the Reapers and what happens to "harvested" individuals is some of the sickest forms of grimdark possible. During the Reaper War, trillions of people across the galaxy were vaporized, dissolved slowly, and/or converted into cyber zombies or brainwashed slaves. And that's just the latest Reaper War. The Reapers have committed so much galactic genocide beforehand, they turned it into a "regularly" scheduled event and made the galaxy their farm/laboratory.
** There are many other forms of Grimdark in the relatively Nobledark/Noblebright universe of Mass Effect, one of the most notable being the Genophage, a bioweapon deployed against the Krogan race as to halt the Krogan Rebellions. This bioweapon was basically a massive, permanent genetical Fetus Deletus that drove Krogan birthrates down extensively and creates a lot of stillborns, leaving them vulnerable to extinction.
* '''''Killzone''''', again. The Second Extrasolar War alone deserves its own page of Grimdark: Humanity and their alien descendants, the Helghast, engage in a near-racial war of genocide, more genocide, and even more genocide. Technology has devolved in many areas, and battles turn into endless slaughters as hundreds of thousands of men and women are thrown into a Verdun/Stalingrad hybrid scenario. What's even more horrible is how literally '''everyone''' is evil. Not just the Helghast. Literally all of humanity is warped. The Earth-based UCN? Corrupt and bureaucratic. They want to strangle all their colonies with an iron fist and they intentionally keep the colonial military, the ISA, weaker than it otherwise could be so the centralized military could easily crush them if they rebelled, (UCN cruisers for example are basically dreadnoughts in comparison to those of the ISA), which has caused more than a few problems for the ISA when fighting the Helghast. The Vektans? Hypocritically imperialistic, believing the Helghast deserve to perish for their militarism and (failed) invasion of their planet. The Helghast? Racist, imperialistic genocidal maniacs, believing themselves to be "superior" and even some thinking they need to kill every human in the universe, for "Helghast Purity".
** The Helghast are a literal representation of a society and people warped by Grimdarkery: The planet of Helghan is inhospitable, forcing almost all its inhabitants to wear gas masks. Society is highly fascist, militaristic, and any form of dissent is met with "reeducation" (A bullet to the head), while the government itself is highly nepotistic, where opportunistic scumbags manipulate Helghast Nationalism for their self-benefit. Also, technology and living standards in the civilian sector is extremely poor, as the majority of the advanced technology went over to the military.
** The fanbase of the series is certainly odd though due to the fact that this concept that everyone is evil has went completely over their heads and due to the blatantly unfair treatment of the Helghasts (kind that makes the Treaty of Versailles seem all fair and good by comparison) in the lead up and aftermath of the First Extrasolar War, they have a tendency to see the Helghast, despite being the antagonists, [[derp|as the good guys]]. Their totalitarian society and the fact that the Helghast commit more or less every warcrime known to man apparently didn't make it obvious that this is not so.
* '''''Gears of War''''', again. Decades of civil war, genocide and weapons of mass destruction has turned your home planet into a quasi-dead world. The human race is close to extinction, women are reduced to birthing machines, your government is an uncaring fascist scumbag, the weather is often rain consisting of razor sharp ice crystals that could cut you into ribbons, you're fighting a never-ending war with genocidal monsters from the underground and the world is literally '''dying''' from super fuel.
**To make matters even worse. Even before the Locust War, humanity was locked in a near 80 year war between two rivaling superpowers over the aforementioned super fuel. The COG and the UIR. Both governments are ruthless, imperialistic, fascistic, communistic bastards of a government whose war crimes will make the likes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany look like amateurs. When even the Locust have a point by calling us out for being exactly the same genocidal monsters as they are, you know Gears of War is fucked. Oh and the planet is called Sera, or Ares when said backwards.
* The '''''Resistance''''' series, again: Humanity is losing a brutal war of genocidal attrition against a parasitic alien species, the Chimera. Russia, Asia, and nearly all of Europe has been converted into a desolate wasteland, suitable for the Chimera species. Whatever is left of humanity has been driven into cave dwellings. Humans captured by the Chimera are converted into a Chimera Hybrid (Basically the Chimera equivalent of [[Arco-flagellant|Arco-Flagellants]]).
* '''''Hellgate London'''''.
* Most of '''David Bowie''''s songs about 1990.
* World Devastators in '''''[[Star Wars]]'''''. Seriously, if you read about them without knowing that they are from Star Wars, you could easily mistake them for something from 40k. And we're not talking about Star Wars Legacy and the genocide of the Mon Calamari.
* The first two '''''Hellraiser''''' movies
* '''''Event Horizon'''''
* '''''GANTZ'''''
* '''''[[Cyberpunk 2020]]'''''.
* '''''[[Shadowrun]]'''''. While not the worst in the grimdark department, Shadowrun definitely has its moments (the Renraku Archology Shutdown being a prime example); for instance the oppressive megacorporations reducing people to an identification number, with people not having one ([[Derp|for... reasons]]) don't exist legally.
* '''''[[Hellsing]]'''''... just all of Hellsing... Though it can easily slide into grimderp. (A little girl seeing her mother killed while hiding in a closet? Yeah that's intense. In a moment of desperation, shove a rod into the guy's eyeball, only for him to not be mortally wounded? That's pretty unfortunate. Said guy deciding to fuck the corpse as his smashed eyeball hangs from the socket? That's just silly.)
**'''''Drifters''''', by the same author. The protagonists are a bunch of [[murderhobo|kill-happy murderhoboes]] drawn from various psychos from all throughout history into [[Isekai|a generic fantasy world]] who have decided to [[Great Crusade|save the world by conquering it, one country at a time]]. One of the major powers of the setting turns out to have been founded by ''Adolph friggin' Hitler''. Even Joan of Arc, who IRL was noted for being a pacifist, is warped into a bloodthirsty psycho. The [[BBEG]], who wants to kill all humans (and is noted to be a step up from his subordinates, who want to kill [[Necron|everything]]) is all but outright states to be ''Jesus''.
* '''''Bioshock''''' and '''''Bioshock 2''''' (as well as '''''Bioshock Infinite''''', though it comes hidden behind a smiling facade of barbershop singing and the Fourth of July).
* Anything from the '''''[[Xeelee Sequence]]'''''.
** The Interim Coalition of Governance for example, is such a grim-ridden shit-hole that they make the Imperium of Man look like pussies filled with sun-shine and rainbows in comparison and make the [[Adeptus Custodes]] shit themselves in collateral fear. Despite achieving time travel, conquering the entire Universe through xenocide that would make the Necrons look like children and shooting Neutron Stars at .99c at the speed of light, The ICoG is still a minor nuisance compared to the Xeelee and their enemies, the Photino Birds. Stephen Baxter was able to construct the insignificance and petty malevolence of Man in a few books better than GeeDubs more [[Matt Ward|questionable]] [[CS Goto|authors]] did in decades. [[tl;dr]] the IoM wishes they would be as cool as the ICoG. A small example is a soldier, Pirius invents an incredible way of outmaneuvring the enemy and does a huge impact on the war: [[awesome|he captures a Xeelee ship]]. Turning back time and going to the past, he is...sent to a penal unit guaranteeing death. Literally for thinking outside the box.
** All of Steven Baxter's works arguably qualify. '''''Evolution''''' can be summed up as "humanity almost overcame its flaws, fixed the damage it did to Earth, and ushered in a [[noblebright]] future, and it might have worked, but [[Rocks_fall,_everyone_dies|just then a supervolcano erupted, wiped out human civilization, and everyone died]]. The end. There's even a chapter in the middle of the book outright stating it. Also that humans [[Imperium|are nothing but vicious bastards who rape, kill, and destroy everything they touch]] and have been ever since our ancestors were rats under the feet of dinosaurs, but other animals aren't much better.
* '''North Korea''', which is essentially [[1984|"Real Life Oceania"]], a totalitarian nightmare almost completely isolated from the rest of the world with a leader whose name you are literally forbidden from saying without the prefix "supreme leader". Universal conscription is in place for men with service lengths of over ten years from age 17 to 30 (for comparison, in South Korea, where compulsory military service length is also among the highest in the world, the service length is 21 to 24 months depending on the chosen branch). The country has no access to the internet and only has it's own intranet with government controlled websites. Long gone are the days when the government had any interest in making the country good. Now all they care about is simply staying in power, no matter how much poverty and how many famines the rest of the country has to suffer for it. And if you get on the government's really bad side, you and at least 2 other generations of your family get sent to prison camps to be executed or become the playthings of the prison guards until you die.
* '''''The Goon''''' comic series by Eric Powell (because circus hillbillies, werewolves with midget hand phobias, and the Zombie Priest are the least of it all).
* '''''Children of Men''''': A future where humans are no longer fertile and going extinct, and then someone finds a pregnant woman and nearly everyone in the world fights over her.
* '''''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''''' AKA Game of Thrones: Good guys screw up monumentally or never win, the only people who get ahead are amorally manipulative assholes and everyone is going to be massacred and enslaved by the evil ice elf necromancers in the end. And if they somehow survive, then another war for the Iron Throne will happen after the winner gets their revenge-boner satisfied and later, their kids would need to clean up the wankstains.
* '''''Dishonored''''' - Grimdark, and steampunk. Only in the "Kill fucking everyone" ending though.
* '''''Dark Seed''''', Grimdark to the core! the first game is about the main character being fucked in the head. Hr giger's artwork helps too.
* '''''[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|X-Com]]''''' (The remake and the original, as a parody of the G.I. Joe Badass stereo type, you're struggling with funding and even your gods in human form, some of whom make certain chapters of Astartes weep, can get fucked over by Sectoids!)
* '''''Puella Magi Madoka Magica'''''. Being Meguca is suffering.
* '''''[[Adventure Time]]''''''s backstory.
* '''''Path of Exile'''''. The game's setting is basically a documentary on the corruption of [[Roman Empire]]. Basically there is this continent called the Wraeclast. [[Tomb Kings|The land is pretty much cursed with undeath]] and [[chaos|mutation]] due to Thaumaturgy aka magic in the form of gems that grants ability, which came from the beast, some kind of eldritch abomination living in the mountain and the source of all this evil magic shit. Many great Empire rose and fell on the continent with their own fucked up and downfall. [[Fall of the Eldar|The first empire: The Vaal were somekind of Aztec, Mayan inspired Empire who loves to sacrifice people for power, so much that they were responsible for corrupting the beast, which partly responsible for what Wraeclast is today]]. After that, a new Empire called "the Eternal Empire" was built on top the former and began outlawing Thaumaturgy and gems for the next 1000 years, until a tyrant was throne after he cheat a death maze trial and was killed in a rebellion staged by Voll, who is obsessed with the old purity ideal and decided to trust Malachai, a previous evil asshole Thaumaturgiest employed by the previous Emperor to destroy the beast, the source of all magic (in detail, Voll was convinced by Malachai into thinking that only those who study Thaumaturgy could destory Thaumaturgy). Obviously, [[Nagash|Malachai ended up betraying Voll as well as everyone in the Empire, as well as the godamn world by merge with the beast and unleash a series of cataclysm that made what Wraeclast is today, and the bastard achieve a twisted sense of immortality where he is now but a evil monster living inside the beast, who is obsessed with creating nightmarish monsters]].
**Despite the Voll's fucked up, part of the Empire survived in the form of an island nation south called Oriath. [[Imperium of Man|It was ruled under a Theocratic government. Following the laws of purity with an iron fist, where they reject impurity so much that anyone who reject their doctrines is met with either slavery, death or exiled to Wraeclast (which the player came to be)]]. [[Nazi|They are also racist, dressed in stylish uniform fashioned with eagle, gold and the typical red armband, all the more reinforce their real life counterpart]]. [[Roman Empire|Since they inherit the previous empire's slavery culture, they enslave a group of archipelago tribal minority known as the Karui, serving as the Rome equivalent of barbarian tribe slave race for Oriath and oh boy, how Oriath loves to oppress the shit out of them, using them for free labor, torture them, experiment them and putting them in the grand arena as gladiators entertainment]]. They also worship this golden figure with red eyed [[Emperor|called Innocence, who is the major god of Oriath, the Templar's most beloved GOLDEN subject of worship]] and they believe themselves to be the most pure and "innocence" while calling others like [[heresy|the karui and the heretics to be impure and "Sinned"]].
***As if things are not bad enough, later game where after the player killed the beast, it awoke the gods from the slumber. Gods, who were once mortal but sold their humanity for power in order to ascend. As a result, the gods are no better than the humans, most them were downright psychopath(there's a god called Yugul who was once a scholar obsessed with fear that he study about it so much he eventually ascend to godhood, became somekind of four leg walking mouth thing), mentally depressed ([[genestealers|there's this insect goddess called Ryslatha who is afraid of loosing her children that she makes everyone hers by having her parasite control everything that moves]]) or just a downright bloody warlords (the Karui wargod, who is the one to encourage his tribes man to stop being peaceful and tell them to go kill shit and babies, which are actually Ryslatha's and is therefore responsible for her ugly transformation). Although some gods were good, they ended up being corrupted by their followers for fuck how longs while the beast forcing them to slumbering away. After their returning, some human made contact with them through their mind radio advertisement, and were made to become their followers, where they were [[chaos|granted mutations (or blessing, some would say)]] and went on their own ape shit rampage across the world to claim their own territories or invade others. Most of the Karui slaves in Oriath ended up getting the worst mutation of all since [[Angron|they worship this Kitava god (an evil Karui god whom was repeatedly punished for his gluttony, yet despite its mouth being mutilated in such way for him to stop consuming anything, he still does and even managed to reach godhood) in order to free from their slavery and shitty treatment from their Templar tormentor]], [[Khorne|all the more powered up Kitava with their desires for vengeance and blood. The slave's faith for Kitava is so overwhelming that not one on Oriath is safe from Kitava's power]], even the Templar, after their god Innocence that had been recently decimate by the player are now vulnerable to Kitava influences, that they switched side without a second thought, easily giving up their old faith like the asshole heretic they had always been. The only god who managed to retain its sanity from all this madness is called Sin, Innocence's brother who is this creepy black winged figure that could make everyone thought of angels of death whenever he pops up. Despite this, he is smart enough to realized the danger of godhood and create the beast in order to force them asleep (this includes his wife and daughter, whom were also deities like him, and were also corrupted that they had to be put down by the player because even Sin finds it painful to kill his own kin and lover). Even after the player has killed all the gods, Wraeclast remains the same, Thaumaturgy and gems still exist, but at least Oriath is no longer rule by an extreme religious organization, right?
* '''''[[Space Station 13]]''''' : Space paranoia simulator. Some might not consider this game grimdark, but the lore is set in a dystopian future where capitalism and unforgiving bureaucracy rules the universe, your life is expandable, and the media is controlled; your only choice is working until you die, or getting killed by either rival corporate operatives, space wizards, cultists, deathsquads or spies posing as your co-workers.
* '''''Barotrauma''''' : Inspired by Space Station 13, centered on a submarine crew in the underground oceans of Europa. Crew members are expendable, you're ''always'' outgunned, the submarine is almost [[Death World|constantly under attack by massive sea creatures]], and most missions are much more likely to end in disaster than success. Also, you explode as soon as you step outside the sub.
* '''''[[Pokemon Tabletop Adventures]]''''' (optionally).
* Original '''''Grimm's Fairy Tales''''' ("Hansel and Gretel", for example).
* '''''Alien''''' (as in the biomechanical, parasitic, acid-blooded brainchild of Ridley Scott and the late H.R. Giger).
* '''''[[Halo]]''''' (the setting of Halo is one grand scale of a Cosmic Horror Story centered around absolute hopelessness and bleakness of a Universe governed by hyper malevolent gods. Our good guys, the UNSC? It's a semi-authoritarian 'Big Brother is Watching You', fascistic style government that have no qualms dumping nukes on a civilian population if rebellion is sighted. The UNSC also have no problems dicking over their only alien 'friends' to benefit humanity, while also being bogged down in a political quagmire. The Covenant are ''much, much worse'', while anything from the Forerunner trilogy is just a high concoction of Nightmare Fuel inside a depressing milkshake.
**Now with [[Halo#Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command|newly added fluff in the Tabletop Games and other books,]] Halo is going eerily straight down the WH40K route. [[Space Marines|Covenant now having different chapters and sects,]] [[Warp|Slipspace shifting more like space hell,]] [[Inquisition|the UNSC/UEG sending secret police to silence and torture innocents]] [[Abbadon|and an ancient Eldritch A.I. of malevolent aura that shares the same name to a certain armless failure.]] Seriously we ain't making this shit up!
* '''''[[Battletech]]'''''.
* '''''Factorio'''''. Subtle, but, lone human, aliens want to kill you, everything you do makes smog, and your goal is to cover the world in industry, concrete, machines, and gun turrets. The world isn't dead when you arrive, but you're damn well going to kill it yourself or die trying.
* '''''Kane & Lynch.''''' Sweet Emperor, Kane & Lynch. Forget your GTAs and Paydays. In it, you control two murderous middle-aged fugitives, one of which is explicitly mentally troubled, and not in a funny way. The kind of true underworld scum that can only be described as genuinely repulsive. That, plus the fact that nothing ever goes right for anyone in the story just adds to it.
* '''''Attack on Titan''''' (You cannot win, ever. And if you do, you've probably lost all your friends, who've been eaten by giant freaky Mutants, who don't even need food. Yeeeah).
** To put things bluntly, it turns out even the Titans are perpetually suffering, the whole setting runs on a system of human sacrifice and cannibalism that would make the Aztecs proud, this is a series where facing the apocalypse does ''not'' bring out the best in humanity but instead remains as fractious, self-destructive, and divisive as ever (which is honestly one of the points of the story), and the leaders of humanity make the [[High Lords of Terra]] look competent. Things are such a clusterfuck with no hope of change that one of the characters has decided the only way things can get better is to wipe out every human that isn't a member of their ethnic group, and what's worse the plot seem to be proving them ''right''.
* '''''Metro''''' series (both the books and games, but mostly in the books, where the last known humans are hiding in underground subway tunnels, and when not trying to finish each other off are fighting endless hordes of [[mutant]]s [[/b/|and other, much worse things]]. Also, if you're one of the stalkers, the few brave ones that head to the surface to [[Blood Ravens|loot anything they can find]], you risk [[Tyranid|being eaten by flying daemons]]. Hell, it even has [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Metro-2033-Dmitry-Glukhovsky/dp/0575086254 the same "abandon all hope" vibe in the intro], just like 40k. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.)
** Note as the books go on the grimdarkness does tone down by showing the areas outside of the city to be in much better living conditions and other metros.(though not all the books are written by the same author).
* '''''Madness Combat''''' - no regret, no remorse, no reason, only [[Khorne|madness]].
* '''''LISA the RPG.'''''
* '''''The Darkness''''' videogames. Fairly average if utterly spoiled gangster is almost killed and inherits an ancient lineage of shadow monsters that feed off of shadows. Said gangster then decides to go on a revenge-killing spree against his uncle who ordered the whole thing while also fighting off the will of the monsters and protecting his girlfriend.
* The first two '''''Hyperion''''' books.
* '''''Elfen Lied''''' (where the next step of the evolution of mankind is a group of schizophrenic homicidal mutant girls with invisible tentacle hands and a hair-trigger temper who will either kill you in the worst way possible or [[Genestealer|infect you with their gene to increase their numbers]].)
* Most of '''Stephen King's''' works.
** As the joke goes, some people say that Stephen King's works are so fucked up they should come with a content warning. The reply is that they ''do'' have a content warning, they have the words "written by Stephen King" on the front.
* '''''S.T.A.L.K.E.R.''''' You travel a desolate landscape filled with mutants in all the horrific varieties, failed science projects (courtesy of the secret cabal of scientist settled there after USSR' s dissolution), anomalies that you often can't see and kill you instantly and a lot of renegades/bandits/fanatics/zombies. Your gear breaks all the time, resources are scarce and your goal is to get to the [[Wikipedia:Chernobyl disaster|highly dangerous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant]], which is also protected by lots of fanatics with the best gear available. If you make it through that hellish place that is The Zone, you'll likely get one of the 5 really grimdark endings, and if you paid a lot of attention to certain seemingly useless items along the way, you may get one of the other two grimdark endings. The rest of the world largely ignores what's happening inside The Zone, aside from a few scientists that study the deadly phenomena and the international military that maintains a cordon around The Zone so the nasty stuff doesn't get out and sometimes send expeditions inside, killing everything and everyone in sight. Also, [[Meme|A NU CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE]].
* '''''The Slenderman Mythos''''' (HE ALWAYS WATCHES).
* [[Dante|Dante "you hurt my feefees so I'll put you in hell" Alighieri]]'s '''''[[Warp|Inferno]]'''''. Put simply short, God is a fucking Sadist. If you suffer from depression/PTSD so much that you commit suicide, God will mutate you into an immortal tree that still feels pain and is constantly torn apart by harpies forever. How merciful. Sinners who committed Gluttony are punished by being eaten/mutilated alive by Cerberus, who transforms your corpse into slowly regenerating shit mud, all while a costant snowy rain (or rainy snow) hits your head; after being whole again, thou art eaten while trying to flee in despair, and it starts anew.But that's not the worst punishment. How about being under constant fireball rain in a desert for loving a person of the same gender? And being annihilated by snakes, then rebuilt? Or you find funnier being stuck in the ice? For ever. Because some old dude called Minos decided so.
* The '''''F.E.A.R.''''' series (even the third vanilla-by-comparison game is fucked up).
* '''''Total War: Attila''''' (Unlike the previous Total War titles, which were about your faction's rise to power from small backwater city/tribe/country into a mighty empire able to boss around its neighbors into doing your bidding, this one is about the decline of your faction as you desperately try to survive the onslaught of the Huns, who's sole purpose in the game is to worship Tengri by burning, pillaging, and raping their way through the known world. Particularly if you are the Romans. Winning is defined by being the last guy standing who gets to clean up the rubble and dead bodies, trying to rebuild their world after Attila destroyed it. Seriously, even the music sounds depressing and foreboding as fuck.)
* '''''[[Darkest Dungeon]]'''''. Your ancestor awakened some kind of God that is pretty much Cthulhu's brother and sent you a letter before killing himself, asking you to mop up the huge mess he created. Enjoy sending parties of 4 adventurers ranging from badass lepers to sickle-wielding jesters to their deaths in cultist-infested ruins, sewers filled with mutated cannibalistic pigmen, sea caverns serving as anthropomorphic sea creatures and forests corrupted by evil. And I'm not going to talk about the Darkest Dungeon itself. Also, have fun dealing with those bandits that are raiding the Hamlet for which you spent a fuckton of resources in upgrades.
* '''''The Day After''''', and its worse Brit counterpart, '''''Threads'''''.
* '''''Lord Of War'''''. The worst is that it's based on real events.
*'''''Now and Then, Here and There'''''. The DARKEST [[Isekai]] ever made. Period. Imagine if you will, that you were isekai'ed into a world that took direct inspiration from the ''Rwandan Genocide''. Yeah, we are in that type of territory here boys. The setting takes place in an alternate world, ''10 billion years'' into the future where the sun is about to go into a red giant and whatever scraps of humanity are fighting each other for the last remaining sources of water. Expect a lot of child soldiers, child abuse, child torture, child rape and ethnic cleansing to a scarily realistic degree. This is a post-post-apocalyptic world that is designed to break the viewers. It is an anime darker than 40k despite the 'happy' ending due the sheer levels of nihilism and unforgiving horrors of human depravity. As such, it is one of the few isekais that /tg/ could respect.
* '''''[[SCP Foundation]]''''' universe as a whole is borderline grimdark, as many aspects of the Foundation are mixed between absurd comedy, derp, and pure grimdark. At its very worst, the SCP Foundation has things that make the [[Daemonculaba]] look nice by comparison. Above all: [[Inquisition|Secure. Contain. Protect. Imagine a semi-totalitarian world power, funded by world governments to capture and contain anomalous entities, objects and locations so that the rest of mankind can live in a world that makes sense.]] We're talking animate statues that move when you blink (predating that episode of [[Doctor Who]]) and a creature that kills anyone that sees its face in ''any'' form. One of the most Grimdark anomalies is a girl pregnant with something that could cause the end of the world if it is ever born and the only way to stop it from being born is to regularly put her through something unimaginably horrible (The author has said that they never will reveal what exactly it is but it probably involves [[Rape]]) and periodically erase her memories to make sure she doesn't get used to it. And not all of these threats can be contained or stopped and are roaming free to harm innocents. And some of the captured SCPs are not necessary hostile or evil, but are still imprisoned in a worse case scenario. Oh, and the apocalypse has already happened several times over, whenever it does humanity is replaced with clones, and they have lost track of how many times they have done this. You can't even escape by dying, as the most of the possible afterlifes are just as bad if not far worse. While the SCP Foundation tries to avoid being outright bad guys, they are willing to do ANYTHING to keep the world normal and most of the other factions are morally grey at best, and the few good guy factions tend to cause a lot of unintentional harm. But still, [http://www.scp-wiki.net/black-white-black-white-black-white-black-white-black-white Secure. Contain. Protect.] Just another day at the office.
* '''''Shisha no Teikoku''''', the Empire of Corpses. Steampunk, Grimdark, Zombies, Cross-References and Conspiracies everywhere. It has even become possible to ressurect the dead, giving them their soul and intelligence back, but only 2 characters profit from it in the end, while everyone else stays a slave.
* '''''[https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/ The Eternal War]''''', as the name suggests
* '''''[[Dystopian Wars]]''''', as the name suggests
* '''''Clockup Games''''' where you get a firsthand look a sex cult and their destructive side effects.
* '''''World War Z''''' (the book). After zombies overran most of the world, many people had it so bad that they simply lost the will to live. Fighting in the Paris Catacombs with weaker weapons that wouldn't cause a cave-in due to hazardous gasses everywhere. Russian soldiers rioting over unfair treatment and enforced secrecy ordered under pain of death to kill one in ten of their own squadmates - with rocks - to teach them the price of freedom and democracy. Which they then happily traded away. The survival of the human race hinged on governments following a plan including elements of eugenics and leaving settlements of people behind as zombie bait. People resorted to cannibalism to survive in Canada. North Korea entirely vanished without a trace. Pakistan and Iran nuked each other. After the war officially ended, there are still loose zombies wandering around, Russia has started a breeding program to deal with severe underpopulation, several species are extinct, and diseases thought to be wiped out are coming back en masse.
* '''''Space Runaway Ideon'''''
* '''''[[Isekai|Re:Zero]]'''''
* '''''Uzumaki'''''. Basically a Lovecraftian horror manga where a seaside town gets [[rape]]d by spirals. Not as weird as it sounds. Or maybe it is as weird as it sounds but not as bad. Also has enough body horror to put most [[Chaos Spawn]] to shame.
** Pretty much anything by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junji_Ito Junji Ito.] Except ''Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu''.
* '''''[[Doom]]'''''. Demons from Hell have overrun Mars and Earth. You are the lone space marine capable of anything. Somewhat of a subversive case of grimdark: it's not you who is afraid of demons, [[awesome|it's the demons who are afraid of you]]. Commence with the [[Rip and Tear]].
* '''''Armored Trooper Votoms''''', an old-school mech anime. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Mankind has been at war for so long that even the computers created to direct strategy don't know what the goal is]]. War isn't glorious either, most of the first arc is about a squad that goes rogue and raids their own side's armory to find some loot. While the mech designs aren't pretty or fancy, they are more industrial and utilitarian than many contempoaries, being repurporsed exo-suits. The main character is a [[Perpetual]] done right, through a mix of natural regeneration abilities, skills and nigh supernatural luck; unlike, you know, [[Vulkan]], who was just handed something that should have probably belong to all Primarchs just so that he could make [[Horus|some]] [[Sanguinius|people]] [[Ferrus Manus|jealous]]. Take notes, [[Games Workshop|Gros Wotour]], take notes...
* The '''''Prototype''''' games. New York City is infected with a virus created by a generically-unethical corporation called GenTek that mutates people into mutant zombies and/or fucking huge deformed beasts. A secret division called Blackwatch is sent to brutally contain the virus, except it turns out they originally created the virus as a way to purge minorities. This may sound like Resident Evil but the resemblance ends here because you play as Alex Mercer (Prototype 1) and James Heller (Prototype 2), both of them infected by a strain the virus and became superhumans who can shapeshift and gain someone's memories by consuming them (read violently absorbing them into their bodies) and can grow weapons like claws or a blade arm.
* Saw: [[Cegorach|I just wanna play a game.]]
[[File:Digimon_Tamers_Nope_Nope_Nope!.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[RIP AND TEAR|It was going to be a kids show they said. It was going to be as whimsical as Pokemon they said...]]]]
* '''''[[Digimon: Digital Adventures|Digimon Tamers]]'''''. (Digimon as a franchise is noted to be surprisingly dark and adult for a kids anime in the 'Mon' genre, but Digimon Tamers is exceptionally depressing even by the series standard. Children attempting suicide, child abuse, attempted murder on a child, multiple on-screen deaths of major characters, torture, psychological mind rape on a young girl, PTSD on said young girl, eldritch abominations, horror and psychological horror. You think Tamers would have a happy ending? Lolnope, Tamers has a bittersweet ending in which the main kids lose their Digimon partners ''for ever''. This is what happens when you allow a guy notorious in psychological horror anime to do a kids show. There is a reason why Tamers is considered the Neon Genesis Evangelion for kids.)
** '''''Digimon Adventure Tri''''' (aimed towards adult fans of the series) takes Tamers up a notch in just plain creepyness. Deaths, assisted suicide, infanticide of Digimon babies, psychological damage, grief-induced madness, corruption, attempted genocide, racial supremacy, racism, immense property damage with collateral damage and attempted rape from the series' former mentor and teacher becoming a creepy sexual predator molesting one of the main characters and choking another one to near death (Both female by the way). Digimon doesn't fuck around.
* Most good 'Real Robot' anime/video games. Further discussion will result in [[skub]].
* '''''Full Metal Alchemist''''': The World is coated by a side of Noblebright at the beginning but morphs into 1984 the more you watch/read. The world Amestris starts out as fine and dandy (despite being a fascist military Dictatorship (the head of state is literaly called [[nazi|führer]])), then it morphs into a world where the Main Country (Amestris.) is at constant war with almost all it's neighbors commits Genocides Left and right and Murder's anyone who finds out the dark truth.
* '''''Shin Sekai Yori''''' also known as From the New World is a novel by Yusuke Nishi (and it has an anime adaptation, which is freaking awesome, everyone should watch it). Basically it's a dystopian story with people using magic to run their society instead of machines in a world that has deliberately regressed to the medieval level. Every child who doesn't manifest magical abilities by a certain age is killed, and all existing non-magical humans have been genetically engineered into a slave-race of mole-people so long ago they've forgotten their origins. The magical people are instead engineered to commit unwilling suicide should they use their powers to harm another human (mole people are fair game, though), and those of them who are too strong and can't manage to control themselves become Lovecraftian abominations.
* '''''Bloodborne''''' or the love child of Dark Souls (gameplay) and Lovecraftian mythology (its main inspiration for setting and theme). Another masterpiece from FROM software and Hidetaka Miyazaki. TLDR, the game is a mix of elritch horrors, omnipotent creatures which are fundementally gods and Dark Souls, though this time there is no fire to link, only FEAR.
* '''''Bet On Soldier/Iron Storm''''': WW1 got extended by 80 years, leading to a world where war is everything (including a televised past time), peace is considered a horrifically dissident ideal and there is a shadowy cabal behind the scenes plotting to make the war last forever.
* Noir in general, from Raymond Chandler's novels to games like This is the Police.
* '''''Magical Girl Site''''' (so grimdark it makes Meguca look Noblebright)
* '''''Wanted'''''. A comic book series which inspired the 2008 action flick. The villains won the war against the heroes and completely erased them from reality. The world of Wanted is one of the most horrific comic book series as it deconstructs the 'action macho man' of the superhero genre and insults the reader (As in break the fourth wall) if they ever felt like rooting for the 'protagonist'. How bad is Wanted? Crime is not only rampant but is actually part of the law, enforced by the Fraternity (Justice League for bad guys), and the only way to even have the closest thing to a 'safe and happy life' is by murdering your next door neighbor out of paranoia. Furthermore, as the world is cut up into sections and ruled by different supervillains, you will most likely be born in a country ruled by either a psychotic bastard who shoots children for shits and giggles, a Lex Luthor archetype who hungers for more unrestrained power, a literal Nazi from the future who wants another Holocaust, or a megalomaniac and sociopathic Chinese emperor who makes Mao Zedong like a chump or a completely immortal 'President-for-Life' Mugabe expy that will probably rule for eternity.
** Our 'protagonist' is a sociopathic, violent, sadistic rapist who assassinates people in ridiculous violent manners that makes the Punisher, Konrad Curze and Batman look like Constable Care in comparison. His first 'character development' was shooting his neighbor in the face because he was too damned nice... yeah... our 'heroes' are literally no different than the villains at all. If you could even call them 'heroes'. While characters in WH40K and Gears of War commit atrocities usually because they have a reason, idea or dogma behind their actions, the villains of Wanted commit them because [[Lulz|they felt like it.]] Don't even get us started with the supervillains who are so repulsive that they are barely redeemable. Wanted is one of those franchises that just makes you ''feel'' like a bastard for even trying to root for anyone. In terms of the moral scale, if DC is the classical Black and White franchise and Marvel is the classical Grey and Gray franchise, than Wanted is the classical Black and Black franchise. [[Chaos]] wishes it could be this efficiently evil.
* '''''Grim Dawn'''''. In a world called Cairn there is magic, monsters, and humans using 19th century tech. A group of mages failed some sort of ritual and accidentally called in a ghost called an Aetherial, setting off a chain of events that would lead to the "Grim Dawn". They invaded the world by possessing many creatures and humans for their own world domination plan, and the ensuing chaos allowed the Cthontic Cult (Mix Khorne and Slaaneshi pain cults) to come out of the shadows just as the Aetherials started getting shit done. This results in a never ending struggle between humans and multiple otherworldly powers. An optional meeting with a god from the universe tells the player that there are many gods watching this world and none of them, him included, gave a shit about their followers since this is just one of many realities they observe and the tragic event is nothing more than a normal day for him. So players have to fight through undead ([[Tomb Kings|who are cursed to forever linger in the world, only to get back up as soon as they are defeated]]), a land corrupted by the aether's green shit that is as harmful as the warp itself, and a crimson forest filled with Cthonic Cultists. The factions of the 'Good Guys' aren't much better either. There is either a necrophiliac ice ninja that will enslave the dead or a pretentious templar order whose god is just as bad as the others. The only hope lies in survivors from the aetherial encounters that gained unnatural powers which may potentially corrupt them in the process. Nothing will ever change though since the world now is filled with horrifying creatures and humanity is reduced to pockets of bandits squabbling over the pitiful remnants of their civilization. Invasions are still going strong despite your efforts at the very end of game and other gods are ready to back stab, corrupt, raid and torment every living creature in the world for their own selfish needs.
** The new expansion '''''Ashe of Malmouth''''' adds more grimdark and even a rare instance of sick fuckery in modern video game. The city Malmouth is said to be the first place hit with Aetherials forces so the entire place is nothing but a fucked up zombie town with buildings made out of human flesh. But before the player can get to that "fun party" however, they would need to cross the jungle, bog place of Ugdenbog, a wild swamp and evil infested shithole filled with cannibals and witches that got gangbang from both the Aetherials and Cthontic forced during the grim dawn. You are even allow to side with the local cannibals in Barrowholm (a much lesser evil mind comapre to the Cthontic and Atherial mind you). Once you got to Malmouth, the true sick fuckery begin. The local Aetherials had spare a few human survivors just so they could hunt them down and replenish for their needs of flesh. What's worst is that they have abducted local females (especially younger one) and use them as breeding cattle to produce more "test subject" and "soldiers". Doesn't that sounds like [[Daemonculaba]]? It also means that the enemies like Aetherial Scamp and Aetherial Imp, those little shit that are the size of a child you fought are actually.....yeah, I'm done with this shit.
* '''Peter Watts'''. Brutal neuropunk sci-fi horror, as bleak as H. P. Lovecraft but with a list of scientific citations at the end to let you know just how realistic it really is. Hits you with a world-ending catastrophe and then manages to make it a thousand times worse -- an alien invasion DURING a hard-takeoff singularity, for example. Sociopathy and post-human augments abound. [http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm Also, the books are free!]
* '''''Armored Warfare'''''. Terrorist/ultra-nationalist/anarchists with tanks, corporations that rule and enslave large portions of the world and the rest of the world might as well be a wasteland, as far as we know.
* Pandora from the '''''Borderlands''''' games. A whole planet covered in tonnes of rubbish, industrial equipment, pollution and debris from mining operations by huge intergalactic corporations. A classic example of unregulated capitalism where the few inhabitants (mostly from the abandoned mining operations) fight for survival against hideously mutated and highly dangerous wildlife and go completely mental in the process. What little rational civilisation there is is constantly under attack from all sides, including by the Hyperion corporation which wants to purge the planet of all life and start again from scratch. To do this the [[BBEG]] has built an army of robots and seeks to awaken an ancient, all-powerful, immortal, alien warrior ([[Derp|which, as it turns out, is very easy to kill]]). Pandora is essentially a [[Death World]]. [[Herp|And people still go and live in this shithole]] just to search for hidden caches of [[Pretend|ancient alien technology]]. TL;DR Australia on steroid with alienz lmao.
* '''''Call of Duty: Black Ops 3'''''
* '''''Homefront''''' (the game, not the similarly-named but unrelated movie)
* '''''Made in Abyss'''''. It is one of those [[Trap]] anime/manga that fools unsuspecting viewers into watching a cute, whimsical Studio Ghibli esque show filled full of wonder and adventure....what the series '''WON'T''' tell you is the amount of Grimdark it would throw at you at the most unsuspecting turn. You want to see cute moe loli children getting tortured, horribly disfigured, experimented on, brutally killed, discarded and abused? Made in Abyss got your back! You want to see a [[Deathworld]] so extreme it even kills you when you think of trying to escape? Made in Abyss is completely centered around that! You want to see a society run on child labor, in which death and injury is so common that a 12 year old knows how to amputate an arm and be unfazed by dead bodies? Made in Abyss is proud to include these! You want to see a [[Nazi|Josef Mengele Cosplayer]]/[[Awesome|Evil Daft Punk]]/[[Furry|Super Furry Loli Fetishist]]/[[Meme|Completely Best Dad EVAR!]] as the main villain? Made in Abyss is a proud sponsor of this! You want to have a deep and dark philosophy on how deep one's humanity can go before completely losing it and what counts as truly human before succumbing to the human excess of wants, needs and pride? Made in Abyss have plenty to showcase this! You want to see what would happen when Laputa's Flying Castle and Madoka Magica fucked Berserk? Made in Abyss is the end result of their sweaty lust! You want to hear absolutely beautiful music and see eye-poppingly gorgeous art which is contrasted against the raw, brutal and savage realities of the setting? Made in Abyss would win over you! You want to get emotionally attached to a bunch of [[Furry|moe furries]] and [[Fist of the North Star|cry manly tears]] without feeling too dirty? Don't worry, we in /tg/ can tolerate it... just about...
* '''''Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'''''. A manga/anime film made by Hayao Miyazaki, yes you heard us right. The man who was the main founder of Studio Ghibli and gave us childhood gems such as Tortoro, Spirited Away and Ponyo, gave us a Science-Fantasy Epic of the brutality of war. Sure there was Princess Mononoke, but that was basically a spiritual sequel to Nausicaa. The setting of Nausicaa is centered around a post-apocalyptic [[Deathworld]] in which humanity had nuked itself back into the early renaissance via kilometer tall, biomechanical, nuclear-firing [[Exterminatus|GOD-WARRIORS.]] Most children don't make it to adulthood and the remaining human civilizations are on the verge of collapse due to scarcity of resources and the ever growing encroachment of the Sea of Death/Corruption, a forest of highly toxic fungal jungles and incredibly violent mega-insects that goes [[RAGE|completely anal if you dare pluck a 'Shroom or two.]] To make matters worse, [[Adeptus Mechanicus|the state of technology has been declining over the years either due to loss of knowledge]] [[FATAL|or the sheer amount of dead children failing to reach the proper age to spread such knowledge.]] Nausicaa, especially the manga, does not shy away from human slavery, biological WMDS, genocides, nuclear holocaust, a gratuitous amount of inferred and overt infanticides, inquisitorial purging and the likes. By far the most mature and grittiest of Miyazaki's works. The one main thing that Nausicaa stands out from the rest is its titular character. Princess Nausicaa is an actual pacifist and a self-impose Jesus archetype. Yet despite such [[Noblebright]] characteristics, she is an absolute '''''BADASS'''''. Nausicaa may hate fighting and war, but she is not afraid to split some heads open and gut your belly empty. She is also a surrogate mother for a giant walking WMD and a surrogate big sister for a psychic boy with the [[PROMOTIONS|assets to boot;]] this gives her extra brownie points for being [[Awesome]]. Seriously, Merida and other Princesses has nothing on this chick.
**Because of the fact that Nausicaa for all intents and purposes, kickstarted the foundation of Studio Ghibli in the first place, its influence had a profound impact on Ghibli's future works. It basically was the progenitor of every Ghibli trope imaginable. You got the strong female heroine and her equally strong and capable male deuteragonist? check. A setting based upon fantastical elements and a blatant anti-war/pro-environmentalist message? check. Giant, awesome planes? check. Scenery populated by eye-candy artwork? check. A quirky, animal side character? check. The bad guys being revealed to be either not so evil/misunderstood/have morally grey beliefs? check. Furthermore, Nausicaa influenced other works such as the Chocobos from Final Fantasy being a complete copy of Nausicaa's Horseclaws, as well as the God-Warriors being the main inspiration of the motherfucking ''EVAs'' (Seriously, the main creator behind Evangelion first got the idea after animating the God-Warriors for Nausicaa. Seriously look it up, the resemblance is uncanny).
** Another studio Ghibli film called '''''Grave of the Fireflies''''' is far worse. The plot of film is "A pair of orphans starve to death in Japan at the end of WWII." That is the entire plot. This movie utter torture to watch and a great reminder of why war may be fun in games but is the worst thing imaginable in real life.
*'''''[http://www.synthiciderpg.com/ Synthicide]'''''. "When robots are gods, killing humans is fair game." In the deep darkness of the far, post-mutagen virus future, Human life is worthless (Murder and theft against them and each other is entirely legal), murder of sentient bots (Who are given free-range to torment humans with impunity after being let go from service to the major faction that makes them), however is one of the greatest offenses, and one the PC's are bound to commit at some point in their careers. Also, everything has a black and white color pallete.
* '''''Destiny/Destiny 2''''''s backstory. Basically, there was a very short-lived race of people called "The Krill" which lived only ten years on a planet called Fundament (fair note, Fundament is a gas giant, and Jupiter's orbit takes 10 years. So the Krill may have lived to a few hundred). There was a ruler called the Osmium King, and a traitor named Taox killed him. His daughters, Xi Ro, Aurash, and Sathonna took a ship to the planet's core where they met the Worm Gods, or Ahamkara. What happened is that the [[Khorne|Worm Gods grant immortality, but in order to become immortal you have to kill or the worm will eat you]], this was called The Sword Logic, and the Krill were re-named The Hive after killing that fucking traitor Taox. They proceeded to exterminate every living thing in the galaxy, [[Xeelee Sequence|harboring xenophobia and militarism which would make the Imperium look tolerant and pacifist in comparison]]
* The aftermath of '''''Avengers: Infinity War'''''. After the [[Rubric Marines|battledust]] settles, no one really wins at the end of the movie. Even the villain, who won, was badly injured and the victory was very costly.
* '''''Spec Ops: The Line''''', due to disguising itself as a run of the mill shooter, but disregard for orders and going in all guns blazing in quest of "becoming a hero" and "saving everyone", unlike most FPS, rather realistically leads from bad to worse, resulting in the player committing vile acts and outright war crimes. At the time of its release, its atmosphere and presentation made it a standout. Due to being heavily reliant on the player having no foreknowledge that it'll drown them face-first in the horrors of war, the game has undergone a sort of "Rosebud effect", and at worst can be considered grimderp. Granted, even then it's far less so than the examples below, and can be considered a period piece of sorts whose themes retain relevance.
* '''''The Suffering''''' and '''''The Suffering: Ties that Bind'''''. Two messed up stories about an unwell guy who may or may not have murdered his family tries to survive the worst prison in all of Maryland while it's being infested by nightmarish creatures symbolic of the countless atrocities committed on it (Being not only a prison, but also the former site of a WWII POW camp run by a paranoid lunatic, an old-timey mental institution run by an...eccentric who still haunts the place, and a puritan village that saw it's own recreation of the Salem Witch Hunts). The sequel sees the man in equally worse surroundings as Baltimore has it's own infestation of the monsters symbolic of the city's corruption and is now haunted not only by two deranged murderers, but also a figure from his past who supposedly know the truth about his family.
** In ''Ties That Bind'', it's implied that ''every'' city of decent size has the potential to be turned into a haunted hellscape. Because humans are shitty and have been doing shitty things to each other for all of recorded history, and hence ''every'' city has a number of bloodsoaked ghosts created by atrocities and desperate for vengeance.
* The first two seasons of '''''Animals of Farthing Wood''''', a animated series for kids ''infamous'' for having graphic depictions of violence and a death rate of major characters on par with Game of Thrones. Though somewhat at the low end of the Grimdark spectrum, the fact this show was for kids earns it major points for being grimdark. The third series noticeably toned down on the Grimdark elements and ended up being the least well regarded. Notable deaths in the series include but are not limited to:
** '''''The Pheasants''''', a couple of, well, pheasants who die at a farm in an extremely cruel manner. First, the wife is forced by her husband to take his watch and is spotted by the farmer, then shot. The husband, overcome with grief, elects to go back and find Adder, hoping to atone for causing his wife's death. Instead, he sees the cooked corpse of his wife and breaks down in tears, unable to pull himself together and is also shot dead by the farmer.
** Three baby mice are born in one episode. The very next episode they are all killed onscreen by a shrike, a bird infamous for impaling its prey, [https://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/2016/10/9nsgawb.png/ as seen here].
** The hedgehogs, while trying to cross a road, have to fight not to curl up into a ball... but eventually, the husband goes crazy, unable to stop himself from curling up, and his wife elects to stay with him, leading to both their deaths when a lorry runs them over.
* '''''Ava's Demon''''', a webcomic who's cutesy style doesn't hide how fucking dark this world can be. For starters, in the opening itself, a planet is destroyed by Silent Scavengers, which are Tyranids and Necrons mixed together, then the main character ends up impaled when they crash land, her soul going to turn into space dust until she agrees to help the demon who's been possessing her since she was born to get revenge on TITAN, who can at best be described as the God-Emperor if he were every negative stereotype about the Imperium taken to the extreme and then some. How bad is TITAN? It's implied he turned a star into a black hole solely because of its planets inhabitants wouldn't do what he wants. And trust us, things can only get worse in this setting.
* '''''Dragon Ball Z: History of Trunks'''''. Could just be expanded to Trunks' timeline in general. Dragon Ball has always been known as a sort of noble bright anime, but ''this'', damn. Everyone is either dead, dying, or living in fear of two walking machines of pure evil. And then when Trunks does actually take care of his enemies, another more powerful one shows up and just sends everything back to the way it was. Even the parody of this movie is oddly depressing.
* '''''Power Rangers RPM''''' plays with this trope, being what is effectively ''Terminator'' meets ''Mad Max'' "for kids." It is still Power Rangers, and does still have its fair share of comic relief, but this is also the season where a young girl is brainwashed into becoming a child soldier for Skynet and HAL 9000's demented love child, while also having her humanity stripped away and replaced with cold metal. That's not even starting to mention the fact that most of the planet is wiped out, with billions dying over the course of what seems like a few weeks.
* '''''Postal'''''. Not the sequels, which play the violence for laughs and topical humor, or the crap Uwe Boll movie, just the first game and it's remake (''Postal Redux''). Once you get past all the shock and outrage of being a forefather of the [[Satanic Panic|"Ban Violent Video Games"]] movement, you'll realize that this game is genuinely fucked up with its imagery and the protagonist is a mentally unwell individual.
* '''''Resistance : Fall of Man.'''''
* '''''Romero's "Dead" series''''', especially the later entries. ''Night'' is grim for the heroes, even if the overall story ends somewhat happily with the zombies taken care of. On the other hand, ''Dawn'' and ''Day'' are much darker, with zombies overrunning society, and though both end on positive notes, the journey there is a grim fight for survival. Most of the heroes die in ''Dawn'' (all of them if you count the depressing alternate cut), and in ''Day'' most of the characters, even the heroes, are hateful, unhinged, and/or just plain crazy.
* ''''' Requiem for a Dream'''''. If you have seen this movie, this is self-explanatory.
* '''''Blakes 7'''''. The BBC broadcast this against coronation street. And it was written by Terry Nation. It opens with a show trial after the hero gets set up to join a terrorist cell post mind wipe, gets accuses of paedophilia, and then exiled to the world of warhammer where Brian Blessed is king of the cult of scientology. Then you get 4 seasons of basically terrorists fighting the evil space empire, with the worlds most sarcastic computer, special effects that make your mates larp when they were 14 years old look high budget (ffs the federation are armed with caulking guns and some pipe). It's fucking GLORIOUS.
* '''''The Promised Neverland'''''. An anime/manga about a bunch of cute children raised in a nice orphanage, that is really a farm set up by demons who raise the children as food. Hence the "Neverland" part of the title, the children don't grow up, because they are killed by monsters. A handful girls get to survive until adulthood by getting selected to act as mothers to children, but they are still prisoners who can't leave the farm. If they are unlucky they will have to watch over their own children until the day they are killed.
** The world outside the farms is even worse. A thousand years ago the world was divided between humans and demons. The children are in the demons' half. Demons used to hunt humans until the two sides made a truce where the world was divided in two halves to keep peace and humans were handed over to the demons to farm as food and the wealthy family of humans who made the deal are out to kill the escaped children to uphold it. Demons actually need to eat humans or they degenerate into mindless animals that attack everything in sight, except of the demon nobility thanks to them consuming blood that removed the need. And they still insist on hoarding the best quality human meat for themselves while leaving the commoners to feed on meat from humans raised on factory farms where the humans are force fed until they die. This inferior quality meat isn't enough to keep demons from degrading and so the demons' human allies are doing horrifying expirements to produce better quality meat. Something could have been avoided if the demon nobility didn't make sure that only they were free from dependence on human meat as means of maintaining their control with their supply of meat, because as you can probably tell, they don't care about the commoners.
* '''''Dorohedoro'''''. Described by its own author as "a song with really dark lyrics, but a melody that's so happy that you want to dance to it". So happy grimdark? The title can literally be translated as "from shit to shit". Seriously, the setting wouldn't look out of place among a 40k [[hive world|underhive]]. The entire setting is a massive slum, with horrible pollution, mass poverty, and human body parts polluting the waterways. Your options for living are being a normal human, living in poverty and treated like toys, lab rats, and livestock by the various magic users. Or being a [[psyker|magic user]], and either be lynched by the terrified normies or captured by other magic users and boiled down to make drugs. And if you're a magic user, regardless of how good you are when you die you're [[Warp|guaranteed to be sent to hell to be tortured by devils for all eternity]] ([[Daemon Prince|unless you become a devil yourself]]). Or being a devil, and worry about being [[Tzeentch|screwed over by your boss for shits and giggles]] or eaten by Store, who is implied to be an angel and treats devils the same way devils treat mortals. Or being said boss, [[Necron|and dick around with people for all eternity because you're absolutely bored with existence]], can't die, and are horribly lonely since you can't form a meaningful bond with anyone else. Of course "your options" being metaphorical in this sense, since you are either born a normal human or magic user and can't change who you are (which is a major plot point for several characters). Three of the most moral people in the entire setting are a mob boss and two different flavors of serial killer. Even when the normal people manage to fight back by [[God-Emperor|creating a god through the merger of thousands of souls of those killed by magic users]], it immediately tries to kill ''everyone'' just to end its suffering. The only time the weather changes in the series is when it rains, which causes magic users to fall sick because it's the manifestation of the will of said god and if you're a magic user it ''hates'' you. Well, at least the food is good.
* '''''Lobotomy Corp/Library of Ruina'''''. Two games made by a Korean game studio named Project Moon, and well known for its dark setting. [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2098034966 I have decided to leave most of the detailed explanations to this guide here to avoid further paragraph bloat.] To put it simply, the first game: '''Lobotomy Corp''', is about a corporation trying to harvest energy from monsters that are extracted from humanities collective subconsciosness: Abnormalities. Each Abnormalities has special powers to mess with people's mind or just straight up kill people in a very gruesome way and the corps' employees has to suppress them. [[SCP Foundation|Does that sounds familiar?]]/Read Wonderlab, and it gets even worse. SPOILER ALERT: It turns out the energy is not only used to power every other corporation's devices, it is also used to power up some kind of positive energy beacon that spread its power aka Light to everyone in the city just so they could feel hope and be "saved". The plAn failed several times due to the failure of containing and suppressing Abnormalities. The reason why the plAn can be carried out despite its constant setbacks is all thanks to a certain time control technology that could rewind the time back before the incidents happened. Which means, the guy that has to manage this shithole has to go through this tiresome process of witnessing his employees' death again and again until he finally reaches a satisfactory conclusion. The employees that die are revived from every time rewind without ever remembering their death, but not the manager, nor the Sephiroth, whom are [[Dreadnought|brain jar robots]] that oversee their own departments in the Corp. As you play through, the difficulty spikes as the suffering from constant rewind has made the Sephiroth lose their minds which leads them from time to time to throw fits, forcing the manager to calm/supress their ass down. There was this robotic AI waifu assistant Angela that was created to help managing the place. For some reason, she was given the ability to feel emotions just so she could experience the same cruel passage of time and the scenery of Abnormalities killing the employees, driving her nuts. It was made all the more painful for her since she can perceive time in even slower rate, making her existence all the more painful. As the game progresses and the difficulty spikes even futher answers can now be given as to why is it the founders of the Corp decide to go through all this tragedy and torture to save the unknowing masses blind to their suffering and why exactly do the the city people need to be saved?
** Now things starts to get interesting in the second game: '''Library of Ruina'''. Turns out everyone living in the city has become "ill", as in mentally depressed/suffering from disease of the mind due the constant needs to meet certain demands for their jobs everyday, up to the point they could not have any free will to do anything they like.
*** More lore is dumped in the second game as it explains that world they lived in is controlled by Corporations: '''Wings''', who holds the most power and are forcing everyone to pay expensive taxes or else get fucked by their schemes. Their unfair demands create an enormous circle of poverty, forming countless '''Backstreets''' where death and crimes became the norm. In order to pay their unfair expensive tax, people resort to other ways of earning steady incomes. Some become a '''Fixer''', mercenary policemen who would fight for anyone for the right price (Note: there is no functional police department in the setting). Some become part of the '''Syndicates''', the Fixers' criminal counterpart who earn their keep by doing crime instead. Note that neither Fixers or Syndicates members have any choice but to keep climbing their ranks. Sure the higher their rank, the better their living conditions become, but it is a never ending grind that will eventually result in their deaths or depression to the point of suicide due to the amount of killing they've done.
*** Moving on to the upper class. Rich people live in '''The Nest''' and are well educated. But just like the Fixers and the Syndicates, they are not free from paying taxes and are also forced to climb their own social ladder in order to survive. Not to be mentioned the dangers of Backstreets still exist in some isolated areas of The Nest. Worse still is that the corporations they've worked for can and will use them as test subject to test their super precious technology: '''Singularity''' and see how much they get fucked up. They are basically office wage slaves with higher mortality rate.
*** Speaking of Singularity, it is a form of futuristic, magic-like technology (nanomachines, teleportation, laser, etc... you could only see from a typical scifi-movie) own by The Wings. Each Wing has their own Singularity and despite their usefulness however, they are still complicated technology, which can led to horrible accidents if it were mishandled, yet they were treated by The Wings like money tree. Sometimes a Wing could fell and left its Singularity sold on the market, to be purchase by other Wings. The catch being any instructions or informations regarding this Singularity had fell along with its Wing, meaning the buyer has no idea how it works other than knowing what it is truely capable of on surface or through some easy testing. Despite not knowing how to really using it however, the buyer [[capitalism|insisted on profiting it by making merchandises from it or marketing it as some kind of super transportation]]. For example: W-Corp's train are capable of transporting passengers to their destination in 10 seconds. What really happens is that the train entered into some kind of warped dimension and stucks inside for 2000+ fuckoff years. During that time, some of the passenger's body functions just stopped functioning, as they become unable to feel pain or hunger as the "time" for their body just stopped. What really happened was that T-Corp collaborate with W-Corp by using their time singurarity put the passenger's biological timer in stasis, ensured their survival in this seemly endless journey (T-Corp gets to profit from this remember). After 100 days, the passengers began tear each other apart out of boredom and insanity, to the point they eventually tearing themselves into bits that merges with one another. Case in point we don't talk about [[Chaos Spawn|Love Town]]. The crazy part is that the dimention portal Singularity is the purchased one, and thus W-corp has no idea how to fucking use it, yet used it on civilians anyway, but it is only because they can cancel out their own ignorance by using their own Singurarity, that is Material Restoring. By the time the train arrives, the W-Corp's agents came and restoring passengers using their Singurarity. Just like at L-Corp, using their biometrics, they restore the passengers body state to the time when they only experienced 10 seconds on the train, as if [[Just as Planned|nothing ever happened]]. Rich investors and other corporation's board chairman do knew about this, yet refused to speak out, not that they care since W-corp introduce them to the expensive option of first-class passenger seat (aka cryo stasis tube) for them if they are so afraid of even experience a train ride to hell, even though they won't remembered a damn thing when the train ride ends. The plebs can fall apart in the train and patch back up for all they care! So yeah, so much for dangerous technology. They are but a mere capitalism scheme, where corporations band together to juggle around the lives of innocents for a few cashes.
*** By letting a bunch of morally corrupted gold diggers handling such a dangerous technology, who is there to control them? meet '''The Head''', aka the shit heads that put everyone in their misery. They are the ones with absolute power in the setting. Not even the Wings wishes to fuck with them, for they have the best combat force out of them all, and being the [[Great Horned Rat|giant rat that made all the rules]]. It is hinted that they intended for the humans to suffer under the stresses of survival and death, as if they were treating the humans in the city like test subjects inside a vivarium they had created. In the games' ending, it was revealed they have [[Imperial Truth|strong obsessions with philosophies that defines humanity]] and [[Men of Iron|dislike for machines that look and act like humans]]. Although not much about them has been revealed yet, those little details is enough to label them as some kind of [[nazi|facist organization with an extremist ideology]]. They were known for shaping the world that is today with their armies of '''Arbiters''', aka [[Officio Assassinorum|Singularity-infused assassins]](which may or may not be comprised of hags). They are so powerful, one of them could take on everyone in the Wing and evict the Wing. Other than Arbiters, they have their own super fixers called '''The Claws''', who are comparable to a high grade Fixers with benefits of being mass produced. They also have the '''The Eyes''', aka '''The Beholders''' agents (or some kind of spirit/demon/telescreen hologram as it was revealed) that [[1984|report The Head for any potential tax evaders as well as any potential threats by surveillance the masses]]. No one fucks with The Head. NO ONE.
** And all these examples are just the tip of the iceberg to show how Grimdark life is in this setting. It gets potentially worse as '''Distortions''', which are related from the first game's Abnormalities, are monsters from the minds of an individual rather than humanity as a whole and due to the failed results of the plAn from the first game are now roaming the city to further spike up the mortality rate, making everybody's live even more miserable. Despite that, the Fixers still demand payment to kill them (which a new association was created to deal with them according to the ending/read Distortion Detective) and The Head refuses to even lend a hand in dealing with them (because distortions are considered a product of humanity, which is much more tolerable when compared to robots who act like humans). Oh and it is impossible to not live in the city, for the outside lies the '''Outskirts''', where monsters, robotic death machines and other abominations created from fail experiments reside. It is a wasteland composed of pretty much everywhere but the city, caused by the constant resource wars from the past and it is literary impossible for humans to lived in there. Even if it could, it would be filled with hostile exiles, outlaws or whatever godforsaken engineered intelligent species.
*** Interestingly, the setting's corporation culture could be a nod to the modern day capitalism in South Korea (It is a Korean game after all), and it in general shows how shitty life is under capitalism with the taxes and all that. Just slightly better to its Northern Communism brother I suppose.
** Further more the third upcoming game '''Limbus Corp''' has promises of further progressing the storyline and give more world building.
* '''''Warframe's lore.''''' What's so dark about Warframe? You're a space ninja which just chops stuff up and shoots right? Oh you're DEAD wrong. The main characters, the Tenno, are children survivors of an accident when a ship tried to use a metaphysical realm called [[warp|The Void]] to perform a faster-than-light jump to Tau Ceti (which was previously terraformed for their arrival). And what do we know about using metaphysical realms to travel faster-than-light? It goes [[Gellar Field|fuckingly bad]], invest in a warp drive.
**The Tenno were discovered by the Orokin, [[that guy|pansy hedonistic little faggots]] which sent them there, and were treated like absolute shit. To get an idea of just how awful the Orokin were, imagine the repressiveness, feudal structures, and lack of regard for human life found in the Inperium of Man… with a tech level comparable to the Dark Age of Technology. The only person who treated the Tenno with absolute respect was a scientist called [[this guy|Margulis]]. When the robots sent to terraform Tau Ceti, the Sentients, evolved intelligence and came back to anally rape the Orokin, their built-in weakness was void stuff, which the Tenno were full of. After a victory over the Sentients, the Tenno [[rape|bitchslapped the Orokin and bludgeoned them like the fucks they are]].
***The Orokin are just a bunch of [[Marines Malevolent|shitbags in general]]. They treated Tenno, Lorist healers, and Grineer like absolute shit until they need their help. They execute scientists when they fail to produce results, because a GREAT way of increasing productivity is executing a scientist who is doing the work. And the way they maintain their immortality is by capturing children, and mind-raping them to download their own consciousness into theirs. The reason that they couldn't control the Warframes and needed the Tenno to do so is because they [[that guy|lack basic human empathy]], they just abuse and torture everyone under them.
**The Grineer were slaves to the Orokin which are now free, and are now absolutely terrorizing the system. They're a bunch of rotten clones which are highly augmented, and they kill everyone who isn't them, which aren't any better. Oh, and dialogue implies that they process their dead into corpsestarch.
***The Corpus are the second faction, being greedy money-grubbers who care only for profit, and imprison a colony of debt-bondage slaves called "Fortuna", just to rub it in, and so on. Oh, and said Solaris are people whos HEADS have been stuffed into their torsos so they can easily reposes their limbs and organs for dept that is passed through the generations. Oh, and ya not able to pay with your limbs alone? They will scoop your brain out of your skull and shelve it for a set ammount of time... or the rest of your natural lifespan. As you are awake and lost in your thoughts.
****And, of course, this is done to kids, severing their necks and replacing them with a connector to more esily stuff their heads into their scooped out torsos once they are old enough to lug around a wrench. Pretty much all Post-Orokin civilizations are pieces of shit.
***And if evil bureaucrats, and shitty clones who want to kill everything that isn't them bad enough, we have the Infected, which are a [[Tyranids|hive mind of twisted forms that kill everything they can stick their bloody tendrils into]], bottom line is, Warframe is a shitty place.
* '''''[[Unhallowed Metropolis]]''''', a game representing probably the outer limits of how Grimdark you can go without sliding into Grimderp.
* ''''Fragged Cyberpunk''''': A prequel to the more optimistic Fragged Empire. Fragged Cyberpunk focuses on the twilight years of humanity as Habsburgian levels of genetic erosion and degradation leave it only a few centuries of life, while the powers that be, that could cure it do not bother and instead focus their efforts on terraforming hospitable worlds for their new, engineered super species. All the while herding humans into cramped cities on dead planets that are effectively concentration/death camps for what remains of mankind.
* '''''Clive Barker''''' in general. His works include Hellraiser, Rawhead Rex where an ancient god of male sex eats kids, the Midnight Meat Train where an ancient cult feeds people to an underground society of monsters so New York isn't destroyed, and... let's just say there's a reason he's basically a BDSM enthusiast given way too much handle.
* '''''[[EYE: Divine Cybermancy]]''''' (Basically, Wh40k with French people)
* '''''Half-Life''''', a video game series which helped revolutionize FPS games, has a surprisingly dark story and lore. In the first game, you play as Gordon Freeman and defeat an invading alien race after an accident you helped indirectly cause. Then comes the second game, where it turns out the alien boss you killed in the last game was keeping the Combine at bay, a race of inter-dimensional conquerors who bulldoze Earth in a matter of hours and occupy it, running the planet’s resources dry and slowly driving mankind to extinction while irreparable damage is done to the ecosystem, with a steadily losing resistance and Gordon’s old boss overseeing everything the Combine does. You come back and help turn the tide in the fight... but throughout all this, guiding your every action, is the G-Man, an enigmatic figure with Tzeentch levels of planning and manipulation. Ultimately, every action you take is for his benefit. You cannot make any real choice because he will make it for you. In other words, no matter what Gordon or anyone else does, the G-Man will always be right there, waiting in the wings, to slightly... adjust it to his benefit. And there’s almost nothing that can be done to stop him.

== Grimderp ==
{{topquote| Why don't people band together to fix things? Because GRIMDARK. Why hasn't an external system supplanted the current, barely functioning one? Because GRIMDARK. How does such a woefully inefficient system manage the logistical nightmare of endless total war? Because I murdered a baby seal, that's why! You should feel bad.|Terrible Writing Advice (The GRIMDARK Episode)}}

Grimderp is what happens when a writer takes grimdark so far that it goes [[derp]]. The writer puts something in that makes the setting more grimdark, but it's generally reliant on at least one party involved [[Fail|suddenly abandoning all sense of reason and logic]], or else caused by a lack of forethought on the implications of how the element interacts with the world. Many long-runner grimdark works will become this sooner or later, as either the setting or the cast's morality (rather a usually extreme lack thereof) will induce complete and utter apathy in the audience and cause them to give up out of sheer pointlessness. Most "dark" anime/manga tend to be more or less grimderp, as attempts to attract mature audiences ends in violence, blood, and sex without consequence (at BEST, mind you. [[Rape|At worst...]]), all in gratuitous quantities.

To be clear, grimderp is not just that something is "dark" or that a character behaves stupidly. Human beings make dumb, short-sighted, irrational, and morally objectionable decisions all the time, just crack open about any book on human history. Grimderp is when a character breaks character to do something they would normally never do or engage in behavior that is logistically impossible [[Gav Thorpe|("there are as many elves as the plot demands")]], simply "because it's dark". To put it in another way, it is basically the author(s) writing dark things for the sake of [[Edgy|edginess]]. The end product often comes out as painfully juvenile and sounding like something out of a 13-year-old fanfic that thinks adding barbwire coated in feces to everything makes something 'deep'.

That is not to say it is impossible to make an absurdly dark fiction without straying off course into grimderp territory. The post-apocalyptic short story, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison avoids the grimderp label due to the historical context the story was written in as well as the philosophical debate on the idea of cruelty as presented through AM. Is AM a spiteful, cruel monster or a product of man's penchant for violence and warfare trapped in its own database prison? Another example that avoids this title would be Stephen Baxter's [[Xeelee Sequence]], whose entire ethos is a critique and ruthless deconstruction on the entire [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] and [[Cthulhu|Cosmic Horror]] tropes whilst still crafting an unbelievably depressing multiverse. So yes, it is possible to write pure concentrated grimdark, but it should be done with a level of delicacy and self-awareness for it to be seen as legible.

* The Last of Us: Part 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed The Last of Us, is Grimderp in its purest form: Characters prolong suffering simply out of the blue. Basic logic is thrown out as countless characters dive headfirst into a rabbit hole of violence, suffering, and depression, often to the point of [[Edgy|literal edginess]].
* The Dothraki of "[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]". We are asked to believe that an entire culture can sustain itself by raiding settled people (when the Mongols and Plains Indians they're based on hunted and herded large animals), and then ''killing and not even selling or eating the livestock'', eating horses whenever possible despite borderline worshipping them and relying on them as beasts of burden or war steeds, solve literally all their disputes with murder and defeat their enemies with mass charges (despite real nomads having small populations, and winning battles with cavalry skill and/or surprise). At the point where the story says that "a wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull occasion" and mentions warriors casually raping dancers (the first fight to the death started over two warriors wanting the same dancer), the whole thing just looks like an [[edgy]] [[Magical Realm]] based on "hordes of eastern savages" clichés.
* [[My Little Pony|Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons]] is a fanfiction about magical ponies so grim, dark, and derp that it would almost be comical if it wasn't so fucking horrifying. With characters that get shit on (both figuratively and literally) more than the [[Lamenters]], and with a world so bleak (and missing the point of Fallout, FiM, ''and'' the original Fallout: Equestria) that an heroing <s>seems like</s> WOULD ACTUALLY BE the happiest ending (<s>Assuming it will end, it probably never will as long as there's enough cybernetics to keep rebuilding the constantly-dying protagonist)</s> HOLY SHIT IT ACTUALLY ENDED!), it's the prime example of how to make readers stop giving a fuck about the story at all.
* On that note, 90% of all grimdark fics are grimderp since writers are under the impression that [[Edgy|just making things dark makes it good writing]]. There are exceptions, but they are rare, because Sturgeon's Law is a thing. On the flip side, however, [[DOOM: Repercussions of Evil|certain examples]] have reached the apotheosis of Grimderp and become gut-bustingly hilarious.
* Warhammer 40,000 gets called out as this by some. Certainly it's a valid criticism of certain parts, but as we said earlier, [[Skub|you could argue about what is and is not grimderp in 40k for weeks without conclusion.]] For example, the Imperium is excessively self-destructive and tyrannical to its own people, but in the hands of a good writer, it's meant to underline how corrupt and desperate the Imperium has become without the Emperor's guidance, and how even those who are neither incompetent nor malicious still have to make brutally difficult choices. In the hands of a lesser writer, it's unnecessary evil purely for the sake of evil. We should call our next book "[[C.S. Goto|Darkness of Darkest Dark!]]"
** Historically, the Grail myths drift, not from [[Ecclesiarchy|Christian sources]], but Celtic ones (and beyond the Celts, older civilizations), and a typical feature of these myths happens to be the healing of a King through forces of restauration and regeneration (i.e. to put one in touch with his sources, with his roots), and the King was typically seen in agrarian societies as the King of a land, avatara of a Sky-Father, and [[Alarielle|the Queen as the Earth Goddess]]. The [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Psychic 101|Geokinesis psychic discipline]] has a power called '''Earth Blood''' who would do just that; if only [[Adeptus Custodes|someone]] let Librarians enter the Imperial Palace to do some Perceval style healing.
**[[Khornate Knights]]
**The [[Grey Knights]] (who seem to get this a lot, really) equipment and how it is made. Specifically, every bolt shell that the Grey Knights use is consecrated by the blood sacrifice of a righteous man or woman in a borderline Khornate ritual (and it has to be a ''good'' person, not just anyone. How the Imperium determines if someone is sufficiently "good" or not remains an open question). Those Aegis armors? Made from thousands of psykers (including ''children'') burned in a furnace to channel their power to the armor. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people have to die to make ''one'' Grey Knight combat-effective. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] as to whether it is grimderp or not, as it raises the question of where the Grey Knights find enough good people to consecrate all of the bolter rounds they go through every battle (especially in the 41st millenium, of all places).
**[[Gellar Field]]s being powered by the dreams of a comatose psyker being used as a battery (which also burns out and has to be replaced regularly). While very dark, it crosses the line into grimderp when one realizes 1) that Gellar Fields were said to be invented long before psykers began appearing among humanity, and 2) psykers are apparently rare enough in the Imperium that the Imperium has [[Black_Ships|an entire institution]] dedicated to rounding up psykers and bringing them back to Terra to make use of them, like making [[Astropath]]s or feeding the [[Astronomican]] and the [[Golden Throne]]. And according to recent editions the Black Ships are just barely meeting the quota to keep the [[Golden Throne]] going, so it's not like there are a lot of spare psykers around to be made into Gellar Field batteries.
**Originally, the [[Black Templars]] were treated as refusing to suffer the witch no matter who they were, to the point of refusing to ally with any Imperial instutition that made use of them. This got retconned to only hate ''enemy'' psykers in 6th edition after it was pointed out it would be really hard for the Black Templars to do anything if they refused to tolerate Astropaths or Navigators, and thus have no Warp travel or faster-than-light communication.
**[[Imperial_Worlds#Agri-World|Agri-Worlds]]. Seemingly in response to the common fandom sentiment that [[The_Imperium_of_Man#However.2C_is_the_Imperium_really_that_bad.3F|most worlds in the Imperium are actually quite decent places to live]], just so long as you don't get invaded by [[Orks]], [[Chris Wraight]] in ''Lords of Silence'' outlines a typical Agri-World, describing a horrific hellscape wracked by permanent Dust Bowl conditions and so much pesticides that the sky turns orange and it is not safe to walk around outside without a biohazard suit, and goes on to say that all Agri-Worlds are like this. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] within the community. Some say that this practice is perfectly acceptable grimdark, and that unsustainable farming practices aren't exactly unusual in human history (look at slash-and-burn farming practices in Brazil, or aquifer use in the United States). However, what people find issue with is the claim that ''all'' agri-worlds are invariably like this, when [[Your Dudes|the fact that conditions on various planets in the Imperium vary massively from world to world as needed for the plot and there is almost no standardization]] has always been considered one of the big selling points of the setting (not to mention contradicting descriptions of Agri-Worlds in [[Ciaphas Cain]] and the [[Last Chancers]]). The other aspect that people tend to find unbelievable is that the Imperium is claimed to not even use crop rotation in their Agri-Worlds, simply farming the same crop over and over again until the soil gives out and the planet becomes a [[Death World]]. The Imperium may have lost a lot of its ancient knowledge, but crop rotation as a practice goes back to the freaking ''Stone Age''. [[Derp|Its absurd to see knowledge that basic being lost in the horrors of Old Night]], or not been rediscovered in the time after. This also means the Imperium would literally have run out of planets thousands of years ago if this was true.
** The nature of how Imperial ships work has caused a great deal of [[skub]]. Namely the fact that the weapons of Imperial ships are loaded by hundreds of chem-bulked, rabid slaves dragging them into place while being whipped, the exertion being so great that many die frothing at the mouth by the effort or have their hands crushed by chains. They do this completely by hand, hauling the munitions across the ship with chains. This despite the fact that hydraulic power systems have existed since the 18th century. They don't even use inclined planes or levers, something which humanity has been using to haul large objects where they want them to go since the days of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and Easter Island. Or they could literally just use a [[Chimera Transport|Chimera]] or a team of grox to do the job, you know, the reason why humanity built large vehicles and domesticated large animals? Meanwhile the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] is using autoloaders, and is deliberately go keeping the technology from the rest of the Imperium so they will have an advantage in case another civil war ever breaks out (one changing this whole piece of lore to Imperial ships having inefficient, barely functional autoloaders due to Mechanicus hoarding or corner cutting so captains use press ganged maintenance teams who keep them running with blood, sweat, tears and lives for an uncaring Imperium would honestly be more grimdark). Some say this is perfectly acceptable grimdark, others say that this is just too ridiculously inefficient to take seriously, even for the Imperium.
**The Marneus Calgar comic has caused a shitstorm with the recent revelations that the average life expectancy of the BEST place in the Imperium is in the mid-thirties, which is fucking [[FAIL|'''STUPID''']]. Because that means that the life expectancy of other non-Ultramar worlds are drastically shorter, which makes the machinations on how the Imperium is run, fucking unsustainable. If child mortality rates are ''that high'', then entire worlds would have quite literally run out of humans especially in warzones, while entire sectors' worth of economies would collapse or stagnate as more kids die before they grow up and be a productive member of society. This creates a drain in resources and long-term stability; it was already considered unsustainable during MEDIEVAL times, so you could just extrapolate this to a million worlds and the Imperium should collapse under its own inertia and weight by this point. I don't care how 'disposable' human life is, it is still a resource and the [[Emprah]] fucking hates wasting resources. We get that the comic writer is trying to shoehorn even more feudalist themes in the comics, but the problem is, this is not Krieg we're talking about, but fucking ''Ultramar''. So either the author does not know what sense of scale is, or that he does not understand the works of [[Roboute Guilliman|Guilliman]] because Grandpa Smurf [[Rage|'''WOULD. NOT.''' let this shit fly under the radar.]] The author has confirmed, however, that it was added to make Ultramar feel more grimdark. To give you some context, Somalia in the mid 1960s has a higher life expectancy than this. This is not grimdark, this is just fucking stupid that breaks the suspension of disbelief. It is one of the few things that both 4Chan and Reddit concurrently agree upon as fluff breaking.
**To be honest, the whole idea of humans being the "teeming multitudes" faction [[Imperial Guard|winning battles by sheer weight of numbers]] and which [[Skaven|breed quickly and are easily replaced]] is kind of silly if you know anything about human reproduction. Among species on Earth, humans are notable for being one of the ''slowest'' reproducing species out there. It takes nine months for a human to gestate to maturity in the womb, more than any other animal aside from elephants and whales, and even after birth humans take longer to reach maturity even compared to our close relatives the Neanderthals and ''Homo erectus''. Additionally, it takes a huge amount of parental care to care for a child and raise them to functional adulthood, more than any other animal. On top of this, pregnancy is incredibly crippling for human females, and women have a one in three chance of dying in childbirth if giving birth without any external aid or midwives (as would be the case for a citizen of the underhives), something almost no other species has to deal with. The way our species generally works is we breed incredibly slowly but live an incredibly long time and invest a lot of resources to make sure those few that are born survive to adulthood, which basically makes us the [[elves]] of the animal kingdom. Barring some major technological breakthrough like artificial wombs or genetic engineering to reduce the crippling side effects of human pregnancy or long adolescence, humans are unlikely to be able to outbreed anything. And while some factions in the Imperium do have access to artificial wombs (like the [[Mechanicus]], most of humanity in 40k are shown to still reproducing the old fashioned way. Even if humanity starts out with a huge population it can throw at any problem, that population is going to be depleted pretty fast because humanity [[Eldar|can't replace their losses]]. Even if are the greatest resource the Imperium has, they're still trying to fight a war of attrition against foes including [[Daemons|ones who can't even be properly killed]] and two races who can easily outbreed humanity; [[Orks|one reproduces by fighting]] and [[Tyranids|the other are a rapidly reproducing horde of space locusts who go from conception to combat-ready within a Terran week]]. However, fans tend to ignore this because of the whole “to be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions” thing that is part of the general lack of regard for human life that makes 40k 40k, so people give it a pass.
** Some 40k sources claim that millions if not billions of guardsmen are killed EVERY SECOND. Even with the scale of the imperium taken into the account, having many times the current population of the Earth die every minute would be ridiculous for the whole of Imperium, let alone just the Imperial Guard.
**[[Deathwatch|Watch Captain Artemis]] saying [[Heresy|better to let the galaxy burn and allow the Imperium to fall to Chaos than allow the xenos to live]], right before [[Battle_of_Coheria|fucking up an eldar ritual that would have awakened Ynnead early and fucked over Slaanesh]], indirectly [[Gathering Storm|causing all of the ruckus of 8th Edition]]. Granted, while this does come from the [[Deathwatch]], who tend to be rabidly anti-xenos even by the Imperium's standards, this is for ''Chaos'', the Archenemy, the [[Big Bad Evil Guy]] of the Warhammer 40k setting, the one faction that even the notoriously xenophobic Imperium will begrudgingly admit is a bigger threat than the xenos and will team up with them to fight against it. A loyalist saying they ''prefer Chaos'' over anything, even as the lesser of two evils, should be grounds for an insta-[[BLAM]]ing and a red flag for Chaos corruption. And no, Watch Captain Artemis was not [[BLAM]]-ed for this, nor is this treated as the beginnings of his corruption and a slow fall to [[Chaos]]. And so a loyalist Space Marine managed to [[Fail|single-handedly save Slaanesh]]. Seriously, Chaos champions have been elevated to [[Daemon Prince|Daemon Princehood]] for less.
** The whole thing reached the lowest point by 3rd edition, considered the Darker and Edgier version of 40k, this is when some of the silliest things mentioned in this wiki were added or accentuated, after that 40k required more than 5 EDITIONS of fluff update, novels, characters and additional background to finally come back from "we no longer care" to an actual war with stakes and actual chances for all sides involved.
* [[Star Wars]]: Although Star Wars is 40k's high fantasy twin. There has been a few grimderp things that came out recently in Canon that has given 40k a run for its money. According to Canon, specifically the novel Ashoka, the Galactic Empire forces farming worlds by gunpoint to harvest a particular breed of crop to be used as rations for their troops. The problem? These crops were specifically designed to [[Wat|soak up every bit of nutrients on the planet until it becomes sterile.]] Meaning that the particular farming world is only capable of harvesting the crops a few times [[FAIL|''AT BEST'']] before it becomes a sterile death world. Let's put this in context here, the Galactic Empire is currently fighting a galaxy-wide insurgency and being a galaxy-wide government, the GE NEEDS a sustainable way to produce food in order to keep its giant military well-fed for long-term campaigns. So forcing farming worlds to produce crops that intentionally leave their worlds sterile after a few farming cycles is just fucking [[EPIC FAIL|'''STUPID'''.]] Because realistically, the GE would have quite literally, ran out of food in a decade, collapsing due to galaxy-wide famine. [[FAIL|This shit is so fucking stupid and retarded that it makes the abovementioned IoM agri-world farming practises look eco-friendly in comparison.]] Even if they did something somewhat reasonable like restricting this practice to worlds that sided with the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone Wars as a punishment, it's just spiteful beyond all reason.
** Seriously, this is a level of grimderp surpassing the [[Skub|Yuuzhan Vong]]; sure, they were be a race of machine-hating, masochistic religious zealots, but even they had organic technology to compensate, some were capable of pragmatism and they didn't make unsustainable food sources... and this is before they overhauled their society.
* [[Drowtales]]: The whole series is Grimderp on steroids, but there are a few particularly nauseating examples: nothing like the protagonist [[Mary Sue]] of innocence and purity blowing up the light elf MILF slave called Maya in an argument with a rival, an argument in which she feels morally justified right after buying a fighting slave which was doomed to die in underground Arenas even most Drow find disgusting, ran by a complete monster of a drow, regularly visited to watch slaves die, that's right, by the protagonist Ariel. Maya dies crying in her native tongue about "what she did to deserve this", crying she'll never see sunlight again. Protagonist feels a bit bad about a few days, and only that when she sees a few naked light elf slaves for sale, reminiscing Maya's face. Years pass and she thinks all the slavery and needless murder isn't so cool... just before visiting a surface colony who was taken from humans. She and her lesbian lover have an orgy on the settlement they just conquered by massacre. After a blissful after-sex sleep, the settlement is counterattacked by desperate humans coming to save their kin... which are promptly murdered by the half-light half-dark elf paladin of Sharess (Yes, a [[Mary Sue]] worshipping a total [[Baldur's Gate]] rip-off) who is all high and righteous when she is burning innocent humans who wanted to save their kin from slave traders about to buy the survivors. The protagonist's lesbian empath Drow (yes, with a length of purple hair paint, straight out of Deviantart) friend berates the cornered humans with a lame excuse line of "I feel your pain, why don't you take your survivors and run?!" when the said humans scream in desperation to save their families from the town's locked buildings, die horribly and our "I'm glad my clan Sarghress prevents slavery, let's shake hands and feast on the food we just plundered!" protagonist shakes hands on it. It's not even depressing, it's plain fucking logic diarrhea with enough depressive themes to OD an edgy 13 year old. (considering the authors were that old when they started...)
* Jeph Loeb's run on [[/co/|Ultimate Marvel]]: people dying brutally (most well known being Wasp getting eaten by the Blob) and completely gratuitously (Dr. Strange is killed the one page he shows up on and is completely forgotten afterwards), lore rape worst than anything Ward ever did (the heroic Pyro is now a rapist version of the mainline Marvel Pyro with no explanation, Thor going from new age hippie to mainline-style viking with no explanation... at least that last one is kinda cool). Overall it was so bad it effectively made the Ultimate Marvel universe (with the exception of Spider-Man and his cast) completely unusable. Small wonder that years later, Marvel thought smashing it and the main Marvel universe together would be a good idea.
* Koutetsujou no Kabaneri, an anime with a similar premise to the already-grimdark ''Attack on Titan'': It's set in (presumably feudal) Japan, where people are hiding behind walls and communicate with each others using trains to travel from town to town, and trades the giants and horses for guns and [[zombie]]s. Several of the characters have moments of team-killing ineptitude that end up prolonging the conflict far longer than it should:
**The [[samurai]] don't bother with armor and generally aren't very combat-savvy when it comes to zombies, and their [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies turn any defense against a wall breach into an utter clusterfuck. The antagonist is [[Abaddon|an absolute failure AND wanted for crimes against humanity]], being a [[Edgy|pretentious Che Guevara wannabe]] [[Chaos Pretty Marines|with pink hair]] and wielder of an ugly-yet-somewhat effective [[Sword|sabre]]. He also has a devoted following despite being thoroughly unable to grasp the basics of warfare and its ethics (he thinks children are cowards for not being able to fight monsters that ambush and run through trained adult fighters with ease, and [[What|considers destroying one's own resources and castles to be a viable strategy]]). Meanwhile, the main protagonist has found not one, but TWO miracle solutions that would allow mankind to fight back against the zombie plague, but no one will listen to him, especially not the main antagonist, both because of the above and because ''of course they wouldn't'', it's <s>grimderp</s> GRIMDARK.
**Ironically, Ancient Shintoism (a main religion of that period) has the only known anti-[[Nurgle|zombie]] deities: ''Kukuri hime no kami'', a goddess of purification ([[Reasonable Daemonette|''despite'' being rather sado-masochist]]) whose followers would bind a corpse with ropes, place a big stone on the chest and bury it (coffins are optional). [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Insane as it was]], it was the most common form of burial in the Jomon period, and never went completely out of date through all the medieval period. Despite the rites being a perfect defense against [[Dark Souls|an undead invasion]], apparently they didn't take in this setting. Three guesses why.
*Most dark fantasy/"Ryona" hentai like Redo of a Healer (see [[Edgy]] for details), Kuroinu, Maggot Baits and whatever bargain basement hentai game developer puts the heroines through horrifying rapes, tortures and debauchery with no way to escape, all for little more purposes than to degrade, humiliate and mind-break them.
* [[FATAL]]
* [[Black Tokyo]]
* Teenagers bad attempts at recreating stuff they like such as Creepypasta's.
* About half of Garth Ennis's work goes so far around the bend that, if you don't stop caring about anyone in the story and put it down first, it becomes compelling or hilarious. Practically all of his original stories are drowning in grimderp (and author ax grinding). Prime examples include;
** The Boys: Almost every superhero is an irredeemable sexual deviant and loose cannon whose only crime fighting accomplishments come from corporate PR lies, and the story's protagonists are little better.
*** Surprisingly averted with it's Amazon Prime adaptation. By actually making most of the heroes less unambiguously rotten, cutting down the childish silliness, making the violence less gratuitous and more justified, and making the Boys themselves more human, the series actually manages to be WAY darker than the comics. Hell, Billy Butcher actually contemplates MURDERING A CHILD in the series, which is something the way more psychotic Butcher of the comics would not.
** Crossed: One of his most infamous creations. Most of the world is dead or turned into [[Slaanesh|murder-raping sadists]] á la the Reavers from Firefly due to a virus with a visible symptom being boils forming a cross pattern on the infectee's face. Showing any courage will get you killed or turned into one of the aforementioned murder-rapists, and there are survivors that are just as fucked up as the infectees. Supposedly a dig at arm chair survivalists, it's now mostly remembered for being edgy for the sake of edginess and being overall boring as hell.
* Hatred: Remember how your family told you that GTA was breeding criminals and that games created "monsters"? Well, Hatred tries to cash in on that by making a game dedicated to killing innocent people and making a "parody" out of those reactions, but [[FAIL|fails miserably]] to do that. This is because not only is our main "hero" a complete asshole with literally nothing redeeming about him, but most of the gameplay consists on you shooting unnarmed civilians and members of the policy/military that are '''extremely''' easy to beat, and coupled with the monochrome colors the game becomes ''very'' boring in a ''very'' quick pace. And unlike these old games that caused oh so much controversy, Hatred doesn't even have that good old orkish humor and tries to [[Serious Business|take everything inside it seriously]], which makes the "Grimdark" aspect come off as ''very'' dumb.
* [[Carl Sargent]]'s total rape of the [[Greyhawk]] setting in ''[[From The Ashes]]''. Something of a unique case in that the grimdark was well-done; it's that he had to fuck over the game's oldest and most-beloved setting (see the article for details) to do it that made it Derp.
* Most of the anti-[[HFY]] content in the [[World of Darkness]], especially the unmitigated misanthropy in parts of [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]. Humans vary from 'Idiotic sheep permanently at the bottom of the food chain' to 'Apathetic fools responsible for most of the world's ills' to 'Cackling, moustache-twirling villains', civilization and all its fruits are EVIL!, and the tribe of bestiality-born werewolves that want to exterminate the human race down to pre-Stone Age levels are presented as heroes that're unequivocally morally justified in their actions (both in and out of setting, if some of the Apocalypse scenarios are anything to go off). [[FAIL|Yeah.]]
* Anything made by biggest hack in Hollywood, <s>Zack</s> Hack Snyder.
* LifeWeb: A complex SS13 spinoff taking place in a cave fortress of a neo-medieval world in the far future, combat is more lethal, and it claims to explore subjects like murder, corruption, rape(with no regard for age), torture, cultism and general human suffering. In reality, the themes it "explores" just means "it's in the game and you can do it" and it's a farce on every level possible.
* The ''Hearts of Iron IV'' mod ''The New Order: Last Days of Europe'' has numerous dystopian "failstates", but the most notorious is the SS Ordenstaat Burgund, also known as Burgundy. Covering northeastern France and Belgium, Burgundy is ruled by [[Nazi|Heinrich Himmler and the SS]] as a giant concentration camp. Its sole purpose is genocide, first on the local and ultimately on the [[Exterminatus|global]] scale. When it isn't killing its own inhabitants, it's backing SS agents throughout the Third Reich's sphere of influence to further its cause of EEEVIL. Economic minister Oswald Pohl even points out that killing massive swathes of the nation's population just for not being Aryan isn't sustainable, but Himmler regards such criticism as treason. Realistically, Burgundy should have collapsed on itself before the game started, but it can stick around regardless. Playing as it is as difficult and miserable as you'd expect from a Holocaust management sim.
** Recent updates have focused more on the "derp" than the "grim", apparently as a reaction to Burgundy's pre-rework supervillainy. Unlike before, where it could last into the '80s [[Plot Armor|because the plot would break otherwise]], nü-Burgundy experiences [[Not As Planned]] moments on a near-[[Abbadon|FAILbaddon]] scale. Himmler [[BLAM|shooting Oswald Pohl]] for his "treason" not only tanks the economy but also makes economic management ''impossible''. Over time, the slaves, French and Belgian collaborator legions, and even Burgundy's own ministers will eventually get fed up and rebel. If Himmler purges them, ''literally everyone else'' will rise up in an event called the "Burgundian Spring". Even in the rare event that Himmler actually gets his nuclear Holocaust, it ultimately fails; the "pure" Aryans he chose to preserve emerge from their bunkers...and peacefully join post-apocalyptic society without issue. Why? Himmler told them that only true Aryans would survive the nuclear holocaust, so they assume that [[Derp|all the survivors are Aryan ''by definition'']], [[Wat|even if said survivors are Jewish or black]].

== Grim Tragedy ==
Naturally in a universe such as 40k, the grimdarkness of the setting would mean nothing if not tied into the ironic tragedy of the lore. This includes:

*[[Imperium|A species]] so afraid of the dauntless perils of Chaos that they will brutally harass and execute entire populations out of mere suspicion, all to stop the spread of ruin while indirectly strengthening those who seek to destroy them (''particularly'' Chaos). They, as a people, have progressed massively in population, technology and power since their species conception, yet they, more than anyone else, have lost one vital element: their humanity.

*[[Eldar|A race who]] was once at a zenith of civilization and prosperity, capable of bending the very Gods to their will. But by their own hand reduced themselves to scattered isolated fleets and colonies always on the run; their pompous and arrogant leaders hide behind a dwindling sense of security based in superiority over other races who are far more successful and perhaps destined to be greater than they ever were. [[Dark Eldar|A number among them]], after their unholy and insidious near-demise, continue (with oblivious glee) to empower [[Slaanesh|the very being that brought them to ruin]] in order to save themselves.

*[[Orks|A race of creatures]] who possess the brightest "potential"; with near mastery over the psychic, near-natural physical perfection and almost limitless numbers from their highly successful methods of reproduction... And yet they are genetically restricted by an unquenchable thirst for conflict which drives each to idiocy, leaving them hopeless of advancing beyond simple barbarians.

*[[Necron|An ancient people]] who were so envious of their neighbors' lifespans that they were ready to cripple the entire galaxy just for the sake of petty superiority - a superiority neutered by their unwitting transformation into metaphorical and literal automatons. They are now mindless machines who, bar few, care nothing of their past and seek only one thing: Conquest. And those who still have their personalities are either insane, demented, depressed, brooding, psychotic, or any combination of these in various proportions.

*[[Tau|A newborn race]] who innocently believes that there can be peace and acknowledgement among each other. Unfortunately the sinister methods they employ hoping that it is for [[Greater Good|something better]] is slowly, but steadily driving them into the decadence that plagues the other species. In doing so they become proof, both of the fact that [[Horus|anyone]], [[Emperor|no matter their intentions]], can be corrupted, and also of the kindness that the rest have forsaken for damnation and despair...

*The fact that, despite tens of thousands of years of knowing nothing but war, these peoples are woefully unprepared for what is to come. No matter how many regiments can be raised or Craftworlds restored, what is out there is [[Tyranids|all consuming, diabolical and numberless...]] Unless, they are themselves on the verge of extinction, and as such, desperately trying to cross over the great void between galaxies, which implies fighting against [[Ork|invincibles foes]] and [[Ultramarines|fate dodging cheaters]] unnaturaly empowered by the grief of an [[Games Workshop|unspeakable Eldritch Abomination beyond the cosmos]]. The good option is that there are a thousand galaxies worth of the fucking bugs; the bad option is that there are billions upon billions of galaxies worth of the fucking bugs. The worse option is that billions upon billions galaxies worth of what is essentially the perfect organism is running away from something worse.

== See also ==
*[[Noblebright]]
*[[Edgy]]
*[[Eversor]]
*[[Lamenters]]

== External Links ==
* [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/grimdark KnowYourMeme has examples from outside of /tg/]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQAWBeFnkg8 Trope Talk: Grimdark], a analysis of the "Grimdark" style of storytelling and why it works (and why sometimes it doesn't)
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Grimdark

2022-01-07T10:16:49Z

195.194.119.220: /* Grimderp */

{{Grimdark}}
[[File:P23436_p_v10_aa.jpg|300px|right|thumb|If your protagonist or antagonist isn't at least this [[edgy]], then you're probably doing Grimdark wrong.]]
[[Image:Lovepeace.png|thumb|right|It's totally the opposite of this.]][[Image:Inspector Grimgadget.jpg|thumb|right|Inspector Gadget, reimagined with a grimdark feel.]]
[[Image:Grimdark.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark versions of the TMNT. Their mentor is a Skaven.]]
[[Image:Grimdarkery.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark means war, and always endless, brutal war.]]
{{topquote|We are not men disguised as mere dogs, we are wolves disguised as men|Captain Muroto, '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''}}
{{topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

{{topquote|Tᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀɪɴᴅ ɪᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴅᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ɪᴛ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇɴ sʜᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ ᴏɴᴇ ᴀᴛᴏᴍ ᴏғ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʟᴇᴄᴜʟᴇ ᴏғ ᴍᴇʀᴄʏ ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴇᴛ... Aɴᴅ ʏᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀᴄᴛ ᴀs ɪғ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs sᴏᴍᴇ ɪᴅᴇᴀʟ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ, ᴀs ɪғ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs sᴏᴍᴇ... Sᴏᴍᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛɴᴇss ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ʙʏ ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ɪᴛ ᴍɪɢʜᴛ ʙᴇ ᴊᴜᴅɢᴇᴅ.|DEATH, [[Discworld|Hogfather]] (while explaining that since humans believe that it does, the way we believe Santa or the "Hogfather" does, we make it so it does.)}}

'''Grimdark''' is an adjective derived from the tagline for [[Warhammer 40k]], which states that "In the '''grim darkness''' of the far future, there is only war," and in some of the novels (at least a few of the [[Ciaphas Cain]] stories, for instance) it states straightforwardly, "in the '''grim dark''' future..." Whether this came after "grimdark" began to be popularly used as an adjective is not wholly clear (probably after). It is generally used to describe a dilapidated, dystopian "crapsack world" setting which it would really suck to live in, as say Somalia, North Korea, the North of England and the setting of Warhammer 40k itself. In fairness to the franchise and its defenders, this is because the published material primarily focuses on war and [[Chaos Gods|cults]] and other [[Daemonculaba|horrible things]]. There are supposed to be many pleasant and peaceful worlds and sectors in the Imperium, but they are mostly ignored as they are boring -- and when they DO appear in lore or fluff, they're usually to go from "0 problems" to "totally fucked", very quickly. It can also be used to describe artwork that has a ''grimdark'' feel, even if the setting itself would not normally be considered grim or dark, or something sinister or uncommonly threatening/intimidating in real-life. This often applies to fan-art and writefaggotry as well.

Depending on your own personal tolerances for grim darkness of course, it can be taken to the extreme, just like with all descriptive traits. There is a point in which it becomes more ridiculous than anything else, because everything is indefeasibly tragic all the time - the term for this being [[Grimdark#Grimderp|grimderp]], which is explained further below.

This is an accusation often leveled at Warhammer itself, and leads some to rail against "Grimdark" as a whole, decrying the concept as ridiculous attempts at [[edgy|edginess]] (typically by teenagers), and using the expression to refer solely to such over-the-top settings in a strictly pejorative manner. Others actually embrace this ridiculousness and run with it (including Warhammer 40K itself, due to being a much more obviously comedic setting [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|in early editions]]), insisting that the detractors or even the creators who take it seriously are making a mistake. Some people embrace the grimdarkness and mix it up with some humor (like painting Necrons with bright colors to make them look like edible candy figurines), especially if they are Ork players. But the schism between taking Warhammer's grimdarkness seriously or not is mostly visible with races such as the Tau, who are noticeably less grimdark ''visually'' than most of the other races and are either loved or absolutely hated for it (when not hated for being overpowered as shit). Meanwhile, another sizable percentage postulate that Grimdarkness lends greater moral and ethical complexity to a setting, based on [[Edgy|the fallacy that darkness always equals depth]]. Such people usually cite the works of Dan Abnett and many other Warhammer 40K writers to lend credence to such suppositions; these people are clearly ignoring that fact that most writers tone the grimdark WAY down. What, you didn't think the fact that the Imperium being an effective government, civilians having normal happy lives on par with the Scandinavians, Commissars who never *BLAM* their troops was odd? Needless to say, grimdark is [[Skub|a rather polarizing subject whose discussion often leaves little room for a middle ground]].

Speaking of, the polar opposite of grimdark is [[Noblebright]], a deliberate inversion of grim and dark nature where honor, chivalry, happiness and high adventure rule the day, as opposed to dying in a ditch from a supernatural plague as you run out of potable water and can no longer wait for the logistics department to process your dead comrades into something slightly more palatable before you start eating them. Oh, and being {{BLAM}}ed by a Commissar for even starting to look a little sad from these thoughts.

Although, it could be argued that 40K proper is actually Nobledark. Although the lore claims one man cannot make a difference and heroes are meaningless (Grim), we see the complete opposite of that actually happening in the lore. 40K fluff (40K, not just 30K) is crammed to bursting with heroes who made major differences. If anything, 40K seems to be about the difference one man ''can'' make rather than showing one man cannot make a difference. Even the events revolve around the Great Man idea of basically superheroes and supervillains moving the galaxy (and it's not just actual superhumans doing this). It is nonetheless a very dark setting, though.

== Common grimdark themes ==
*[[1984|Massive, imperialist, overbearing, bureaucratic, dystopian dictatorships]]; e.g. [[Imperium of Man|Nazi Germany clones]], [[Tau|Soviet Union/China clones]], or straight out examples of [[Paranoia|"Big Brother is watching you"]].
*Constant, never ever-ending warfare, usually as a horrific combination of outdated tactics and technology (And sometimes overly advanced technology). E.g., sending line infantry armed with single-shot [[Lasgun|Lasguns]] against a [[Bolter|Heavy Bolter]] nest.
*Horrifyingly large death tolls are perfectly normal. Genocide is also perfectly normal, and in many cases encouraged and espoused.
*Slavery is also perfectly normal, and sometimes considered a great necessity. Massive constructs are often built via slave labor.
*Everyone is racist towards non-humans/[[Eldar|elves]]/[[Mutant|mutants]]/[[Orks|fungus]]/[[Rak'gol|lizards]]/[[Slaugth|worms]]/[[Necrons|robots]]/[[Tyranids|aliens]]/[[Chaos|each other]]. Vice versa for literally every race.
*Speaking of xenophobia towards every species, those who express sympathy for a hated race and/or intermingle with said race, are usually publicly humiliated, tortured, and usually purged.
*Daily dose of [[HFY]]. [[Astral Knights|And]] [[Awesome]].
*[[Shadowrun|The vast majority are poor people who literally live in shit, pollution, crime]], and a plethora of [[Nurgle|all kinds of filthy diseases]], except for a [[Monopoly|few greedy upper 1% who own 99.9% of everything]].
*You, a poor bastard, are being farmed for shits and giggles by said few greedy upper 1%.
*Most of the poor bastards are being forced to work 23 hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, in factories and/or forced labour camps, until their bodies give out. Forever.
*They're probably making weapons and equipment for [[Imperial Guard|the military]] (which is where the rest of the poor bastards are).
*[[Age of Strife|Dark, disgraceful and recondite past]] covered with [[Alpha Legion|lies]] [[Imperium|propanganda]], [[Tzeentch|deception]] and [[Eldar|partiality]].
*The Higher Powers do indeed give you consideration, they're just malevolent as all fuck.
*Chronic backstabbing. Just like in real life relationships. (''Who hurt you?'')
*[[Ork Snipers|"Frie]][[Marines Malevolent|ndly]] [[Kharn|fire"]]
*[[Space Marines|Child]] [[Imperial Guard|soldiers]]. Just like in real life.
*Your morning alarm clock is the stray bullets you hope don't hit you, from [[Necromunda|the gangsters doing a drive-by on their enemy who happens to be in the same district]] to whom you don't even belong to or like.
*Status quo is god. [[Nurgle|Literally.]]
*[[Tzeentch|Change is worse]].
*[[Cyberpunk|Cybernetics and cyborgs]]; the less human, the better.
*[[Commissar|Daily forecasts reguarly call for a 80% chance or more of *BLAM*]].
*[[Judge Dredd|Police]] [[Adeptus Arbites|brutality]].
*Even minor crimes can have major punishments.
*[[Inquisition|Being innocent or even a victim of crime can be counted as a crime]]. All participants in a crime, whether perpetrator or victim, are charged.
*[[Inquisition|Government agencies that are always there to fuck you over]] at the slightest hint of [[heresy]].
*Did I mention that the [[Inquisition]] commits planetary genocide 24/7?
*The [[Erebus|cock]][[Dark Eldar|suckers]] responsible for most of the shittiness are not only getting away with it, but are surviving and thriving, without becoming major targets for the [[noblebright]] forces.
*Torture that makes the CIA look like saints.
*[[Call of Cthulhu|Sanity checks]].
*Criminally insane delusional psychotics tortured in filthy mental asylums (in case of no/failed SAN checks).
*[[H.P. Lovecraft|Disgusting, horrifying, tentacled eldritch abominations]] that are often the cause of aforementioned criminal insanity.
*Rape. Just like in real life. ([[/d/|And often by said tentacled Eldritch Abominations]].)
*Surgery without anesthesia.
*[[Cannibalism]], in three forms:
*# For power (embracing the myth of "you are what you eat").
*# For food value; sometimes this is concealed by callous authorities as some other kind of food; sometimes, it's just a biological, cultural or desperation thing.
*# For the sheer fun of it.
*Want chemotherapy or some other expensive treatment? Well, you have to eviscerate that old dropout student of yours in order to pay.
*In fact even surgery without anesthesia is a luxury available only to wealthy or important ones, as are all other forms of medicine. 99% of people are expected to die when they fall sick or get injured. That is when they don't get executed FOR falling sick or getting injured.
*[[Fleshcrafting|Human experiments]]. [[Fabius Bile|Sometimes willingly, but most of the time not]]!
*Zombie plagues.
*Ritual cult sacrifices.
*Massive amounts of blood, gore, guts, pain and hatred.
*No personal opinion or choice. Only the illusion of it, in which you probably end up an [[Magnus|unwil]][[Mortarion|ling]] [[Rubric Marines|sla]][[necron|ve]]. Or...[[Chaos spawn|something worse]].
*Anti-intellectualism.
*...and it's justified because even an instant of unprotected thinking risks mass destruction.
*PTSD.
*Nihilism.
* Racism is actually right.
*Gothic and emo aesthetics (with the help of tons of ''"decorative"'' skulls).
*There are no "good guys". Everyone's a jerk, including yourself. ''Especially yourself.''
* Everyone is evil either because they’re just plain monsters or because they are trying to survive which makes everyone evil to everyone else.
*[[Tau|The guys everyone refer to be "good" or "nice"]] are actually just ''the least'' evil bunch, and would still make your average high fantasy/sci-fi arch-villains look like saints in comparison.
*The REAL good guys are either [[Lamenters|the ones (usually) mostly hated, and are going to get fucked over beyond human recognition usually without any logical reason]] or [[Salamanders|too few to make any difference]].
*Aforementioned "good guys" are only "good" because they do care about their allies and civilians, and generally try to make the place less shitty for those they care for. But they still wouldn't hesitate a second before doing pretty horrible things like [[Shadowrun|terrorist actions against "The Man"]], [[Warhammer 40k|killing a defenseless xeno child]], etc...
* The aforementioned defenseless xeno-child needed to be killed either because it was guaranteed to grow up to be a monster, would grow to compete for resources needed for survival, would be corrupted, was already a monster, or any number of reasonable justifications that would leave a modern man in frustrated tears trying to justify not killing it. Welcome to Warhammer 40,000.
*Magic is [[Warp|inherently malevolent]] and actively seeks to [[Cenobites|corrupt]] and [[Khorne|destroy]] those unfortunates 'gifted' with magical abilities. And everything around them at the time.
*You either die a [[Sanguinius|worthy death]] or you live long enough to see yourself becoming something that [[Mortarion|you've]] [[Perturabo|always]] [[Fulgrim|hated]].
*Everyone will most likely die in the end. Especially the ones important to and including the main character.
*Always polluted, never sunny.
*No ice cream. No lollipops either.
*Death or suicide will only make things much, much worse in [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] levels, as a hive of disgusting, incomprehensibly evil supernatural daemons are waiting patiently to eternally torment your un-life and roast your soul alive day and night forever and ever, again and again and again and again.
*Tremendous potential for offensive/dark comedy/[[lulz]].
*[[God-Emperor of Mankind|And if you ever, EVER try to change this shitty world or try to help one person just a little, you will probably suffer terrible consequences,]] because altruism is a dying philosophy. (And because your reasoning is flawed.)
*Life sucks.
*There's only war.
*You're probably going to get eaten by Tyranids.
*no gf
*Good luck and [[Dwarf_Fortress|have fun.]]
*Even using the wrong calendar is [[heresy]].

== Stuff considered Grimdark ==
{{cleanup}}
[[File:Tyrus.jpg|400px|thumb|A world where the only way to beat grimdark is by introducing something even grimmer and darker]]
[[File:The_grimdarkian_by_ironshrinemaiden_d1i73bl.jpg|400px|thumb|[https://www.deviantart.com/ironshrinemaiden/art/The-Grimdarkian-91030161| The Grimdarkian, by IronShrineMaiden]]]
* '''''[[Warhammer 40,000]]''''' (Naturally, coined the term).
* '''''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]''''', <strike>but less than you'd think. It's a lot closer to nobledark</strike> until the world [[Derp|was]] [[Bullshit|actually]] [[End Times|destroyed]]. Now, [[Age of Sigmar]] continues it and is, slightly, better in so much that it is unlikely to be destroyed, though [[Warhammer Meta-Setting|that may imply an even worse eternal stalemate]].
* '''The World Wars''', especially the Western Front of WW1, the Eastern Front of WW2, and everything involving WW2 Japanese army/navy and PoWs/civies.
* '''The countless wars of the 1990s in Africa''', including, but not limited to: The Rwandan Genocide, Liberian child soldiers, Sierra Leonean amputations, slave labor in the Congo, etc.
** Post Colonial Africa in general until the 21st century and even then there's not particularly nice places like Somalia.
* '''''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'''''
* '''''[[Dark Sun]]'''''
* '''''End of War'''''
* '''''Blood''''', The main character is a undead wild west gunslinger who has to bring down a dark god's cult!
* '''Shakespeare's tragedies''', especially ''Macbeth'' and ''Hamlet''.
* '''''[[1984]]'''''
* '''''Soylent Green'''''.
* '''''[[Paranoia]]''''' (though used for parodying 1984).
* The majority of the tragedy genre of stories.
* '''''[[RIFTS]]'''''.
* The '''''Half-Life''''' universe after the resonance cascade.
* '''''Portal''''' once you get past the memes.
* The Helghast from the '''''Killzone''''' universe.
* The '''Kerberos''' trilogy, but special mentions to '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''. A series of films that basically gave birth to Killzone singlehandedly (Seriously, look at the comparisons between the Helghast and the film's Protect Gear, [[Original character, do not steal|it is ''blatant'']]). Set in an alternate-history where Japan was occupied by Germany rather than America at the end of WW2. In Jin-Roh, the nation is constantly in social turmoil with left-wing communist terrorist guerillas using children as bomb couriers against two police force of Japan: the normal-looking police force (Backed by the Japanese KGB/CIA hybrid) and the '''ORIGINAL''' Helghasts called the Kerberos Panzer Cops. Jin-Roh is a political thriller film that largely talks about the problems of the "Good guy, bad guy" dichotomy and how juvenile it is for stories to portray these things in real life. All of the films have a downer ending, so if you are looking for a happy ending, you're gonna get dissapointed. Despite what [[/pol/|some people]] [[SJW|may argue,]] the Kerberos trilogy is a condemnation of all extremist ideas and actions. Its a Mamoru Oshii film of Ghost in the Shell fame, what do you fucking expect.
* Everything in '''''Gears of War'''''. The fact that the primary weapon in the series features a [[Chain Weapon|Chainsaw bayonet designed to utterly rip out the innards of anyone unfortunate to be at the receiving end]] is already by itself Grimdark.
* Everything in the Resistance universe.
* The MachineGames '''''Wolfenstein''''' games. The Nazis crushed the Allies in 1947 with insane technology and won World War II. The setting pulls no punches in depicting how nightmarish the world would become if the Nazis were free to enact their racist and reactionary ideology to its fullest. Manhattan was nuked off the earth, London is now a slum filled with humiliating monuments to the Nazi victory (and a giant robot that literally crushes any uprisings), indigenous peoples in Africa and South America are being exterminated wholesale, there are concentration camps on the Moon, Hitler has been deified, and untermensch live in hiding and constant fear for their lives.
* '''''[[Blame!]]'''''.
* '''''Devilman'''''. (especially CRYBABY)
* '''''[[Berserk]]'''''
* '''''[[Goblin Slayer]]'''''.(Pretty much [[Berserk]] if it was set in a Dungeons and Dragons world)
* '''''[[Emergence]]'''''. (177013)
* '''''[[Kingdom Death]]''''' (Makes 40k's setting seem pleasant and cheerful).
* '''''Eastenders''''' (especially at Christmas).
* '''[[Grimdark Songwriting]]'''
* '''''[[Don't Rest Your Head]]'''''
* '''''SLA Industries''''': Imagine if the Emperor was not only still walking around, but was a callous buisnessman with a permanent skeleton face and no bling armor. Imagine a civilization that exists almost entirely to strip mine itself in the name of consumerism, with snuff television being the primary source of entertainment and anyone trying to do buisness not on SLA's pay roll being branded a "Soft Company" to be exterminated. Oh, and truly horrid aliens that were thought extinct centuries ago are now making a comeback AND occult fuckery of varying flavours is manifesting in increasing amounts in Mort City, SLA's capital.
* '''''The Matrix'''''
* '''''[[World of Darkness]]''''', with special mention going to [[Wraith: The Oblivion]], a game so bleak it's rumored to have actually caused fits of chronic depression in players.
* '''''[[CthulhuTech]]'''''
* '''''[[Call of Cthulhu]]''''', depending on how you do it.
* Everything from '''''[[H.P. Lovecraft]]''''' and the '''''Cthulhu Mythos''''', though this can vary when you add in other Mythos writers like August Derleth.
* Playing mortals in '''''[[Exalted]]'''''
* '''''Neon Genesis Evangelion''''' (Especially End).
* '''''Muv-Luv''''' Often compared to 40k in how bleak and brutal the series is.
* '''''[[Midnight]]''''' setting for D&D.
* '''''[[FATAL]]'''''.
* '''[[Rebecca Black]]'''.
* '''''I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream'''''. Just the title itself should give you a clue on how horrific the game is. (The video game is terrifying, especially with its endings, and the short story it is based on is even more horrifying). Humanity has been wiped out except for five people, who are trapped inside a complex controlled by a misanthropic, reality-warping supercomputer keeping them alive to torture them.
* The '''Medieval Dark Ages''' that Warhammer 40,000 was originally based on.
* '''''[[The Witcher]]'''''. Racism, genocides, dozens of monsters that want to eat your face whenever you enter a random forest. Or cave. Or ruins. The video game adaptation even features a medieval Hitler running the [[Inquisition|Witch Hunters]], a fanatical order of [[Black Templars|racist scumbags dedicated to wiping out both mages and non-humans]] in the name of the Eternal Fire. Meanwhile, the neighboring empire starts a series of wars against northern kingdoms (where the series takes place), in which both sides descend into scorched earth warfare, all the while backstabbing their allies and generally being a colossal wall of dicks to the point that close to 70% of civilian population in war-zones died from raiding, famine and occasional outbreaks of extradimensional plagues. To add insult to injury, the whole world is doomed due to the (slowly) encroaching Ice Age, and the only person that could save it took two glances at this shitshow and decided to fuck off to a parallel universe and let them all die, ''because it would be a mercy''. (To be fair, though, she comes back, if only to save her adoptive mother and father from said Ice Age, as she still maintains her 'fuck the rest of humanity' attitude.
* '''''Dark Souls'''''. The entire ''world'' is ''dying''. Specifically, most of the population is undead, you die constantly, and you have to fight enemies larger and filthier than you are, [[Heresy|including a naked bitch with a spider vagina]]. Also, [[Extra Heresy|FAKE TITS]]. Stuck in an infinite loop where a hero constantly saves the world, and everything goes back to normal before hitting another grimdark cycle every thousand years. Compare with nobledark and check your mileage.
* '''''Drakengard''''' and its related franchise: '''''Nier'''''. Basically, the "god" in this setting is a massive dick so he infects humans with zombie aids out of boredom and watch them kill each other for the [[lulz]]. Caim (the player), the former prince of a fallen kingdom (due to his parents being killed by a black dragon) had to fight the zombie army. He unironically [[rip and tear|enjoys slaughtering any living things]] after waging a bunch of other conflicts and lost his ability to speak after he made a pact with a dragon in exchange for companionship and power (in Drakengard, making such a pact with another creature makes you lose a certain part of you). He had to team up with a blind pedophile priest, a baby eating elf witch, and a ageless shota. His sister unknowingly to him is a crazy incest bitch, driven mad by the pain she endures because she was forced to become a "Goddess of the Seal", some kind of administrator chosen by the "god" to maintain space and time. The job sucks, she had to be separated from her family and she's unable to kill herself because her caretaker would prevent that from happening. And to top it off her parents die tragically. And then you have the villains. Manah, an abused 8 year old child descended from one of the evil clone sister's brother from the prequel, was controlled by the eldritch forces of "the watchers" (read: the dick head "god" himself) who are in charge of the zombie armies with humanity's extinction being their goal. Due to the influence of the watchers group on the Empire kingdom of its setting, the world is engulfed in flames and corpses. The true ending for the game is that everyone except Caim dies and he somehow end up moving a magical doomsday device created by the god to other world (Tokyo Japan of our world to be exact), detonate it and doom the human race. It is said that Drakengard as a series has a fuck ton of timelines and a timeline was born from each of the endings with each ending being bad, or if not worse than the previous. Surprisingly the ending mentioned above is consider canon and it is where the sequel Nier took place (after 1462 years no less) with more grimdark ensuing. Drakengard 2 was pretty bright light since it was directed by a different director but is still part of branch timeline while Drakengard 3 is the prequel retelling how the god tries to destroy the world by sticking an evil parasite flower on some psychopathic girl. Each time the girl died it creates an evil clones of her that will try to rule the world with their evil song magic. Obvious, it's also grimdark since it led to the tragic grimdark rape sauce that is the plot of the first game.
** In '''''Nier''''', the world sets 1462 years into the future. After our "hero" and his dragon fucked up the world by killing and detonating the doomsday device, it release some kind of magical evil virus that mindraped and turned people into salt if they don't submit. After countless grimdark conflicts involving child soldiers, human experiments and more resource shortage, the scientist decided to separate the rest of the survivors souls (gestalt) from their bodies, hoping they could outlast the pandemic. But of course all these attempts are futile failure because Nier, our "hero" ended up killing the only thing that could save humankind, dooming them all to extinction.
*** Finally we have '''''Nier: Automata''''', 8480 years later, where new androids were created by the last human survivors. One of the Nier's companions Emil, a bizarre magical weapon created from some crazy experiment (he is over 8480 years old or so at this point) had to clone himself over 9000 times just to fight the aliens, which not only made him lose his mind and memories but also his sanity. Oh and the humans that escaped to the moons turn out to be long dead. When the rest of androids find out, they proceed to kill themselves in a batshit frenzy. To make this sound even more painful and tragic, the androids have the human concepts of pain and emotions programmed to them, making their death even more painful to be felt.
* '''''Mass Effect''''': While its universe overall is hardly grimdark overall, the Reapers and what happens to "harvested" individuals is some of the sickest forms of grimdark possible. During the Reaper War, trillions of people across the galaxy were vaporized, dissolved slowly, and/or converted into cyber zombies or brainwashed slaves. And that's just the latest Reaper War. The Reapers have committed so much galactic genocide beforehand, they turned it into a "regularly" scheduled event and made the galaxy their farm/laboratory.
** There are many other forms of Grimdark in the relatively Nobledark/Noblebright universe of Mass Effect, one of the most notable being the Genophage, a bioweapon deployed against the Krogan race as to halt the Krogan Rebellions. This bioweapon was basically a massive, permanent genetical Fetus Deletus that drove Krogan birthrates down extensively and creates a lot of stillborns, leaving them vulnerable to extinction.
* '''''Killzone''''', again. The Second Extrasolar War alone deserves its own page of Grimdark: Humanity and their alien descendants, the Helghast, engage in a near-racial war of genocide, more genocide, and even more genocide. Technology has devolved in many areas, and battles turn into endless slaughters as hundreds of thousands of men and women are thrown into a Verdun/Stalingrad hybrid scenario. What's even more horrible is how literally '''everyone''' is evil. Not just the Helghast. Literally all of humanity is warped. The Earth-based UCN? Corrupt and bureaucratic. They want to strangle all their colonies with an iron fist and they intentionally keep the colonial military, the ISA, weaker than it otherwise could be so the centralized military could easily crush them if they rebelled, (UCN cruisers for example are basically dreadnoughts in comparison to those of the ISA), which has caused more than a few problems for the ISA when fighting the Helghast. The Vektans? Hypocritically imperialistic, believing the Helghast deserve to perish for their militarism and (failed) invasion of their planet. The Helghast? Racist, imperialistic genocidal maniacs, believing themselves to be "superior" and even some thinking they need to kill every human in the universe, for "Helghast Purity".
** The Helghast are a literal representation of a society and people warped by Grimdarkery: The planet of Helghan is inhospitable, forcing almost all its inhabitants to wear gas masks. Society is highly fascist, militaristic, and any form of dissent is met with "reeducation" (A bullet to the head), while the government itself is highly nepotistic, where opportunistic scumbags manipulate Helghast Nationalism for their self-benefit. Also, technology and living standards in the civilian sector is extremely poor, as the majority of the advanced technology went over to the military.
** The fanbase of the series is certainly odd though due to the fact that this concept that everyone is evil has went completely over their heads and due to the blatantly unfair treatment of the Helghasts (kind that makes the Treaty of Versailles seem all fair and good by comparison) in the lead up and aftermath of the First Extrasolar War, they have a tendency to see the Helghast, despite being the antagonists, [[derp|as the good guys]]. Their totalitarian society and the fact that the Helghast commit more or less every warcrime known to man apparently didn't make it obvious that this is not so.
* '''''Gears of War''''', again. Decades of civil war, genocide and weapons of mass destruction has turned your home planet into a quasi-dead world. The human race is close to extinction, women are reduced to birthing machines, your government is an uncaring fascist scumbag, the weather is often rain consisting of razor sharp ice crystals that could cut you into ribbons, you're fighting a never-ending war with genocidal monsters from the underground and the world is literally '''dying''' from super fuel.
**To make matters even worse. Even before the Locust War, humanity was locked in a near 80 year war between two rivaling superpowers over the aforementioned super fuel. The COG and the UIR. Both governments are ruthless, imperialistic, fascistic, communistic bastards of a government whose war crimes will make the likes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany look like amateurs. When even the Locust have a point by calling us out for being exactly the same genocidal monsters as they are, you know Gears of War is fucked. Oh and the planet is called Sera, or Ares when said backwards.
* The '''''Resistance''''' series, again: Humanity is losing a brutal war of genocidal attrition against a parasitic alien species, the Chimera. Russia, Asia, and nearly all of Europe has been converted into a desolate wasteland, suitable for the Chimera species. Whatever is left of humanity has been driven into cave dwellings. Humans captured by the Chimera are converted into a Chimera Hybrid (Basically the Chimera equivalent of [[Arco-flagellant|Arco-Flagellants]]).
* '''''Hellgate London'''''.
* Most of '''David Bowie''''s songs about 1990.
* World Devastators in '''''[[Star Wars]]'''''. Seriously, if you read about them without knowing that they are from Star Wars, you could easily mistake them for something from 40k. And we're not talking about Star Wars Legacy and the genocide of the Mon Calamari.
* The first two '''''Hellraiser''''' movies
* '''''Event Horizon'''''
* '''''GANTZ'''''
* '''''[[Cyberpunk 2020]]'''''.
* '''''[[Shadowrun]]'''''. While not the worst in the grimdark department, Shadowrun definitely has its moments (the Renraku Archology Shutdown being a prime example); for instance the oppressive megacorporations reducing people to an identification number, with people not having one ([[Derp|for... reasons]]) don't exist legally.
* '''''[[Hellsing]]'''''... just all of Hellsing... Though it can easily slide into grimderp. (A little girl seeing her mother killed while hiding in a closet? Yeah that's intense. In a moment of desperation, shove a rod into the guy's eyeball, only for him to not be mortally wounded? That's pretty unfortunate. Said guy deciding to fuck the corpse as his smashed eyeball hangs from the socket? That's just silly.)
**'''''Drifters''''', by the same author. The protagonists are a bunch of [[murderhobo|kill-happy murderhoboes]] drawn from various psychos from all throughout history into [[Isekai|a generic fantasy world]] who have decided to [[Great Crusade|save the world by conquering it, one country at a time]]. One of the major powers of the setting turns out to have been founded by ''Adolph friggin' Hitler''. Even Joan of Arc, who IRL was noted for being a pacifist, is warped into a bloodthirsty psycho. The [[BBEG]], who wants to kill all humans (and is noted to be a step up from his subordinates, who want to kill [[Necron|everything]]) is all but outright states to be ''Jesus''.
* '''''Bioshock''''' and '''''Bioshock 2''''' (as well as '''''Bioshock Infinite''''', though it comes hidden behind a smiling facade of barbershop singing and the Fourth of July).
* Anything from the '''''[[Xeelee Sequence]]'''''.
** The Interim Coalition of Governance for example, is such a grim-ridden shit-hole that they make the Imperium of Man look like pussies filled with sun-shine and rainbows in comparison and make the [[Adeptus Custodes]] shit themselves in collateral fear. Despite achieving time travel, conquering the entire Universe through xenocide that would make the Necrons look like children and shooting Neutron Stars at .99c at the speed of light, The ICoG is still a minor nuisance compared to the Xeelee and their enemies, the Photino Birds. Stephen Baxter was able to construct the insignificance and petty malevolence of Man in a few books better than GeeDubs more [[Matt Ward|questionable]] [[CS Goto|authors]] did in decades. [[tl;dr]] the IoM wishes they would be as cool as the ICoG. A small example is a soldier, Pirius invents an incredible way of outmaneuvring the enemy and does a huge impact on the war: [[awesome|he captures a Xeelee ship]]. Turning back time and going to the past, he is...sent to a penal unit guaranteeing death. Literally for thinking outside the box.
** All of Steven Baxter's works arguably qualify. '''''Evolution''''' can be summed up as "humanity almost overcame its flaws, fixed the damage it did to Earth, and ushered in a [[noblebright]] future, and it might have worked, but [[Rocks_fall,_everyone_dies|just then a supervolcano erupted, wiped out human civilization, and everyone died]]. The end. There's even a chapter in the middle of the book outright stating it. Also that humans [[Imperium|are nothing but vicious bastards who rape, kill, and destroy everything they touch]] and have been ever since our ancestors were rats under the feet of dinosaurs, but other animals aren't much better.
* '''North Korea''', which is essentially [[1984|"Real Life Oceania"]], a totalitarian nightmare almost completely isolated from the rest of the world with a leader whose name you are literally forbidden from saying without the prefix "supreme leader". Universal conscription is in place for men with service lengths of over ten years from age 17 to 30 (for comparison, in South Korea, where compulsory military service length is also among the highest in the world, the service length is 21 to 24 months depending on the chosen branch). The country has no access to the internet and only has it's own intranet with government controlled websites. Long gone are the days when the government had any interest in making the country good. Now all they care about is simply staying in power, no matter how much poverty and how many famines the rest of the country has to suffer for it. And if you get on the government's really bad side, you and at least 2 other generations of your family get sent to prison camps to be executed or become the playthings of the prison guards until you die.
* '''''The Goon''''' comic series by Eric Powell (because circus hillbillies, werewolves with midget hand phobias, and the Zombie Priest are the least of it all).
* '''''Children of Men''''': A future where humans are no longer fertile and going extinct, and then someone finds a pregnant woman and nearly everyone in the world fights over her.
* '''''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''''' AKA Game of Thrones: Good guys screw up monumentally or never win, the only people who get ahead are amorally manipulative assholes and everyone is going to be massacred and enslaved by the evil ice elf necromancers in the end. And if they somehow survive, then another war for the Iron Throne will happen after the winner gets their revenge-boner satisfied and later, their kids would need to clean up the wankstains.
* '''''Dishonored''''' - Grimdark, and steampunk. Only in the "Kill fucking everyone" ending though.
* '''''Dark Seed''''', Grimdark to the core! the first game is about the main character being fucked in the head. Hr giger's artwork helps too.
* '''''[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|X-Com]]''''' (The remake and the original, as a parody of the G.I. Joe Badass stereo type, you're struggling with funding and even your gods in human form, some of whom make certain chapters of Astartes weep, can get fucked over by Sectoids!)
* '''''Puella Magi Madoka Magica'''''. Being Meguca is suffering.
* '''''[[Adventure Time]]''''''s backstory.
* '''''Path of Exile'''''. The game's setting is basically a documentary on the corruption of [[Roman Empire]]. Basically there is this continent called the Wraeclast. [[Tomb Kings|The land is pretty much cursed with undeath]] and [[chaos|mutation]] due to Thaumaturgy aka magic in the form of gems that grants ability, which came from the beast, some kind of eldritch abomination living in the mountain and the source of all this evil magic shit. Many great Empire rose and fell on the continent with their own fucked up and downfall. [[Fall of the Eldar|The first empire: The Vaal were somekind of Aztec, Mayan inspired Empire who loves to sacrifice people for power, so much that they were responsible for corrupting the beast, which partly responsible for what Wraeclast is today]]. After that, a new Empire called "the Eternal Empire" was built on top the former and began outlawing Thaumaturgy and gems for the next 1000 years, until a tyrant was throne after he cheat a death maze trial and was killed in a rebellion staged by Voll, who is obsessed with the old purity ideal and decided to trust Malachai, a previous evil asshole Thaumaturgiest employed by the previous Emperor to destroy the beast, the source of all magic (in detail, Voll was convinced by Malachai into thinking that only those who study Thaumaturgy could destory Thaumaturgy). Obviously, [[Nagash|Malachai ended up betraying Voll as well as everyone in the Empire, as well as the godamn world by merge with the beast and unleash a series of cataclysm that made what Wraeclast is today, and the bastard achieve a twisted sense of immortality where he is now but a evil monster living inside the beast, who is obsessed with creating nightmarish monsters]].
**Despite the Voll's fucked up, part of the Empire survived in the form of an island nation south called Oriath. [[Imperium of Man|It was ruled under a Theocratic government. Following the laws of purity with an iron fist, where they reject impurity so much that anyone who reject their doctrines is met with either slavery, death or exiled to Wraeclast (which the player came to be)]]. [[Nazi|They are also racist, dressed in stylish uniform fashioned with eagle, gold and the typical red armband, all the more reinforce their real life counterpart]]. [[Roman Empire|Since they inherit the previous empire's slavery culture, they enslave a group of archipelago tribal minority known as the Karui, serving as the Rome equivalent of barbarian tribe slave race for Oriath and oh boy, how Oriath loves to oppress the shit out of them, using them for free labor, torture them, experiment them and putting them in the grand arena as gladiators entertainment]]. They also worship this golden figure with red eyed [[Emperor|called Innocence, who is the major god of Oriath, the Templar's most beloved GOLDEN subject of worship]] and they believe themselves to be the most pure and "innocence" while calling others like [[heresy|the karui and the heretics to be impure and "Sinned"]].
***As if things are not bad enough, later game where after the player killed the beast, it awoke the gods from the slumber. Gods, who were once mortal but sold their humanity for power in order to ascend. As a result, the gods are no better than the humans, most them were downright psychopath(there's a god called Yugul who was once a scholar obsessed with fear that he study about it so much he eventually ascend to godhood, became somekind of four leg walking mouth thing), mentally depressed ([[genestealers|there's this insect goddess called Ryslatha who is afraid of loosing her children that she makes everyone hers by having her parasite control everything that moves]]) or just a downright bloody warlords (the Karui wargod, who is the one to encourage his tribes man to stop being peaceful and tell them to go kill shit and babies, which are actually Ryslatha's and is therefore responsible for her ugly transformation). Although some gods were good, they ended up being corrupted by their followers for fuck how longs while the beast forcing them to slumbering away. After their returning, some human made contact with them through their mind radio advertisement, and were made to become their followers, where they were [[chaos|granted mutations (or blessing, some would say)]] and went on their own ape shit rampage across the world to claim their own territories or invade others. Most of the Karui slaves in Oriath ended up getting the worst mutation of all since [[Angron|they worship this Kitava god (an evil Karui god whom was repeatedly punished for his gluttony, yet despite its mouth being mutilated in such way for him to stop consuming anything, he still does and even managed to reach godhood) in order to free from their slavery and shitty treatment from their Templar tormentor]], [[Khorne|all the more powered up Kitava with their desires for vengeance and blood. The slave's faith for Kitava is so overwhelming that not one on Oriath is safe from Kitava's power]], even the Templar, after their god Innocence that had been recently decimate by the player are now vulnerable to Kitava influences, that they switched side without a second thought, easily giving up their old faith like the asshole heretic they had always been. The only god who managed to retain its sanity from all this madness is called Sin, Innocence's brother who is this creepy black winged figure that could make everyone thought of angels of death whenever he pops up. Despite this, he is smart enough to realized the danger of godhood and create the beast in order to force them asleep (this includes his wife and daughter, whom were also deities like him, and were also corrupted that they had to be put down by the player because even Sin finds it painful to kill his own kin and lover). Even after the player has killed all the gods, Wraeclast remains the same, Thaumaturgy and gems still exist, but at least Oriath is no longer rule by an extreme religious organization, right?
* '''''[[Space Station 13]]''''' : Space paranoia simulator. Some might not consider this game grimdark, but the lore is set in a dystopian future where capitalism and unforgiving bureaucracy rules the universe, your life is expandable, and the media is controlled; your only choice is working until you die, or getting killed by either rival corporate operatives, space wizards, cultists, deathsquads or spies posing as your co-workers.
* '''''Barotrauma''''' : Inspired by Space Station 13, centered on a submarine crew in the underground oceans of Europa. Crew members are expendable, you're ''always'' outgunned, the submarine is almost [[Death World|constantly under attack by massive sea creatures]], and most missions are much more likely to end in disaster than success. Also, you explode as soon as you step outside the sub.
* '''''[[Pokemon Tabletop Adventures]]''''' (optionally).
* Original '''''Grimm's Fairy Tales''''' ("Hansel and Gretel", for example).
* '''''Alien''''' (as in the biomechanical, parasitic, acid-blooded brainchild of Ridley Scott and the late H.R. Giger).
* '''''[[Halo]]''''' (the setting of Halo is one grand scale of a Cosmic Horror Story centered around absolute hopelessness and bleakness of a Universe governed by hyper malevolent gods. Our good guys, the UNSC? It's a semi-authoritarian 'Big Brother is Watching You', fascistic style government that have no qualms dumping nukes on a civilian population if rebellion is sighted. The UNSC also have no problems dicking over their only alien 'friends' to benefit humanity, while also being bogged down in a political quagmire. The Covenant are ''much, much worse'', while anything from the Forerunner trilogy is just a high concoction of Nightmare Fuel inside a depressing milkshake.
**Now with [[Halo#Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command|newly added fluff in the Tabletop Games and other books,]] Halo is going eerily straight down the WH40K route. [[Space Marines|Covenant now having different chapters and sects,]] [[Warp|Slipspace shifting more like space hell,]] [[Inquisition|the UNSC/UEG sending secret police to silence and torture innocents]] [[Abbadon|and an ancient Eldritch A.I. of malevolent aura that shares the same name to a certain armless failure.]] Seriously we ain't making this shit up!
* '''''[[Battletech]]'''''.
* '''''Factorio'''''. Subtle, but, lone human, aliens want to kill you, everything you do makes smog, and your goal is to cover the world in industry, concrete, machines, and gun turrets. The world isn't dead when you arrive, but you're damn well going to kill it yourself or die trying.
* '''''Kane & Lynch.''''' Sweet Emperor, Kane & Lynch. Forget your GTAs and Paydays. In it, you control two murderous middle-aged fugitives, one of which is explicitly mentally troubled, and not in a funny way. The kind of true underworld scum that can only be described as genuinely repulsive. That, plus the fact that nothing ever goes right for anyone in the story just adds to it.
* '''''Attack on Titan''''' (You cannot win, ever. And if you do, you've probably lost all your friends, who've been eaten by giant freaky Mutants, who don't even need food. Yeeeah).
** To put things bluntly, it turns out even the Titans are perpetually suffering, the whole setting runs on a system of human sacrifice and cannibalism that would make the Aztecs proud, this is a series where facing the apocalypse does ''not'' bring out the best in humanity but instead remains as fractious, self-destructive, and divisive as ever (which is honestly one of the points of the story), and the leaders of humanity make the [[High Lords of Terra]] look competent. Things are such a clusterfuck with no hope of change that one of the characters has decided the only way things can get better is to wipe out every human that isn't a member of their ethnic group, and what's worse the plot seem to be proving them ''right''.
* '''''Metro''''' series (both the books and games, but mostly in the books, where the last known humans are hiding in underground subway tunnels, and when not trying to finish each other off are fighting endless hordes of [[mutant]]s [[/b/|and other, much worse things]]. Also, if you're one of the stalkers, the few brave ones that head to the surface to [[Blood Ravens|loot anything they can find]], you risk [[Tyranid|being eaten by flying daemons]]. Hell, it even has [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Metro-2033-Dmitry-Glukhovsky/dp/0575086254 the same "abandon all hope" vibe in the intro], just like 40k. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.)
** Note as the books go on the grimdarkness does tone down by showing the areas outside of the city to be in much better living conditions and other metros.(though not all the books are written by the same author).
* '''''Madness Combat''''' - no regret, no remorse, no reason, only [[Khorne|madness]].
* '''''LISA the RPG.'''''
* '''''The Darkness''''' videogames. Fairly average if utterly spoiled gangster is almost killed and inherits an ancient lineage of shadow monsters that feed off of shadows. Said gangster then decides to go on a revenge-killing spree against his uncle who ordered the whole thing while also fighting off the will of the monsters and protecting his girlfriend.
* The first two '''''Hyperion''''' books.
* '''''Elfen Lied''''' (where the next step of the evolution of mankind is a group of schizophrenic homicidal mutant girls with invisible tentacle hands and a hair-trigger temper who will either kill you in the worst way possible or [[Genestealer|infect you with their gene to increase their numbers]].)
* Most of '''Stephen King's''' works.
** As the joke goes, some people say that Stephen King's works are so fucked up they should come with a content warning. The reply is that they ''do'' have a content warning, they have the words "written by Stephen King" on the front.
* '''''S.T.A.L.K.E.R.''''' You travel a desolate landscape filled with mutants in all the horrific varieties, failed science projects (courtesy of the secret cabal of scientist settled there after USSR' s dissolution), anomalies that you often can't see and kill you instantly and a lot of renegades/bandits/fanatics/zombies. Your gear breaks all the time, resources are scarce and your goal is to get to the [[Wikipedia:Chernobyl disaster|highly dangerous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant]], which is also protected by lots of fanatics with the best gear available. If you make it through that hellish place that is The Zone, you'll likely get one of the 5 really grimdark endings, and if you paid a lot of attention to certain seemingly useless items along the way, you may get one of the other two grimdark endings. The rest of the world largely ignores what's happening inside The Zone, aside from a few scientists that study the deadly phenomena and the international military that maintains a cordon around The Zone so the nasty stuff doesn't get out and sometimes send expeditions inside, killing everything and everyone in sight. Also, [[Meme|A NU CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE]].
* '''''The Slenderman Mythos''''' (HE ALWAYS WATCHES).
* [[Dante|Dante "you hurt my feefees so I'll put you in hell" Alighieri]]'s '''''[[Warp|Inferno]]'''''. Put simply short, God is a fucking Sadist. If you suffer from depression/PTSD so much that you commit suicide, God will mutate you into an immortal tree that still feels pain and is constantly torn apart by harpies forever. How merciful. Sinners who committed Gluttony are punished by being eaten/mutilated alive by Cerberus, who transforms your corpse into slowly regenerating shit mud, all while a costant snowy rain (or rainy snow) hits your head; after being whole again, thou art eaten while trying to flee in despair, and it starts anew.But that's not the worst punishment. How about being under constant fireball rain in a desert for loving a person of the same gender? And being annihilated by snakes, then rebuilt? Or you find funnier being stuck in the ice? For ever. Because some old dude called Minos decided so.
* The '''''F.E.A.R.''''' series (even the third vanilla-by-comparison game is fucked up).
* '''''Total War: Attila''''' (Unlike the previous Total War titles, which were about your faction's rise to power from small backwater city/tribe/country into a mighty empire able to boss around its neighbors into doing your bidding, this one is about the decline of your faction as you desperately try to survive the onslaught of the Huns, who's sole purpose in the game is to worship Tengri by burning, pillaging, and raping their way through the known world. Particularly if you are the Romans. Winning is defined by being the last guy standing who gets to clean up the rubble and dead bodies, trying to rebuild their world after Attila destroyed it. Seriously, even the music sounds depressing and foreboding as fuck.)
* '''''[[Darkest Dungeon]]'''''. Your ancestor awakened some kind of God that is pretty much Cthulhu's brother and sent you a letter before killing himself, asking you to mop up the huge mess he created. Enjoy sending parties of 4 adventurers ranging from badass lepers to sickle-wielding jesters to their deaths in cultist-infested ruins, sewers filled with mutated cannibalistic pigmen, sea caverns serving as anthropomorphic sea creatures and forests corrupted by evil. And I'm not going to talk about the Darkest Dungeon itself. Also, have fun dealing with those bandits that are raiding the Hamlet for which you spent a fuckton of resources in upgrades.
* '''''The Day After''''', and its worse Brit counterpart, '''''Threads'''''.
* '''''Lord Of War'''''. The worst is that it's based on real events.
*'''''Now and Then, Here and There'''''. The DARKEST [[Isekai]] ever made. Period. Imagine if you will, that you were isekai'ed into a world that took direct inspiration from the ''Rwandan Genocide''. Yeah, we are in that type of territory here boys. The setting takes place in an alternate world, ''10 billion years'' into the future where the sun is about to go into a red giant and whatever scraps of humanity are fighting each other for the last remaining sources of water. Expect a lot of child soldiers, child abuse, child torture, child rape and ethnic cleansing to a scarily realistic degree. This is a post-post-apocalyptic world that is designed to break the viewers. It is an anime darker than 40k despite the 'happy' ending due the sheer levels of nihilism and unforgiving horrors of human depravity. As such, it is one of the few isekais that /tg/ could respect.
* '''''[[SCP Foundation]]''''' universe as a whole is borderline grimdark, as many aspects of the Foundation are mixed between absurd comedy, derp, and pure grimdark. At its very worst, the SCP Foundation has things that make the [[Daemonculaba]] look nice by comparison. Above all: [[Inquisition|Secure. Contain. Protect. Imagine a semi-totalitarian world power, funded by world governments to capture and contain anomalous entities, objects and locations so that the rest of mankind can live in a world that makes sense.]] We're talking animate statues that move when you blink (predating that episode of [[Doctor Who]]) and a creature that kills anyone that sees its face in ''any'' form. One of the most Grimdark anomalies is a girl pregnant with something that could cause the end of the world if it is ever born and the only way to stop it from being born is to regularly put her through something unimaginably horrible (The author has said that they never will reveal what exactly it is but it probably involves [[Rape]]) and periodically erase her memories to make sure she doesn't get used to it. And not all of these threats can be contained or stopped and are roaming free to harm innocents. And some of the captured SCPs are not necessary hostile or evil, but are still imprisoned in a worse case scenario. Oh, and the apocalypse has already happened several times over, whenever it does humanity is replaced with clones, and they have lost track of how many times they have done this. You can't even escape by dying, as the most of the possible afterlifes are just as bad if not far worse. While the SCP Foundation tries to avoid being outright bad guys, they are willing to do ANYTHING to keep the world normal and most of the other factions are morally grey at best, and the few good guy factions tend to cause a lot of unintentional harm. But still, [http://www.scp-wiki.net/black-white-black-white-black-white-black-white-black-white Secure. Contain. Protect.] Just another day at the office.
* '''''Shisha no Teikoku''''', the Empire of Corpses. Steampunk, Grimdark, Zombies, Cross-References and Conspiracies everywhere. It has even become possible to ressurect the dead, giving them their soul and intelligence back, but only 2 characters profit from it in the end, while everyone else stays a slave.
* '''''[https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/ The Eternal War]''''', as the name suggests
* '''''[[Dystopian Wars]]''''', as the name suggests
* '''''Clockup Games''''' where you get a firsthand look a sex cult and their destructive side effects.
* '''''World War Z''''' (the book). After zombies overran most of the world, many people had it so bad that they simply lost the will to live. Fighting in the Paris Catacombs with weaker weapons that wouldn't cause a cave-in due to hazardous gasses everywhere. Russian soldiers rioting over unfair treatment and enforced secrecy ordered under pain of death to kill one in ten of their own squadmates - with rocks - to teach them the price of freedom and democracy. Which they then happily traded away. The survival of the human race hinged on governments following a plan including elements of eugenics and leaving settlements of people behind as zombie bait. People resorted to cannibalism to survive in Canada. North Korea entirely vanished without a trace. Pakistan and Iran nuked each other. After the war officially ended, there are still loose zombies wandering around, Russia has started a breeding program to deal with severe underpopulation, several species are extinct, and diseases thought to be wiped out are coming back en masse.
* '''''Space Runaway Ideon'''''
* '''''[[Isekai|Re:Zero]]'''''
* '''''Uzumaki'''''. Basically a Lovecraftian horror manga where a seaside town gets [[rape]]d by spirals. Not as weird as it sounds. Or maybe it is as weird as it sounds but not as bad. Also has enough body horror to put most [[Chaos Spawn]] to shame.
** Pretty much anything by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junji_Ito Junji Ito.] Except ''Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu''.
* '''''[[Doom]]'''''. Demons from Hell have overrun Mars and Earth. You are the lone space marine capable of anything. Somewhat of a subversive case of grimdark: it's not you who is afraid of demons, [[awesome|it's the demons who are afraid of you]]. Commence with the [[Rip and Tear]].
* '''''Armored Trooper Votoms''''', an old-school mech anime. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Mankind has been at war for so long that even the computers created to direct strategy don't know what the goal is]]. War isn't glorious either, most of the first arc is about a squad that goes rogue and raids their own side's armory to find some loot. While the mech designs aren't pretty or fancy, they are more industrial and utilitarian than many contempoaries, being repurporsed exo-suits. The main character is a [[Perpetual]] done right, through a mix of natural regeneration abilities, skills and nigh supernatural luck; unlike, you know, [[Vulkan]], who was just handed something that should have probably belong to all Primarchs just so that he could make [[Horus|some]] [[Sanguinius|people]] [[Ferrus Manus|jealous]]. Take notes, [[Games Workshop|Gros Wotour]], take notes...
* The '''''Prototype''''' games. New York City is infected with a virus created by a generically-unethical corporation called GenTek that mutates people into mutant zombies and/or fucking huge deformed beasts. A secret division called Blackwatch is sent to brutally contain the virus, except it turns out they originally created the virus as a way to purge minorities. This may sound like Resident Evil but the resemblance ends here because you play as Alex Mercer (Prototype 1) and James Heller (Prototype 2), both of them infected by a strain the virus and became superhumans who can shapeshift and gain someone's memories by consuming them (read violently absorbing them into their bodies) and can grow weapons like claws or a blade arm.
* Saw: [[Cegorach|I just wanna play a game.]]
[[File:Digimon_Tamers_Nope_Nope_Nope!.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[RIP AND TEAR|It was going to be a kids show they said. It was going to be as whimsical as Pokemon they said...]]]]
* '''''[[Digimon: Digital Adventures|Digimon Tamers]]'''''. (Digimon as a franchise is noted to be surprisingly dark and adult for a kids anime in the 'Mon' genre, but Digimon Tamers is exceptionally depressing even by the series standard. Children attempting suicide, child abuse, attempted murder on a child, multiple on-screen deaths of major characters, torture, psychological mind rape on a young girl, PTSD on said young girl, eldritch abominations, horror and psychological horror. You think Tamers would have a happy ending? Lolnope, Tamers has a bittersweet ending in which the main kids lose their Digimon partners ''for ever''. This is what happens when you allow a guy notorious in psychological horror anime to do a kids show. There is a reason why Tamers is considered the Neon Genesis Evangelion for kids.)
** '''''Digimon Adventure Tri''''' (aimed towards adult fans of the series) takes Tamers up a notch in just plain creepyness. Deaths, assisted suicide, infanticide of Digimon babies, psychological damage, grief-induced madness, corruption, attempted genocide, racial supremacy, racism, immense property damage with collateral damage and attempted rape from the series' former mentor and teacher becoming a creepy sexual predator molesting one of the main characters and choking another one to near death (Both female by the way). Digimon doesn't fuck around.
* Most good 'Real Robot' anime/video games. Further discussion will result in [[skub]].
* '''''Full Metal Alchemist''''': The World is coated by a side of Noblebright at the beginning but morphs into 1984 the more you watch/read. The world Amestris starts out as fine and dandy (despite being a fascist military Dictatorship (the head of state is literaly called [[nazi|führer]])), then it morphs into a world where the Main Country (Amestris.) is at constant war with almost all it's neighbors commits Genocides Left and right and Murder's anyone who finds out the dark truth.
* '''''Shin Sekai Yori''''' also known as From the New World is a novel by Yusuke Nishi (and it has an anime adaptation, which is freaking awesome, everyone should watch it). Basically it's a dystopian story with people using magic to run their society instead of machines in a world that has deliberately regressed to the medieval level. Every child who doesn't manifest magical abilities by a certain age is killed, and all existing non-magical humans have been genetically engineered into a slave-race of mole-people so long ago they've forgotten their origins. The magical people are instead engineered to commit unwilling suicide should they use their powers to harm another human (mole people are fair game, though), and those of them who are too strong and can't manage to control themselves become Lovecraftian abominations.
* '''''Bloodborne''''' or the love child of Dark Souls (gameplay) and Lovecraftian mythology (its main inspiration for setting and theme). Another masterpiece from FROM software and Hidetaka Miyazaki. TLDR, the game is a mix of elritch horrors, omnipotent creatures which are fundementally gods and Dark Souls, though this time there is no fire to link, only FEAR.
* '''''Bet On Soldier/Iron Storm''''': WW1 got extended by 80 years, leading to a world where war is everything (including a televised past time), peace is considered a horrifically dissident ideal and there is a shadowy cabal behind the scenes plotting to make the war last forever.
* Noir in general, from Raymond Chandler's novels to games like This is the Police.
* '''''Magical Girl Site''''' (so grimdark it makes Meguca look Noblebright)
* '''''Wanted'''''. A comic book series which inspired the 2008 action flick. The villains won the war against the heroes and completely erased them from reality. The world of Wanted is one of the most horrific comic book series as it deconstructs the 'action macho man' of the superhero genre and insults the reader (As in break the fourth wall) if they ever felt like rooting for the 'protagonist'. How bad is Wanted? Crime is not only rampant but is actually part of the law, enforced by the Fraternity (Justice League for bad guys), and the only way to even have the closest thing to a 'safe and happy life' is by murdering your next door neighbor out of paranoia. Furthermore, as the world is cut up into sections and ruled by different supervillains, you will most likely be born in a country ruled by either a psychotic bastard who shoots children for shits and giggles, a Lex Luthor archetype who hungers for more unrestrained power, a literal Nazi from the future who wants another Holocaust, or a megalomaniac and sociopathic Chinese emperor who makes Mao Zedong like a chump or a completely immortal 'President-for-Life' Mugabe expy that will probably rule for eternity.
** Our 'protagonist' is a sociopathic, violent, sadistic rapist who assassinates people in ridiculous violent manners that makes the Punisher, Konrad Curze and Batman look like Constable Care in comparison. His first 'character development' was shooting his neighbor in the face because he was too damned nice... yeah... our 'heroes' are literally no different than the villains at all. If you could even call them 'heroes'. While characters in WH40K and Gears of War commit atrocities usually because they have a reason, idea or dogma behind their actions, the villains of Wanted commit them because [[Lulz|they felt like it.]] Don't even get us started with the supervillains who are so repulsive that they are barely redeemable. Wanted is one of those franchises that just makes you ''feel'' like a bastard for even trying to root for anyone. In terms of the moral scale, if DC is the classical Black and White franchise and Marvel is the classical Grey and Gray franchise, than Wanted is the classical Black and Black franchise. [[Chaos]] wishes it could be this efficiently evil.
* '''''Grim Dawn'''''. In a world called Cairn there is magic, monsters, and humans using 19th century tech. A group of mages failed some sort of ritual and accidentally called in a ghost called an Aetherial, setting off a chain of events that would lead to the "Grim Dawn". They invaded the world by possessing many creatures and humans for their own world domination plan, and the ensuing chaos allowed the Cthontic Cult (Mix Khorne and Slaaneshi pain cults) to come out of the shadows just as the Aetherials started getting shit done. This results in a never ending struggle between humans and multiple otherworldly powers. An optional meeting with a god from the universe tells the player that there are many gods watching this world and none of them, him included, gave a shit about their followers since this is just one of many realities they observe and the tragic event is nothing more than a normal day for him. So players have to fight through undead ([[Tomb Kings|who are cursed to forever linger in the world, only to get back up as soon as they are defeated]]), a land corrupted by the aether's green shit that is as harmful as the warp itself, and a crimson forest filled with Cthonic Cultists. The factions of the 'Good Guys' aren't much better either. There is either a necrophiliac ice ninja that will enslave the dead or a pretentious templar order whose god is just as bad as the others. The only hope lies in survivors from the aetherial encounters that gained unnatural powers which may potentially corrupt them in the process. Nothing will ever change though since the world now is filled with horrifying creatures and humanity is reduced to pockets of bandits squabbling over the pitiful remnants of their civilization. Invasions are still going strong despite your efforts at the very end of game and other gods are ready to back stab, corrupt, raid and torment every living creature in the world for their own selfish needs.
** The new expansion '''''Ashe of Malmouth''''' adds more grimdark and even a rare instance of sick fuckery in modern video game. The city Malmouth is said to be the first place hit with Aetherials forces so the entire place is nothing but a fucked up zombie town with buildings made out of human flesh. But before the player can get to that "fun party" however, they would need to cross the jungle, bog place of Ugdenbog, a wild swamp and evil infested shithole filled with cannibals and witches that got gangbang from both the Aetherials and Cthontic forced during the grim dawn. You are even allow to side with the local cannibals in Barrowholm (a much lesser evil mind comapre to the Cthontic and Atherial mind you). Once you got to Malmouth, the true sick fuckery begin. The local Aetherials had spare a few human survivors just so they could hunt them down and replenish for their needs of flesh. What's worst is that they have abducted local females (especially younger one) and use them as breeding cattle to produce more "test subject" and "soldiers". Doesn't that sounds like [[Daemonculaba]]? It also means that the enemies like Aetherial Scamp and Aetherial Imp, those little shit that are the size of a child you fought are actually.....yeah, I'm done with this shit.
* '''Peter Watts'''. Brutal neuropunk sci-fi horror, as bleak as H. P. Lovecraft but with a list of scientific citations at the end to let you know just how realistic it really is. Hits you with a world-ending catastrophe and then manages to make it a thousand times worse -- an alien invasion DURING a hard-takeoff singularity, for example. Sociopathy and post-human augments abound. [http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm Also, the books are free!]
* '''''Armored Warfare'''''. Terrorist/ultra-nationalist/anarchists with tanks, corporations that rule and enslave large portions of the world and the rest of the world might as well be a wasteland, as far as we know.
* Pandora from the '''''Borderlands''''' games. A whole planet covered in tonnes of rubbish, industrial equipment, pollution and debris from mining operations by huge intergalactic corporations. A classic example of unregulated capitalism where the few inhabitants (mostly from the abandoned mining operations) fight for survival against hideously mutated and highly dangerous wildlife and go completely mental in the process. What little rational civilisation there is is constantly under attack from all sides, including by the Hyperion corporation which wants to purge the planet of all life and start again from scratch. To do this the [[BBEG]] has built an army of robots and seeks to awaken an ancient, all-powerful, immortal, alien warrior ([[Derp|which, as it turns out, is very easy to kill]]). Pandora is essentially a [[Death World]]. [[Herp|And people still go and live in this shithole]] just to search for hidden caches of [[Pretend|ancient alien technology]]. TL;DR Australia on steroid with alienz lmao.
* '''''Call of Duty: Black Ops 3'''''
* '''''Homefront''''' (the game, not the similarly-named but unrelated movie)
* '''''Made in Abyss'''''. It is one of those [[Trap]] anime/manga that fools unsuspecting viewers into watching a cute, whimsical Studio Ghibli esque show filled full of wonder and adventure....what the series '''WON'T''' tell you is the amount of Grimdark it would throw at you at the most unsuspecting turn. You want to see cute moe loli children getting tortured, horribly disfigured, experimented on, brutally killed, discarded and abused? Made in Abyss got your back! You want to see a [[Deathworld]] so extreme it even kills you when you think of trying to escape? Made in Abyss is completely centered around that! You want to see a society run on child labor, in which death and injury is so common that a 12 year old knows how to amputate an arm and be unfazed by dead bodies? Made in Abyss is proud to include these! You want to see a [[Nazi|Josef Mengele Cosplayer]]/[[Awesome|Evil Daft Punk]]/[[Furry|Super Furry Loli Fetishist]]/[[Meme|Completely Best Dad EVAR!]] as the main villain? Made in Abyss is a proud sponsor of this! You want to have a deep and dark philosophy on how deep one's humanity can go before completely losing it and what counts as truly human before succumbing to the human excess of wants, needs and pride? Made in Abyss have plenty to showcase this! You want to see what would happen when Laputa's Flying Castle and Madoka Magica fucked Berserk? Made in Abyss is the end result of their sweaty lust! You want to hear absolutely beautiful music and see eye-poppingly gorgeous art which is contrasted against the raw, brutal and savage realities of the setting? Made in Abyss would win over you! You want to get emotionally attached to a bunch of [[Furry|moe furries]] and [[Fist of the North Star|cry manly tears]] without feeling too dirty? Don't worry, we in /tg/ can tolerate it... just about...
* '''''Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'''''. A manga/anime film made by Hayao Miyazaki, yes you heard us right. The man who was the main founder of Studio Ghibli and gave us childhood gems such as Tortoro, Spirited Away and Ponyo, gave us a Science-Fantasy Epic of the brutality of war. Sure there was Princess Mononoke, but that was basically a spiritual sequel to Nausicaa. The setting of Nausicaa is centered around a post-apocalyptic [[Deathworld]] in which humanity had nuked itself back into the early renaissance via kilometer tall, biomechanical, nuclear-firing [[Exterminatus|GOD-WARRIORS.]] Most children don't make it to adulthood and the remaining human civilizations are on the verge of collapse due to scarcity of resources and the ever growing encroachment of the Sea of Death/Corruption, a forest of highly toxic fungal jungles and incredibly violent mega-insects that goes [[RAGE|completely anal if you dare pluck a 'Shroom or two.]] To make matters worse, [[Adeptus Mechanicus|the state of technology has been declining over the years either due to loss of knowledge]] [[FATAL|or the sheer amount of dead children failing to reach the proper age to spread such knowledge.]] Nausicaa, especially the manga, does not shy away from human slavery, biological WMDS, genocides, nuclear holocaust, a gratuitous amount of inferred and overt infanticides, inquisitorial purging and the likes. By far the most mature and grittiest of Miyazaki's works. The one main thing that Nausicaa stands out from the rest is its titular character. Princess Nausicaa is an actual pacifist and a self-impose Jesus archetype. Yet despite such [[Noblebright]] characteristics, she is an absolute '''''BADASS'''''. Nausicaa may hate fighting and war, but she is not afraid to split some heads open and gut your belly empty. She is also a surrogate mother for a giant walking WMD and a surrogate big sister for a psychic boy with the [[PROMOTIONS|assets to boot;]] this gives her extra brownie points for being [[Awesome]]. Seriously, Merida and other Princesses has nothing on this chick.
**Because of the fact that Nausicaa for all intents and purposes, kickstarted the foundation of Studio Ghibli in the first place, its influence had a profound impact on Ghibli's future works. It basically was the progenitor of every Ghibli trope imaginable. You got the strong female heroine and her equally strong and capable male deuteragonist? check. A setting based upon fantastical elements and a blatant anti-war/pro-environmentalist message? check. Giant, awesome planes? check. Scenery populated by eye-candy artwork? check. A quirky, animal side character? check. The bad guys being revealed to be either not so evil/misunderstood/have morally grey beliefs? check. Furthermore, Nausicaa influenced other works such as the Chocobos from Final Fantasy being a complete copy of Nausicaa's Horseclaws, as well as the God-Warriors being the main inspiration of the motherfucking ''EVAs'' (Seriously, the main creator behind Evangelion first got the idea after animating the God-Warriors for Nausicaa. Seriously look it up, the resemblance is uncanny).
** Another studio Ghibli film called '''''Grave of the Fireflies''''' is far worse. The plot of film is "A pair of orphans starve to death in Japan at the end of WWII." That is the entire plot. This movie utter torture to watch and a great reminder of why war may be fun in games but is the worst thing imaginable in real life.
*'''''[http://www.synthiciderpg.com/ Synthicide]'''''. "When robots are gods, killing humans is fair game." In the deep darkness of the far, post-mutagen virus future, Human life is worthless (Murder and theft against them and each other is entirely legal), murder of sentient bots (Who are given free-range to torment humans with impunity after being let go from service to the major faction that makes them), however is one of the greatest offenses, and one the PC's are bound to commit at some point in their careers. Also, everything has a black and white color pallete.
* '''''Destiny/Destiny 2''''''s backstory. Basically, there was a very short-lived race of people called "The Krill" which lived only ten years on a planet called Fundament (fair note, Fundament is a gas giant, and Jupiter's orbit takes 10 years. So the Krill may have lived to a few hundred). There was a ruler called the Osmium King, and a traitor named Taox killed him. His daughters, Xi Ro, Aurash, and Sathonna took a ship to the planet's core where they met the Worm Gods, or Ahamkara. What happened is that the [[Khorne|Worm Gods grant immortality, but in order to become immortal you have to kill or the worm will eat you]], this was called The Sword Logic, and the Krill were re-named The Hive after killing that fucking traitor Taox. They proceeded to exterminate every living thing in the galaxy, [[Xeelee Sequence|harboring xenophobia and militarism which would make the Imperium look tolerant and pacifist in comparison]]
* The aftermath of '''''Avengers: Infinity War'''''. After the [[Rubric Marines|battledust]] settles, no one really wins at the end of the movie. Even the villain, who won, was badly injured and the victory was very costly.
* '''''Spec Ops: The Line''''', due to disguising itself as a run of the mill shooter, but disregard for orders and going in all guns blazing in quest of "becoming a hero" and "saving everyone", unlike most FPS, rather realistically leads from bad to worse, resulting in the player committing vile acts and outright war crimes. At the time of its release, its atmosphere and presentation made it a standout. Due to being heavily reliant on the player having no foreknowledge that it'll drown them face-first in the horrors of war, the game has undergone a sort of "Rosebud effect", and at worst can be considered grimderp. Granted, even then it's far less so than the examples below, and can be considered a period piece of sorts whose themes retain relevance.
* '''''The Suffering''''' and '''''The Suffering: Ties that Bind'''''. Two messed up stories about an unwell guy who may or may not have murdered his family tries to survive the worst prison in all of Maryland while it's being infested by nightmarish creatures symbolic of the countless atrocities committed on it (Being not only a prison, but also the former site of a WWII POW camp run by a paranoid lunatic, an old-timey mental institution run by an...eccentric who still haunts the place, and a puritan village that saw it's own recreation of the Salem Witch Hunts). The sequel sees the man in equally worse surroundings as Baltimore has it's own infestation of the monsters symbolic of the city's corruption and is now haunted not only by two deranged murderers, but also a figure from his past who supposedly know the truth about his family.
** In ''Ties That Bind'', it's implied that ''every'' city of decent size has the potential to be turned into a haunted hellscape. Because humans are shitty and have been doing shitty things to each other for all of recorded history, and hence ''every'' city has a number of bloodsoaked ghosts created by atrocities and desperate for vengeance.
* The first two seasons of '''''Animals of Farthing Wood''''', a animated series for kids ''infamous'' for having graphic depictions of violence and a death rate of major characters on par with Game of Thrones. Though somewhat at the low end of the Grimdark spectrum, the fact this show was for kids earns it major points for being grimdark. The third series noticeably toned down on the Grimdark elements and ended up being the least well regarded. Notable deaths in the series include but are not limited to:
** '''''The Pheasants''''', a couple of, well, pheasants who die at a farm in an extremely cruel manner. First, the wife is forced by her husband to take his watch and is spotted by the farmer, then shot. The husband, overcome with grief, elects to go back and find Adder, hoping to atone for causing his wife's death. Instead, he sees the cooked corpse of his wife and breaks down in tears, unable to pull himself together and is also shot dead by the farmer.
** Three baby mice are born in one episode. The very next episode they are all killed onscreen by a shrike, a bird infamous for impaling its prey, [https://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/2016/10/9nsgawb.png/ as seen here].
** The hedgehogs, while trying to cross a road, have to fight not to curl up into a ball... but eventually, the husband goes crazy, unable to stop himself from curling up, and his wife elects to stay with him, leading to both their deaths when a lorry runs them over.
* '''''Ava's Demon''''', a webcomic who's cutesy style doesn't hide how fucking dark this world can be. For starters, in the opening itself, a planet is destroyed by Silent Scavengers, which are Tyranids and Necrons mixed together, then the main character ends up impaled when they crash land, her soul going to turn into space dust until she agrees to help the demon who's been possessing her since she was born to get revenge on TITAN, who can at best be described as the God-Emperor if he were every negative stereotype about the Imperium taken to the extreme and then some. How bad is TITAN? It's implied he turned a star into a black hole solely because of its planets inhabitants wouldn't do what he wants. And trust us, things can only get worse in this setting.
* '''''Dragon Ball Z: History of Trunks'''''. Could just be expanded to Trunks' timeline in general. Dragon Ball has always been known as a sort of noble bright anime, but ''this'', damn. Everyone is either dead, dying, or living in fear of two walking machines of pure evil. And then when Trunks does actually take care of his enemies, another more powerful one shows up and just sends everything back to the way it was. Even the parody of this movie is oddly depressing.
* '''''Power Rangers RPM''''' plays with this trope, being what is effectively ''Terminator'' meets ''Mad Max'' "for kids." It is still Power Rangers, and does still have its fair share of comic relief, but this is also the season where a young girl is brainwashed into becoming a child soldier for Skynet and HAL 9000's demented love child, while also having her humanity stripped away and replaced with cold metal. That's not even starting to mention the fact that most of the planet is wiped out, with billions dying over the course of what seems like a few weeks.
* '''''Postal'''''. Not the sequels, which play the violence for laughs and topical humor, or the crap Uwe Boll movie, just the first game and it's remake (''Postal Redux''). Once you get past all the shock and outrage of being a forefather of the [[Satanic Panic|"Ban Violent Video Games"]] movement, you'll realize that this game is genuinely fucked up with its imagery and the protagonist is a mentally unwell individual.
* '''''Resistance : Fall of Man.'''''
* '''''Romero's "Dead" series''''', especially the later entries. ''Night'' is grim for the heroes, even if the overall story ends somewhat happily with the zombies taken care of. On the other hand, ''Dawn'' and ''Day'' are much darker, with zombies overrunning society, and though both end on positive notes, the journey there is a grim fight for survival. Most of the heroes die in ''Dawn'' (all of them if you count the depressing alternate cut), and in ''Day'' most of the characters, even the heroes, are hateful, unhinged, and/or just plain crazy.
* ''''' Requiem for a Dream'''''. If you have seen this movie, this is self-explanatory.
* '''''Blakes 7'''''. The BBC broadcast this against coronation street. And it was written by Terry Nation. It opens with a show trial after the hero gets set up to join a terrorist cell post mind wipe, gets accuses of paedophilia, and then exiled to the world of warhammer where Brian Blessed is king of the cult of scientology. Then you get 4 seasons of basically terrorists fighting the evil space empire, with the worlds most sarcastic computer, special effects that make your mates larp when they were 14 years old look high budget (ffs the federation are armed with caulking guns and some pipe). It's fucking GLORIOUS.
* '''''The Promised Neverland'''''. An anime/manga about a bunch of cute children raised in a nice orphanage, that is really a farm set up by demons who raise the children as food. Hence the "Neverland" part of the title, the children don't grow up, because they are killed by monsters. A handful girls get to survive until adulthood by getting selected to act as mothers to children, but they are still prisoners who can't leave the farm. If they are unlucky they will have to watch over their own children until the day they are killed.
** The world outside the farms is even worse. A thousand years ago the world was divided between humans and demons. The children are in the demons' half. Demons used to hunt humans until the two sides made a truce where the world was divided in two halves to keep peace and humans were handed over to the demons to farm as food and the wealthy family of humans who made the deal are out to kill the escaped children to uphold it. Demons actually need to eat humans or they degenerate into mindless animals that attack everything in sight, except of the demon nobility thanks to them consuming blood that removed the need. And they still insist on hoarding the best quality human meat for themselves while leaving the commoners to feed on meat from humans raised on factory farms where the humans are force fed until they die. This inferior quality meat isn't enough to keep demons from degrading and so the demons' human allies are doing horrifying expirements to produce better quality meat. Something could have been avoided if the demon nobility didn't make sure that only they were free from dependence on human meat as means of maintaining their control with their supply of meat, because as you can probably tell, they don't care about the commoners.
* '''''Dorohedoro'''''. Described by its own author as "a song with really dark lyrics, but a melody that's so happy that you want to dance to it". So happy grimdark? The title can literally be translated as "from shit to shit". Seriously, the setting wouldn't look out of place among a 40k [[hive world|underhive]]. The entire setting is a massive slum, with horrible pollution, mass poverty, and human body parts polluting the waterways. Your options for living are being a normal human, living in poverty and treated like toys, lab rats, and livestock by the various magic users. Or being a [[psyker|magic user]], and either be lynched by the terrified normies or captured by other magic users and boiled down to make drugs. And if you're a magic user, regardless of how good you are when you die you're [[Warp|guaranteed to be sent to hell to be tortured by devils for all eternity]] ([[Daemon Prince|unless you become a devil yourself]]). Or being a devil, and worry about being [[Tzeentch|screwed over by your boss for shits and giggles]] or eaten by Store, who is implied to be an angel and treats devils the same way devils treat mortals. Or being said boss, [[Necron|and dick around with people for all eternity because you're absolutely bored with existence]], can't die, and are horribly lonely since you can't form a meaningful bond with anyone else. Of course "your options" being metaphorical in this sense, since you are either born a normal human or magic user and can't change who you are (which is a major plot point for several characters). Three of the most moral people in the entire setting are a mob boss and two different flavors of serial killer. Even when the normal people manage to fight back by [[God-Emperor|creating a god through the merger of thousands of souls of those killed by magic users]], it immediately tries to kill ''everyone'' just to end its suffering. The only time the weather changes in the series is when it rains, which causes magic users to fall sick because it's the manifestation of the will of said god and if you're a magic user it ''hates'' you. Well, at least the food is good.
* '''''Lobotomy Corp/Library of Ruina'''''. Two games made by a Korean game studio named Project Moon, and well known for its dark setting. [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2098034966 I have decided to leave most of the detailed explanations to this guide here to avoid further paragraph bloat.] To put it simply, the first game: '''Lobotomy Corp''', is about a corporation trying to harvest energy from monsters that are extracted from humanities collective subconsciosness: Abnormalities. Each Abnormalities has special powers to mess with people's mind or just straight up kill people in a very gruesome way and the corps' employees has to suppress them. [[SCP Foundation|Does that sounds familiar?]]/Read Wonderlab, and it gets even worse. SPOILER ALERT: It turns out the energy is not only used to power every other corporation's devices, it is also used to power up some kind of positive energy beacon that spread its power aka Light to everyone in the city just so they could feel hope and be "saved". The plAn failed several times due to the failure of containing and suppressing Abnormalities. The reason why the plAn can be carried out despite its constant setbacks is all thanks to a certain time control technology that could rewind the time back before the incidents happened. Which means, the guy that has to manage this shithole has to go through this tiresome process of witnessing his employees' death again and again until he finally reaches a satisfactory conclusion. The employees that die are revived from every time rewind without ever remembering their death, but not the manager, nor the Sephiroth, whom are [[Dreadnought|brain jar robots]] that oversee their own departments in the Corp. As you play through, the difficulty spikes as the suffering from constant rewind has made the Sephiroth lose their minds which leads them from time to time to throw fits, forcing the manager to calm/supress their ass down. There was this robotic AI waifu assistant Angela that was created to help managing the place. For some reason, she was given the ability to feel emotions just so she could experience the same cruel passage of time and the scenery of Abnormalities killing the employees, driving her nuts. It was made all the more painful for her since she can perceive time in even slower rate, making her existence all the more painful. As the game progresses and the difficulty spikes even futher answers can now be given as to why is it the founders of the Corp decide to go through all this tragedy and torture to save the unknowing masses blind to their suffering and why exactly do the the city people need to be saved?
** Now things starts to get interesting in the second game: '''Library of Ruina'''. Turns out everyone living in the city has become "ill", as in mentally depressed/suffering from disease of the mind due the constant needs to meet certain demands for their jobs everyday, up to the point they could not have any free will to do anything they like.
*** More lore is dumped in the second game as it explains that world they lived in is controlled by Corporations: '''Wings''', who holds the most power and are forcing everyone to pay expensive taxes or else get fucked by their schemes. Their unfair demands create an enormous circle of poverty, forming countless '''Backstreets''' where death and crimes became the norm. In order to pay their unfair expensive tax, people resort to other ways of earning steady incomes. Some become a '''Fixer''', mercenary policemen who would fight for anyone for the right price (Note: there is no functional police department in the setting). Some become part of the '''Syndicates''', the Fixers' criminal counterpart who earn their keep by doing crime instead. Note that neither Fixers or Syndicates members have any choice but to keep climbing their ranks. Sure the higher their rank, the better their living conditions become, but it is a never ending grind that will eventually result in their deaths or depression to the point of suicide due to the amount of killing they've done.
*** Moving on to the upper class. Rich people live in '''The Nest''' and are well educated. But just like the Fixers and the Syndicates, they are not free from paying taxes and are also forced to climb their own social ladder in order to survive. Not to be mentioned the dangers of Backstreets still exist in some isolated areas of The Nest. Worse still is that the corporations they've worked for can and will use them as test subject to test their super precious technology: '''Singularity''' and see how much they get fucked up. They are basically office wage slaves with higher mortality rate.
*** Speaking of Singularity, it is a form of futuristic, magic-like technology (nanomachines, teleportation, laser, etc... you could only see from a typical scifi-movie) own by The Wings. Each Wing has their own Singularity and despite their usefulness however, they are still complicated technology, which can led to horrible accidents if it were mishandled, yet they were treated by The Wings like money tree. Sometimes a Wing could fell and left its Singularity sold on the market, to be purchase by other Wings. The catch being any instructions or informations regarding this Singularity had fell along with its Wing, meaning the buyer has no idea how it works other than knowing what it is truely capable of on surface or through some easy testing. Despite not knowing how to really using it however, the buyer [[capitalism|insisted on profiting it by making merchandises from it or marketing it as some kind of super transportation]]. For example: W-Corp's train are capable of transporting passengers to their destination in 10 seconds. What really happens is that the train entered into some kind of warped dimension and stucks inside for 2000+ fuckoff years. During that time, some of the passenger's body functions just stopped functioning, as they become unable to feel pain or hunger as the "time" for their body just stopped. What really happened was that T-Corp collaborate with W-Corp by using their time singurarity put the passenger's biological timer in stasis, ensured their survival in this seemly endless journey (T-Corp gets to profit from this remember). After 100 days, the passengers began tear each other apart out of boredom and insanity, to the point they eventually tearing themselves into bits that merges with one another. Case in point we don't talk about [[Chaos Spawn|Love Town]]. The crazy part is that the dimention portal Singularity is the purchased one, and thus W-corp has no idea how to fucking use it, yet used it on civilians anyway, but it is only because they can cancel out their own ignorance by using their own Singurarity, that is Material Restoring. By the time the train arrives, the W-Corp's agents came and restoring passengers using their Singurarity. Just like at L-Corp, using their biometrics, they restore the passengers body state to the time when they only experienced 10 seconds on the train, as if [[Just as Planned|nothing ever happened]]. Rich investors and other corporation's board chairman do knew about this, yet refused to speak out, not that they care since W-corp introduce them to the expensive option of first-class passenger seat (aka cryo stasis tube) for them if they are so afraid of even experience a train ride to hell, even though they won't remembered a damn thing when the train ride ends. The plebs can fall apart in the train and patch back up for all they care! So yeah, so much for dangerous technology. They are but a mere capitalism scheme, where corporations band together to juggle around the lives of innocents for a few cashes.
*** By letting a bunch of morally corrupted gold diggers handling such a dangerous technology, who is there to control them? meet '''The Head''', aka the shit heads that put everyone in their misery. They are the ones with absolute power in the setting. Not even the Wings wishes to fuck with them, for they have the best combat force out of them all, and being the [[Great Horned Rat|giant rat that made all the rules]]. It is hinted that they intended for the humans to suffer under the stresses of survival and death, as if they were treating the humans in the city like test subjects inside a vivarium they had created. In the games' ending, it was revealed they have [[Imperial Truth|strong obsessions with philosophies that defines humanity]] and [[Men of Iron|dislike for machines that look and act like humans]]. Although not much about them has been revealed yet, those little details is enough to label them as some kind of [[nazi|facist organization with an extremist ideology]]. They were known for shaping the world that is today with their armies of '''Arbiters''', aka [[Officio Assassinorum|Singularity-infused assassins]](which may or may not be comprised of hags). They are so powerful, one of them could take on everyone in the Wing and evict the Wing. Other than Arbiters, they have their own super fixers called '''The Claws''', who are comparable to a high grade Fixers with benefits of being mass produced. They also have the '''The Eyes''', aka '''The Beholders''' agents (or some kind of spirit/demon/telescreen hologram as it was revealed) that [[1984|report The Head for any potential tax evaders as well as any potential threats by surveillance the masses]]. No one fucks with The Head. NO ONE.
** And all these examples are just the tip of the iceberg to show how Grimdark life is in this setting. It gets potentially worse as '''Distortions''', which are related from the first game's Abnormalities, are monsters from the minds of an individual rather than humanity as a whole and due to the failed results of the plAn from the first game are now roaming the city to further spike up the mortality rate, making everybody's live even more miserable. Despite that, the Fixers still demand payment to kill them (which a new association was created to deal with them according to the ending/read Distortion Detective) and The Head refuses to even lend a hand in dealing with them (because distortions are considered a product of humanity, which is much more tolerable when compared to robots who act like humans). Oh and it is impossible to not live in the city, for the outside lies the '''Outskirts''', where monsters, robotic death machines and other abominations created from fail experiments reside. It is a wasteland composed of pretty much everywhere but the city, caused by the constant resource wars from the past and it is literary impossible for humans to lived in there. Even if it could, it would be filled with hostile exiles, outlaws or whatever godforsaken engineered intelligent species.
*** Interestingly, the setting's corporation culture could be a nod to the modern day capitalism in South Korea (It is a Korean game after all), and it in general shows how shitty life is under capitalism with the taxes and all that. Just slightly better to its Northern Communism brother I suppose.
** Further more the third upcoming game '''Limbus Corp''' has promises of further progressing the storyline and give more world building.
* '''''Warframe's lore.''''' What's so dark about Warframe? You're a space ninja which just chops stuff up and shoots right? Oh you're DEAD wrong. The main characters, the Tenno, are children survivors of an accident when a ship tried to use a metaphysical realm called [[warp|The Void]] to perform a faster-than-light jump to Tau Ceti (which was previously terraformed for their arrival). And what do we know about using metaphysical realms to travel faster-than-light? It goes [[Gellar Field|fuckingly bad]], invest in a warp drive.
**The Tenno were discovered by the Orokin, [[that guy|pansy hedonistic little faggots]] which sent them there, and were treated like absolute shit. To get an idea of just how awful the Orokin were, imagine the repressiveness, feudal structures, and lack of regard for human life found in the Inperium of Man… with a tech level comparable to the Dark Age of Technology. The only person who treated the Tenno with absolute respect was a scientist called [[this guy|Margulis]]. When the robots sent to terraform Tau Ceti, the Sentients, evolved intelligence and came back to anally rape the Orokin, their built-in weakness was void stuff, which the Tenno were full of. After a victory over the Sentients, the Tenno [[rape|bitchslapped the Orokin and bludgeoned them like the fucks they are]].
***The Orokin are just a bunch of [[Marines Malevolent|shitbags in general]]. They treated Tenno, Lorist healers, and Grineer like absolute shit until they need their help. They execute scientists when they fail to produce results, because a GREAT way of increasing productivity is executing a scientist who is doing the work. And the way they maintain their immortality is by capturing children, and mind-raping them to download their own consciousness into theirs. The reason that they couldn't control the Warframes and needed the Tenno to do so is because they [[that guy|lack basic human empathy]], they just abuse and torture everyone under them.
**The Grineer were slaves to the Orokin which are now free, and are now absolutely terrorizing the system. They're a bunch of rotten clones which are highly augmented, and they kill everyone who isn't them, which aren't any better. Oh, and dialogue implies that they process their dead into corpsestarch.
***The Corpus are the second faction, being greedy money-grubbers who care only for profit, and imprison a colony of debt-bondage slaves called "Fortuna", just to rub it in, and so on. Oh, and said Solaris are people whos HEADS have been stuffed into their torsos so they can easily reposes their limbs and organs for dept that is passed through the generations. Oh, and ya not able to pay with your limbs alone? They will scoop your brain out of your skull and shelve it for a set ammount of time... or the rest of your natural lifespan. As you are awake and lost in your thoughts.
****And, of course, this is done to kids, severing their necks and replacing them with a connector to more esily stuff their heads into their scooped out torsos once they are old enough to lug around a wrench. Pretty much all Post-Orokin civilizations are pieces of shit.
***And if evil bureaucrats, and shitty clones who want to kill everything that isn't them bad enough, we have the Infected, which are a [[Tyranids|hive mind of twisted forms that kill everything they can stick their bloody tendrils into]], bottom line is, Warframe is a shitty place.
* '''''[[Unhallowed Metropolis]]''''', a game representing probably the outer limits of how Grimdark you can go without sliding into Grimderp.
* ''''Fragged Cyberpunk''''': A prequel to the more optimistic Fragged Empire. Fragged Cyberpunk focuses on the twilight years of humanity as Habsburgian levels of genetic erosion and degradation leave it only a few centuries of life, while the powers that be, that could cure it do not bother and instead focus their efforts on terraforming hospitable worlds for their new, engineered super species. All the while herding humans into cramped cities on dead planets that are effectively concentration/death camps for what remains of mankind.
* '''''Clive Barker''''' in general. His works include Hellraiser, Rawhead Rex where an ancient god of male sex eats kids, the Midnight Meat Train where an ancient cult feeds people to an underground society of monsters so New York isn't destroyed, and... let's just say there's a reason he's basically a BDSM enthusiast given way too much handle.
* '''''[[EYE: Divine Cybermancy]]''''' (Basically, Wh40k with French people)
* '''''Half-Life''''', a video game series which helped revolutionize FPS games, has a surprisingly dark story and lore. In the first game, you play as Gordon Freeman and defeat an invading alien race after an accident you helped indirectly cause. Then comes the second game, where it turns out the alien boss you killed in the last game was keeping the Combine at bay, a race of inter-dimensional conquerors who bulldoze Earth in a matter of hours and occupy it, running the planet’s resources dry and slowly driving mankind to extinction while irreparable damage is done to the ecosystem, with a steadily losing resistance and Gordon’s old boss overseeing everything the Combine does. You come back and help turn the tide in the fight... but throughout all this, guiding your every action, is the G-Man, an enigmatic figure with Tzeentch levels of planning and manipulation. Ultimately, every action you take is for his benefit. You cannot make any real choice because he will make it for you. In other words, no matter what Gordon or anyone else does, the G-Man will always be right there, waiting in the wings, to slightly... adjust it to his benefit. And there’s almost nothing that can be done to stop him.

== Grimderp ==
{{topquote| Why don't people band together to fix things? Because GRIMDARK. Why hasn't an external system supplanted the current, barely functioning one? Because GRIMDARK. How does such a woefully inefficient system manage the logistical nightmare of endless total war? Because I murdered a baby seal, that's why! You should feel bad.|Terrible Writing Advice (The GRIMDARK Episode)}}

Grimderp is what happens when a writer takes grimdark so far that it goes [[derp]]. The writer puts something in that makes the setting more grimdark, but it's generally reliant on at least one party involved [[Fail|suddenly abandoning all sense of reason and logic]], or else caused by a lack of forethought on the implications of how the element interacts with the world. Many long-runner grimdark works will become this sooner or later, as either the setting or the cast's morality (rather a usually extreme lack thereof) will induce complete and utter apathy in the audience and cause them to give up out of sheer pointlessness. Most "dark" anime/manga tend to be more or less grimderp, as attempts to attract mature audiences ends in violence, blood, and sex without consequence (at BEST, mind you. [[Rape|At worst...]]), all in gratuitous quantities.

To be clear, grimderp is not just that something is "dark" or that a character behaves stupidly. Human beings make dumb, short-sighted, irrational, and morally objectionable decisions all the time, just crack open about any book on human history. Grimderp is when a character breaks character to do something they would normally never do or engage in behavior that is logistically impossible [[Gav Thorpe|("there are as many elves as the plot demands")]], simply "because it's dark". To put it in another way, it is basically the author(s) writing dark things for the sake of [[Edgy|edginess]]. The end product often comes out as painfully juvenile and sounding like something out of a 13-year-old fanfic that thinks adding barbwire coated in feces to everything makes something 'deep'.

That is not to say it is impossible to make an absurdly dark fiction without straying off course into grimderp territory. The post-apocalyptic short story, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison avoids the grimderp label due to the historical context the story was written in as well as the philosophical debate on the idea of cruelty as presented through AM. Is AM a spiteful, cruel monster or a product of man's penchant for violence and warfare trapped in its own database prison? Another example that avoids this title would be Stephen Baxter's [[Xeelee Sequence]], whose entire ethos is a critique and ruthless deconstruction on the entire [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] and [[Cthulhu|Cosmic Horror]] tropes whilst still crafting an unbelievably depressing multiverse. So yes, it is possible to write pure concentrated grimdark, but it should be done with a level of delicacy and self-awareness for it to be seen as legible.

* The Last of Us: Part 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed The Last of Us, is Grimderp in its purest form: Characters prolong suffering simply out of the blue. Basic logic is thrown out as countless characters dive headfirst into a rabbit hole of violence, suffering, and depression, often to the point of [[Edgy|literal edginess]].
* The Dothraki of "[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]". We are asked to believe that an entire culture can sustain itself by raiding settled people (when the Mongols and Plains Indians they're based on hunted and herded large animals), and then ''killing and not even selling or eating the livestock'', eating horses whenever possible despite borderline worshipping them and relying on them as beasts of burden or war steeds, solve literally all their disputes with murder and defeat their enemies with mass charges (despite real nomads having small populations, and winning battles with cavalry skill and/or surprise). At the point where the story says that "a wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull occasion" and mentions warriors casually raping dancers (the first fight to the death started over two warriors wanting the same dancer), the whole thing just looks like an [[edgy]] [[Magical Realm]] based on "hordes of eastern savages" clichés.
* [[My Little Pony|Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons]] is a fanfiction about magical ponies so grim, dark, and derp that it would almost be comical if it wasn't so fucking horrifying. With characters that get shit on (both figuratively and literally) more than the [[Lamenters]], and with a world so bleak (and missing the point of Fallout, FiM, ''and'' the original Fallout: Equestria) that an heroing <s>seems like</s> WOULD ACTUALLY BE the happiest ending (<s>Assuming it will end, it probably never will as long as there's enough cybernetics to keep rebuilding the constantly-dying protagonist)</s> HOLY SHIT IT ACTUALLY ENDED!), it's the prime example of how to make readers stop giving a fuck about the story at all.
* On that note, 90% of all grimdark fics are grimderp since writers are under the impression that [[Edgy|just making things dark makes it good writing]]. There are exceptions, but they are rare, because Sturgeon's Law is a thing. On the flip side, however, [[DOOM: Repercussions of Evil|certain examples]] have reached the apotheosis of Grimderp and become gut-bustingly hilarious.
* Warhammer 40,000 gets called out as this by some. Certainly it's a valid criticism of certain parts, but as we said earlier, [[Skub|you could argue about what is and is not grimderp in 40k for weeks without conclusion.]] For example, the Imperium is excessively self-destructive and tyrannical to its own people, but in the hands of a good writer, it's meant to underline how corrupt and desperate the Imperium has become without the Emperor's guidance, and how even those who are neither incompetent nor malicious still have to make brutally difficult choices. In the hands of a lesser writer, it's unnecessary evil purely for the sake of evil. We should call our next book "[[C.S. Goto|Darkness of Darkest Dark!]]"
** Historically, the Grail myths drift, not from [[Ecclesiarchy|Christian sources]], but Celtic ones (and beyond the Celts, older civilizations), and a typical feature of these myths happens to be the healing of a King through forces of restauration and regeneration (i.e. to put one in touch with his sources, with his roots), and the King was typically seen in agrarian societies as the King of a land, avatara of a Sky-Father, and [[Alarielle|the Queen as the Earth Goddess]]. The [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Psychic 101|Geokinesis psychic discipline]] has a power called '''Earth Blood''' who would do just that; if only [[Adeptus Custodes|someone]] let Librarians enter the Imperial Palace to do some Perceval style healing.
**[[Khornate Knights]]
**The [[Grey Knights]] (who seem to get this a lot, really) equipment and how it is made. Specifically, every bolt shell that the Grey Knights use is consecrated by the blood sacrifice of a righteous man or woman in a borderline Khornate ritual (and it has to be a ''good'' person, not just anyone. How the Imperium determines if someone is sufficiently "good" or not remains an open question). Those Aegis armors? Made from thousands of psykers (including ''children'') burned in a furnace to channel their power to the armor. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people have to die to make ''one'' Grey Knight combat-effective. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] as to whether it is grimderp or not, as it raises the question of where the Grey Knights find enough good people to consecrate all of the bolter rounds they go through every battle (especially in the 41st millenium, of all places).
**[[Gellar Field]]s being powered by the dreams of a comatose psyker being used as a battery (which also burns out and has to be replaced regularly). While very dark, it crosses the line into grimderp when one realizes 1) that Gellar Fields were said to be invented long before psykers began appearing among humanity, and 2) psykers are apparently rare enough in the Imperium that the Imperium has [[Black_Ships|an entire institution]] dedicated to rounding up psykers and bringing them back to Terra to make use of them, like making [[Astropath]]s or feeding the [[Astronomican]] and the [[Golden Throne]]. And according to recent editions the Black Ships are just barely meeting the quota to keep the [[Golden Throne]] going, so it's not like there are a lot of spare psykers around to be made into Gellar Field batteries.
**Originally, the [[Black Templars]] were treated as refusing to suffer the witch no matter who they were, to the point of refusing to ally with any Imperial instutition that made use of them. This got retconned to only hate ''enemy'' psykers in 6th edition after it was pointed out it would be really hard for the Black Templars to do anything if they refused to tolerate Astropaths or Navigators, and thus have no Warp travel or faster-than-light communication.
**[[Imperial_Worlds#Agri-World|Agri-Worlds]]. Seemingly in response to the common fandom sentiment that [[The_Imperium_of_Man#However.2C_is_the_Imperium_really_that_bad.3F|most worlds in the Imperium are actually quite decent places to live]], just so long as you don't get invaded by [[Orks]], [[Chris Wraight]] in ''Lords of Silence'' outlines a typical Agri-World, describing a horrific hellscape wracked by permanent Dust Bowl conditions and so much pesticides that the sky turns orange and it is not safe to walk around outside without a biohazard suit, and goes on to say that all Agri-Worlds are like this. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] within the community. Some say that this practice is perfectly acceptable grimdark, and that unsustainable farming practices aren't exactly unusual in human history (look at slash-and-burn farming practices in Brazil, or aquifer use in the United States). However, what people find issue with is the claim that ''all'' agri-worlds are invariably like this, when [[Your Dudes|the fact that conditions on various planets in the Imperium vary massively from world to world as needed for the plot and there is almost no standardization]] has always been considered one of the big selling points of the setting (not to mention contradicting descriptions of Agri-Worlds in [[Ciaphas Cain]] and the [[Last Chancers]]). The other aspect that people tend to find unbelievable is that the Imperium is claimed to not even use crop rotation in their Agri-Worlds, simply farming the same crop over and over again until the soil gives out and the planet becomes a [[Death World]]. The Imperium may have lost a lot of its ancient knowledge, but crop rotation as a practice goes back to the freaking ''Stone Age''. [[Derp|Its absurd to see knowledge that basic being lost in the horrors of Old Night]], or not been rediscovered in the time after. This also means the Imperium would literally have run out of planets thousands of years ago if this was true.
** The nature of how Imperial ships work has caused a great deal of [[skub]]. Namely the fact that the weapons of Imperial ships are loaded by hundreds of chem-bulked, rabid slaves dragging them into place while being whipped, the exertion being so great that many die frothing at the mouth by the effort or have their hands crushed by chains. They do this completely by hand, hauling the munitions across the ship with chains. This despite the fact that hydraulic power systems have existed since the 18th century. They don't even use inclined planes or levers, something which humanity has been using to haul large objects where they want them to go since the days of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and Easter Island. Or they could literally just use a [[Chimera Transport|Chimera]] or a team of grox to do the job, you know, the reason why humanity built large vehicles and domesticated large animals? Meanwhile the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] is using autoloaders, and is deliberately keeping the technology from the rest of the Imperium so they will have an advantage in case another civil war ever breaks out ( one changing this whole piece of lore to Imperial ships having inefficient, barely functional autoloaders due to Mechanicus hoarding or corner cutting so captains use press ganged maintenance teams who keep them running with blood, sweat, tears and lives for an uncaring Imperium would honestly be more grimdark). Some say this is perfectly acceptable grimdark, others say that this is just too ridiculously inefficient to take seriously, even for the Imperium.
**The Marneus Calgar comic has caused a shitstorm with the recent revelations that the average life expectancy of the BEST place in the Imperium is in the mid-thirties, which is fucking [[FAIL|'''STUPID''']]. Because that means that the life expectancy of other non-Ultramar worlds are drastically shorter, which makes the machinations on how the Imperium is run, fucking unsustainable. If child mortality rates are ''that high'', then entire worlds would have quite literally run out of humans especially in warzones, while entire sectors' worth of economies would collapse or stagnate as more kids die before they grow up and be a productive member of society. This creates a drain in resources and long-term stability; it was already considered unsustainable during MEDIEVAL times, so you could just extrapolate this to a million worlds and the Imperium should collapse under its own inertia and weight by this point. I don't care how 'disposable' human life is, it is still a resource and the [[Emprah]] fucking hates wasting resources. We get that the comic writer is trying to shoehorn even more feudalist themes in the comics, but the problem is, this is not Krieg we're talking about, but fucking ''Ultramar''. So either the author does not know what sense of scale is, or that he does not understand the works of [[Roboute Guilliman|Guilliman]] because Grandpa Smurf [[Rage|'''WOULD. NOT.''' let this shit fly under the radar.]] The author has confirmed, however, that it was added to make Ultramar feel more grimdark. To give you some context, Somalia in the mid 1960s has a higher life expectancy than this. This is not grimdark, this is just fucking stupid that breaks the suspension of disbelief. It is one of the few things that both 4Chan and Reddit concurrently agree upon as fluff breaking.
**To be honest, the whole idea of humans being the "teeming multitudes" faction [[Imperial Guard|winning battles by sheer weight of numbers]] and which [[Skaven|breed quickly and are easily replaced]] is kind of silly if you know anything about human reproduction. Among species on Earth, humans are notable for being one of the ''slowest'' reproducing species out there. It takes nine months for a human to gestate to maturity in the womb, more than any other animal aside from elephants and whales, and even after birth humans take longer to reach maturity even compared to our close relatives the Neanderthals and ''Homo erectus''. Additionally, it takes a huge amount of parental care to care for a child and raise them to functional adulthood, more than any other animal. On top of this, pregnancy is incredibly crippling for human females, and women have a one in three chance of dying in childbirth if giving birth without any external aid or midwives (as would be the case for a citizen of the underhives), something almost no other species has to deal with. The way our species generally works is we breed incredibly slowly but live an incredibly long time and invest a lot of resources to make sure those few that are born survive to adulthood, which basically makes us the [[elves]] of the animal kingdom. Barring some major technological breakthrough like artificial wombs or genetic engineering to reduce the crippling side effects of human pregnancy or long adolescence, humans are unlikely to be able to outbreed anything. And while some factions in the Imperium do have access to artificial wombs (like the [[Mechanicus]], most of humanity in 40k are shown to still reproducing the old fashioned way. Even if humanity starts out with a huge population it can throw at any problem, that population is going to be depleted pretty fast because humanity [[Eldar|can't replace their losses]]. Even if are the greatest resource the Imperium has, they're still trying to fight a war of attrition against foes including [[Daemons|ones who can't even be properly killed]] and two races who can easily outbreed humanity; [[Orks|one reproduces by fighting]] and [[Tyranids|the other are a rapidly reproducing horde of space locusts who go from conception to combat-ready within a Terran week]]. However, fans tend to ignore this because of the whole “to be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions” thing that is part of the general lack of regard for human life that makes 40k 40k, so people give it a pass.
** Some 40k sources claim that millions if not billions of guardsmen are killed EVERY SECOND. Even with the scale of the imperium taken into the account, having many times the current population of the Earth die every minute would be ridiculous for the whole of Imperium, let alone just the Imperial Guard.
**[[Deathwatch|Watch Captain Artemis]] saying [[Heresy|better to let the galaxy burn and allow the Imperium to fall to Chaos than allow the xenos to live]], right before [[Battle_of_Coheria|fucking up an eldar ritual that would have awakened Ynnead early and fucked over Slaanesh]], indirectly [[Gathering Storm|causing all of the ruckus of 8th Edition]]. Granted, while this does come from the [[Deathwatch]], who tend to be rabidly anti-xenos even by the Imperium's standards, this is for ''Chaos'', the Archenemy, the [[Big Bad Evil Guy]] of the Warhammer 40k setting, the one faction that even the notoriously xenophobic Imperium will begrudgingly admit is a bigger threat than the xenos and will team up with them to fight against it. A loyalist saying they ''prefer Chaos'' over anything, even as the lesser of two evils, should be grounds for an insta-[[BLAM]]ing and a red flag for Chaos corruption. And no, Watch Captain Artemis was not [[BLAM]]-ed for this, nor is this treated as the beginnings of his corruption and a slow fall to [[Chaos]]. And so a loyalist Space Marine managed to [[Fail|single-handedly save Slaanesh]]. Seriously, Chaos champions have been elevated to [[Daemon Prince|Daemon Princehood]] for less.
** The whole thing reached the lowest point by 3rd edition, considered the Darker and Edgier version of 40k, this is when some of the silliest things mentioned in this wiki were added or accentuated, after that 40k required more than 5 EDITIONS of fluff update, novels, characters and additional background to finally come back from "we no longer care" to an actual war with stakes and actual chances for all sides involved.
* [[Star Wars]]: Although Star Wars is 40k's high fantasy twin. There has been a few grimderp things that came out recently in Canon that has given 40k a run for its money. According to Canon, specifically the novel Ashoka, the Galactic Empire forces farming worlds by gunpoint to harvest a particular breed of crop to be used as rations for their troops. The problem? These crops were specifically designed to [[Wat|soak up every bit of nutrients on the planet until it becomes sterile.]] Meaning that the particular farming world is only capable of harvesting the crops a few times [[FAIL|''AT BEST'']] before it becomes a sterile death world. Let's put this in context here, the Galactic Empire is currently fighting a galaxy-wide insurgency and being a galaxy-wide government, the GE NEEDS a sustainable way to produce food in order to keep its giant military well-fed for long-term campaigns. So forcing farming worlds to produce crops that intentionally leave their worlds sterile after a few farming cycles is just fucking [[EPIC FAIL|'''STUPID'''.]] Because realistically, the GE would have quite literally, ran out of food in a decade, collapsing due to galaxy-wide famine. [[FAIL|This shit is so fucking stupid and retarded that it makes the abovementioned IoM agri-world farming practises look eco-friendly in comparison.]] Even if they did something somewhat reasonable like restricting this practice to worlds that sided with the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone Wars as a punishment, it's just spiteful beyond all reason.
** Seriously, this is a level of grimderp surpassing the [[Skub|Yuuzhan Vong]]; sure, they were be a race of machine-hating, masochistic religious zealots, but even they had organic technology to compensate, some were capable of pragmatism and they didn't make unsustainable food sources... and this is before they overhauled their society.
* [[Drowtales]]: The whole series is Grimderp on steroids, but there are a few particularly nauseating examples: nothing like the protagonist [[Mary Sue]] of innocence and purity blowing up the light elf MILF slave called Maya in an argument with a rival, an argument in which she feels morally justified right after buying a fighting slave which was doomed to die in underground Arenas even most Drow find disgusting, ran by a complete monster of a drow, regularly visited to watch slaves die, that's right, by the protagonist Ariel. Maya dies crying in her native tongue about "what she did to deserve this", crying she'll never see sunlight again. Protagonist feels a bit bad about a few days, and only that when she sees a few naked light elf slaves for sale, reminiscing Maya's face. Years pass and she thinks all the slavery and needless murder isn't so cool... just before visiting a surface colony who was taken from humans. She and her lesbian lover have an orgy on the settlement they just conquered by massacre. After a blissful after-sex sleep, the settlement is counterattacked by desperate humans coming to save their kin... which are promptly murdered by the half-light half-dark elf paladin of Sharess (Yes, a [[Mary Sue]] worshipping a total [[Baldur's Gate]] rip-off) who is all high and righteous when she is burning innocent humans who wanted to save their kin from slave traders about to buy the survivors. The protagonist's lesbian empath Drow (yes, with a length of purple hair paint, straight out of Deviantart) friend berates the cornered humans with a lame excuse line of "I feel your pain, why don't you take your survivors and run?!" when the said humans scream in desperation to save their families from the town's locked buildings, die horribly and our "I'm glad my clan Sarghress prevents slavery, let's shake hands and feast on the food we just plundered!" protagonist shakes hands on it. It's not even depressing, it's plain fucking logic diarrhea with enough depressive themes to OD an edgy 13 year old. (considering the authors were that old when they started...)
* Jeph Loeb's run on [[/co/|Ultimate Marvel]]: people dying brutally (most well known being Wasp getting eaten by the Blob) and completely gratuitously (Dr. Strange is killed the one page he shows up on and is completely forgotten afterwards), lore rape worst than anything Ward ever did (the heroic Pyro is now a rapist version of the mainline Marvel Pyro with no explanation, Thor going from new age hippie to mainline-style viking with no explanation... at least that last one is kinda cool). Overall it was so bad it effectively made the Ultimate Marvel universe (with the exception of Spider-Man and his cast) completely unusable. Small wonder that years later, Marvel thought smashing it and the main Marvel universe together would be a good idea.
* Koutetsujou no Kabaneri, an anime with a similar premise to the already-grimdark ''Attack on Titan'': It's set in (presumably feudal) Japan, where people are hiding behind walls and communicate with each others using trains to travel from town to town, and trades the giants and horses for guns and [[zombie]]s. Several of the characters have moments of team-killing ineptitude that end up prolonging the conflict far longer than it should:
**The [[samurai]] don't bother with armor and generally aren't very combat-savvy when it comes to zombies, and their [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies turn any defense against a wall breach into an utter clusterfuck. The antagonist is [[Abaddon|an absolute failure AND wanted for crimes against humanity]], being a [[Edgy|pretentious Che Guevara wannabe]] [[Chaos Pretty Marines|with pink hair]] and wielder of an ugly-yet-somewhat effective [[Sword|sabre]]. He also has a devoted following despite being thoroughly unable to grasp the basics of warfare and its ethics (he thinks children are cowards for not being able to fight monsters that ambush and run through trained adult fighters with ease, and [[What|considers destroying one's own resources and castles to be a viable strategy]]). Meanwhile, the main protagonist has found not one, but TWO miracle solutions that would allow mankind to fight back against the zombie plague, but no one will listen to him, especially not the main antagonist, both because of the above and because ''of course they wouldn't'', it's <s>grimderp</s> GRIMDARK.
**Ironically, Ancient Shintoism (a main religion of that period) has the only known anti-[[Nurgle|zombie]] deities: ''Kukuri hime no kami'', a goddess of purification ([[Reasonable Daemonette|''despite'' being rather sado-masochist]]) whose followers would bind a corpse with ropes, place a big stone on the chest and bury it (coffins are optional). [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Insane as it was]], it was the most common form of burial in the Jomon period, and never went completely out of date through all the medieval period. Despite the rites being a perfect defense against [[Dark Souls|an undead invasion]], apparently they didn't take in this setting. Three guesses why.
*Most dark fantasy/"Ryona" hentai like Redo of a Healer (see [[Edgy]] for details), Kuroinu, Maggot Baits and whatever bargain basement hentai game developer puts the heroines through horrifying rapes, tortures and debauchery with no way to escape, all for little more purposes than to degrade, humiliate and mind-break them.
* [[FATAL]]
* [[Black Tokyo]]
* Teenagers bad attempts at recreating stuff they like such as Creepypasta's.
* About half of Garth Ennis's work goes so far around the bend that, if you don't stop caring about anyone in the story and put it down first, it becomes compelling or hilarious. Practically all of his original stories are drowning in grimderp (and author ax grinding). Prime examples include;
** The Boys: Almost every superhero is an irredeemable sexual deviant and loose cannon whose only crime fighting accomplishments come from corporate PR lies, and the story's protagonists are little better.
*** Surprisingly averted with it's Amazon Prime adaptation. By actually making most of the heroes less unambiguously rotten, cutting down the childish silliness, making the violence less gratuitous and more justified, and making the Boys themselves more human, the series actually manages to be WAY darker than the comics. Hell, Billy Butcher actually contemplates MURDERING A CHILD in the series, which is something the way more psychotic Butcher of the comics would not.
** Crossed: One of his most infamous creations. Most of the world is dead or turned into [[Slaanesh|murder-raping sadists]] á la the Reavers from Firefly due to a virus with a visible symptom being boils forming a cross pattern on the infectee's face. Showing any courage will get you killed or turned into one of the aforementioned murder-rapists, and there are survivors that are just as fucked up as the infectees. Supposedly a dig at arm chair survivalists, it's now mostly remembered for being edgy for the sake of edginess and being overall boring as hell.
* Hatred: Remember how your family told you that GTA was breeding criminals and that games created "monsters"? Well, Hatred tries to cash in on that by making a game dedicated to killing innocent people and making a "parody" out of those reactions, but [[FAIL|fails miserably]] to do that. This is because not only is our main "hero" a complete asshole with literally nothing redeeming about him, but most of the gameplay consists on you shooting unnarmed civilians and members of the policy/military that are '''extremely''' easy to beat, and coupled with the monochrome colors the game becomes ''very'' boring in a ''very'' quick pace. And unlike these old games that caused oh so much controversy, Hatred doesn't even have that good old orkish humor and tries to [[Serious Business|take everything inside it seriously]], which makes the "Grimdark" aspect come off as ''very'' dumb.
* [[Carl Sargent]]'s total rape of the [[Greyhawk]] setting in ''[[From The Ashes]]''. Something of a unique case in that the grimdark was well-done; it's that he had to fuck over the game's oldest and most-beloved setting (see the article for details) to do it that made it Derp.
* Most of the anti-[[HFY]] content in the [[World of Darkness]], especially the unmitigated misanthropy in parts of [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]. Humans vary from 'Idiotic sheep permanently at the bottom of the food chain' to 'Apathetic fools responsible for most of the world's ills' to 'Cackling, moustache-twirling villains', civilization and all its fruits are EVIL!, and the tribe of bestiality-born werewolves that want to exterminate the human race down to pre-Stone Age levels are presented as heroes that're unequivocally morally justified in their actions (both in and out of setting, if some of the Apocalypse scenarios are anything to go off). [[FAIL|Yeah.]]
* Anything made by biggest hack in Hollywood, <s>Zack</s> Hack Snyder.
* LifeWeb: A complex SS13 spinoff taking place in a cave fortress of a neo-medieval world in the far future, combat is more lethal, and it claims to explore subjects like murder, corruption, rape(with no regard for age), torture, cultism and general human suffering. In reality, the themes it "explores" just means "it's in the game and you can do it" and it's a farce on every level possible.
* The ''Hearts of Iron IV'' mod ''The New Order: Last Days of Europe'' has numerous dystopian "failstates", but the most notorious is the SS Ordenstaat Burgund, also known as Burgundy. Covering northeastern France and Belgium, Burgundy is ruled by [[Nazi|Heinrich Himmler and the SS]] as a giant concentration camp. Its sole purpose is genocide, first on the local and ultimately on the [[Exterminatus|global]] scale. When it isn't killing its own inhabitants, it's backing SS agents throughout the Third Reich's sphere of influence to further its cause of EEEVIL. Economic minister Oswald Pohl even points out that killing massive swathes of the nation's population just for not being Aryan isn't sustainable, but Himmler regards such criticism as treason. Realistically, Burgundy should have collapsed on itself before the game started, but it can stick around regardless. Playing as it is as difficult and miserable as you'd expect from a Holocaust management sim.
** Recent updates have focused more on the "derp" than the "grim", apparently as a reaction to Burgundy's pre-rework supervillainy. Unlike before, where it could last into the '80s [[Plot Armor|because the plot would break otherwise]], nü-Burgundy experiences [[Not As Planned]] moments on a near-[[Abbadon|FAILbaddon]] scale. Himmler [[BLAM|shooting Oswald Pohl]] for his "treason" not only tanks the economy but also makes economic management ''impossible''. Over time, the slaves, French and Belgian collaborator legions, and even Burgundy's own ministers will eventually get fed up and rebel. If Himmler purges them, ''literally everyone else'' will rise up in an event called the "Burgundian Spring". Even in the rare event that Himmler actually gets his nuclear Holocaust, it ultimately fails; the "pure" Aryans he chose to preserve emerge from their bunkers...and peacefully join post-apocalyptic society without issue. Why? Himmler told them that only true Aryans would survive the nuclear holocaust, so they assume that [[Derp|all the survivors are Aryan ''by definition'']], [[Wat|even if said survivors are Jewish or black]].

== Grim Tragedy ==
Naturally in a universe such as 40k, the grimdarkness of the setting would mean nothing if not tied into the ironic tragedy of the lore. This includes:

*[[Imperium|A species]] so afraid of the dauntless perils of Chaos that they will brutally harass and execute entire populations out of mere suspicion, all to stop the spread of ruin while indirectly strengthening those who seek to destroy them (''particularly'' Chaos). They, as a people, have progressed massively in population, technology and power since their species conception, yet they, more than anyone else, have lost one vital element: their humanity.

*[[Eldar|A race who]] was once at a zenith of civilization and prosperity, capable of bending the very Gods to their will. But by their own hand reduced themselves to scattered isolated fleets and colonies always on the run; their pompous and arrogant leaders hide behind a dwindling sense of security based in superiority over other races who are far more successful and perhaps destined to be greater than they ever were. [[Dark Eldar|A number among them]], after their unholy and insidious near-demise, continue (with oblivious glee) to empower [[Slaanesh|the very being that brought them to ruin]] in order to save themselves.

*[[Orks|A race of creatures]] who possess the brightest "potential"; with near mastery over the psychic, near-natural physical perfection and almost limitless numbers from their highly successful methods of reproduction... And yet they are genetically restricted by an unquenchable thirst for conflict which drives each to idiocy, leaving them hopeless of advancing beyond simple barbarians.

*[[Necron|An ancient people]] who were so envious of their neighbors' lifespans that they were ready to cripple the entire galaxy just for the sake of petty superiority - a superiority neutered by their unwitting transformation into metaphorical and literal automatons. They are now mindless machines who, bar few, care nothing of their past and seek only one thing: Conquest. And those who still have their personalities are either insane, demented, depressed, brooding, psychotic, or any combination of these in various proportions.

*[[Tau|A newborn race]] who innocently believes that there can be peace and acknowledgement among each other. Unfortunately the sinister methods they employ hoping that it is for [[Greater Good|something better]] is slowly, but steadily driving them into the decadence that plagues the other species. In doing so they become proof, both of the fact that [[Horus|anyone]], [[Emperor|no matter their intentions]], can be corrupted, and also of the kindness that the rest have forsaken for damnation and despair...

*The fact that, despite tens of thousands of years of knowing nothing but war, these peoples are woefully unprepared for what is to come. No matter how many regiments can be raised or Craftworlds restored, what is out there is [[Tyranids|all consuming, diabolical and numberless...]] Unless, they are themselves on the verge of extinction, and as such, desperately trying to cross over the great void between galaxies, which implies fighting against [[Ork|invincibles foes]] and [[Ultramarines|fate dodging cheaters]] unnaturaly empowered by the grief of an [[Games Workshop|unspeakable Eldritch Abomination beyond the cosmos]]. The good option is that there are a thousand galaxies worth of the fucking bugs; the bad option is that there are billions upon billions of galaxies worth of the fucking bugs. The worse option is that billions upon billions galaxies worth of what is essentially the perfect organism is running away from something worse.

== See also ==
*[[Noblebright]]
*[[Edgy]]
*[[Eversor]]
*[[Lamenters]]

== External Links ==
* [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/grimdark KnowYourMeme has examples from outside of /tg/]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQAWBeFnkg8 Trope Talk: Grimdark], a analysis of the "Grimdark" style of storytelling and why it works (and why sometimes it doesn't)
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Grimdark

2022-01-07T10:10:28Z

195.194.119.220: /* Grimderp */

{{Grimdark}}
[[File:P23436_p_v10_aa.jpg|300px|right|thumb|If your protagonist or antagonist isn't at least this [[edgy]], then you're probably doing Grimdark wrong.]]
[[Image:Lovepeace.png|thumb|right|It's totally the opposite of this.]][[Image:Inspector Grimgadget.jpg|thumb|right|Inspector Gadget, reimagined with a grimdark feel.]]
[[Image:Grimdark.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark versions of the TMNT. Their mentor is a Skaven.]]
[[Image:Grimdarkery.jpg|thumb|right|Grimdark means war, and always endless, brutal war.]]
{{topquote|We are not men disguised as mere dogs, we are wolves disguised as men|Captain Muroto, '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''}}
{{topquote|They say, 'Evil prevails when good men fail to act.' What they ought to say is, 'Evil prevails.'|Yuri Orlov, ''Lord of War''}}

{{topquote|Tᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀɪɴᴅ ɪᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴅᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ɪᴛ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇɴ sʜᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ ᴏɴᴇ ᴀᴛᴏᴍ ᴏғ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʟᴇᴄᴜʟᴇ ᴏғ ᴍᴇʀᴄʏ ᴀɴᴅ ʏᴇᴛ... Aɴᴅ ʏᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴀᴄᴛ ᴀs ɪғ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs sᴏᴍᴇ ɪᴅᴇᴀʟ ᴏʀᴅᴇʀ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡᴏʀʟᴅ, ᴀs ɪғ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ɪs sᴏᴍᴇ... Sᴏᴍᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛɴᴇss ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ʙʏ ᴡʜɪᴄʜ ɪᴛ ᴍɪɢʜᴛ ʙᴇ ᴊᴜᴅɢᴇᴅ.|DEATH, [[Discworld|Hogfather]] (while explaining that since humans believe that it does, the way we believe Santa or the "Hogfather" does, we make it so it does.)}}

'''Grimdark''' is an adjective derived from the tagline for [[Warhammer 40k]], which states that "In the '''grim darkness''' of the far future, there is only war," and in some of the novels (at least a few of the [[Ciaphas Cain]] stories, for instance) it states straightforwardly, "in the '''grim dark''' future..." Whether this came after "grimdark" began to be popularly used as an adjective is not wholly clear (probably after). It is generally used to describe a dilapidated, dystopian "crapsack world" setting which it would really suck to live in, as say Somalia, North Korea, the North of England and the setting of Warhammer 40k itself. In fairness to the franchise and its defenders, this is because the published material primarily focuses on war and [[Chaos Gods|cults]] and other [[Daemonculaba|horrible things]]. There are supposed to be many pleasant and peaceful worlds and sectors in the Imperium, but they are mostly ignored as they are boring -- and when they DO appear in lore or fluff, they're usually to go from "0 problems" to "totally fucked", very quickly. It can also be used to describe artwork that has a ''grimdark'' feel, even if the setting itself would not normally be considered grim or dark, or something sinister or uncommonly threatening/intimidating in real-life. This often applies to fan-art and writefaggotry as well.

Depending on your own personal tolerances for grim darkness of course, it can be taken to the extreme, just like with all descriptive traits. There is a point in which it becomes more ridiculous than anything else, because everything is indefeasibly tragic all the time - the term for this being [[Grimdark#Grimderp|grimderp]], which is explained further below.

This is an accusation often leveled at Warhammer itself, and leads some to rail against "Grimdark" as a whole, decrying the concept as ridiculous attempts at [[edgy|edginess]] (typically by teenagers), and using the expression to refer solely to such over-the-top settings in a strictly pejorative manner. Others actually embrace this ridiculousness and run with it (including Warhammer 40K itself, due to being a much more obviously comedic setting [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|in early editions]]), insisting that the detractors or even the creators who take it seriously are making a mistake. Some people embrace the grimdarkness and mix it up with some humor (like painting Necrons with bright colors to make them look like edible candy figurines), especially if they are Ork players. But the schism between taking Warhammer's grimdarkness seriously or not is mostly visible with races such as the Tau, who are noticeably less grimdark ''visually'' than most of the other races and are either loved or absolutely hated for it (when not hated for being overpowered as shit). Meanwhile, another sizable percentage postulate that Grimdarkness lends greater moral and ethical complexity to a setting, based on [[Edgy|the fallacy that darkness always equals depth]]. Such people usually cite the works of Dan Abnett and many other Warhammer 40K writers to lend credence to such suppositions; these people are clearly ignoring that fact that most writers tone the grimdark WAY down. What, you didn't think the fact that the Imperium being an effective government, civilians having normal happy lives on par with the Scandinavians, Commissars who never *BLAM* their troops was odd? Needless to say, grimdark is [[Skub|a rather polarizing subject whose discussion often leaves little room for a middle ground]].

Speaking of, the polar opposite of grimdark is [[Noblebright]], a deliberate inversion of grim and dark nature where honor, chivalry, happiness and high adventure rule the day, as opposed to dying in a ditch from a supernatural plague as you run out of potable water and can no longer wait for the logistics department to process your dead comrades into something slightly more palatable before you start eating them. Oh, and being {{BLAM}}ed by a Commissar for even starting to look a little sad from these thoughts.

Although, it could be argued that 40K proper is actually Nobledark. Although the lore claims one man cannot make a difference and heroes are meaningless (Grim), we see the complete opposite of that actually happening in the lore. 40K fluff (40K, not just 30K) is crammed to bursting with heroes who made major differences. If anything, 40K seems to be about the difference one man ''can'' make rather than showing one man cannot make a difference. Even the events revolve around the Great Man idea of basically superheroes and supervillains moving the galaxy (and it's not just actual superhumans doing this). It is nonetheless a very dark setting, though.

== Common grimdark themes ==
*[[1984|Massive, imperialist, overbearing, bureaucratic, dystopian dictatorships]]; e.g. [[Imperium of Man|Nazi Germany clones]], [[Tau|Soviet Union/China clones]], or straight out examples of [[Paranoia|"Big Brother is watching you"]].
*Constant, never ever-ending warfare, usually as a horrific combination of outdated tactics and technology (And sometimes overly advanced technology). E.g., sending line infantry armed with single-shot [[Lasgun|Lasguns]] against a [[Bolter|Heavy Bolter]] nest.
*Horrifyingly large death tolls are perfectly normal. Genocide is also perfectly normal, and in many cases encouraged and espoused.
*Slavery is also perfectly normal, and sometimes considered a great necessity. Massive constructs are often built via slave labor.
*Everyone is racist towards non-humans/[[Eldar|elves]]/[[Mutant|mutants]]/[[Orks|fungus]]/[[Rak'gol|lizards]]/[[Slaugth|worms]]/[[Necrons|robots]]/[[Tyranids|aliens]]/[[Chaos|each other]]. Vice versa for literally every race.
*Speaking of xenophobia towards every species, those who express sympathy for a hated race and/or intermingle with said race, are usually publicly humiliated, tortured, and usually purged.
*Daily dose of [[HFY]]. [[Astral Knights|And]] [[Awesome]].
*[[Shadowrun|The vast majority are poor people who literally live in shit, pollution, crime]], and a plethora of [[Nurgle|all kinds of filthy diseases]], except for a [[Monopoly|few greedy upper 1% who own 99.9% of everything]].
*You, a poor bastard, are being farmed for shits and giggles by said few greedy upper 1%.
*Most of the poor bastards are being forced to work 23 hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, in factories and/or forced labour camps, until their bodies give out. Forever.
*They're probably making weapons and equipment for [[Imperial Guard|the military]] (which is where the rest of the poor bastards are).
*[[Age of Strife|Dark, disgraceful and recondite past]] covered with [[Alpha Legion|lies]] [[Imperium|propanganda]], [[Tzeentch|deception]] and [[Eldar|partiality]].
*The Higher Powers do indeed give you consideration, they're just malevolent as all fuck.
*Chronic backstabbing. Just like in real life relationships. (''Who hurt you?'')
*[[Ork Snipers|"Frie]][[Marines Malevolent|ndly]] [[Kharn|fire"]]
*[[Space Marines|Child]] [[Imperial Guard|soldiers]]. Just like in real life.
*Your morning alarm clock is the stray bullets you hope don't hit you, from [[Necromunda|the gangsters doing a drive-by on their enemy who happens to be in the same district]] to whom you don't even belong to or like.
*Status quo is god. [[Nurgle|Literally.]]
*[[Tzeentch|Change is worse]].
*[[Cyberpunk|Cybernetics and cyborgs]]; the less human, the better.
*[[Commissar|Daily forecasts reguarly call for a 80% chance or more of *BLAM*]].
*[[Judge Dredd|Police]] [[Adeptus Arbites|brutality]].
*Even minor crimes can have major punishments.
*[[Inquisition|Being innocent or even a victim of crime can be counted as a crime]]. All participants in a crime, whether perpetrator or victim, are charged.
*[[Inquisition|Government agencies that are always there to fuck you over]] at the slightest hint of [[heresy]].
*Did I mention that the [[Inquisition]] commits planetary genocide 24/7?
*The [[Erebus|cock]][[Dark Eldar|suckers]] responsible for most of the shittiness are not only getting away with it, but are surviving and thriving, without becoming major targets for the [[noblebright]] forces.
*Torture that makes the CIA look like saints.
*[[Call of Cthulhu|Sanity checks]].
*Criminally insane delusional psychotics tortured in filthy mental asylums (in case of no/failed SAN checks).
*[[H.P. Lovecraft|Disgusting, horrifying, tentacled eldritch abominations]] that are often the cause of aforementioned criminal insanity.
*Rape. Just like in real life. ([[/d/|And often by said tentacled Eldritch Abominations]].)
*Surgery without anesthesia.
*[[Cannibalism]], in three forms:
*# For power (embracing the myth of "you are what you eat").
*# For food value; sometimes this is concealed by callous authorities as some other kind of food; sometimes, it's just a biological, cultural or desperation thing.
*# For the sheer fun of it.
*Want chemotherapy or some other expensive treatment? Well, you have to eviscerate that old dropout student of yours in order to pay.
*In fact even surgery without anesthesia is a luxury available only to wealthy or important ones, as are all other forms of medicine. 99% of people are expected to die when they fall sick or get injured. That is when they don't get executed FOR falling sick or getting injured.
*[[Fleshcrafting|Human experiments]]. [[Fabius Bile|Sometimes willingly, but most of the time not]]!
*Zombie plagues.
*Ritual cult sacrifices.
*Massive amounts of blood, gore, guts, pain and hatred.
*No personal opinion or choice. Only the illusion of it, in which you probably end up an [[Magnus|unwil]][[Mortarion|ling]] [[Rubric Marines|sla]][[necron|ve]]. Or...[[Chaos spawn|something worse]].
*Anti-intellectualism.
*...and it's justified because even an instant of unprotected thinking risks mass destruction.
*PTSD.
*Nihilism.
* Racism is actually right.
*Gothic and emo aesthetics (with the help of tons of ''"decorative"'' skulls).
*There are no "good guys". Everyone's a jerk, including yourself. ''Especially yourself.''
* Everyone is evil either because they’re just plain monsters or because they are trying to survive which makes everyone evil to everyone else.
*[[Tau|The guys everyone refer to be "good" or "nice"]] are actually just ''the least'' evil bunch, and would still make your average high fantasy/sci-fi arch-villains look like saints in comparison.
*The REAL good guys are either [[Lamenters|the ones (usually) mostly hated, and are going to get fucked over beyond human recognition usually without any logical reason]] or [[Salamanders|too few to make any difference]].
*Aforementioned "good guys" are only "good" because they do care about their allies and civilians, and generally try to make the place less shitty for those they care for. But they still wouldn't hesitate a second before doing pretty horrible things like [[Shadowrun|terrorist actions against "The Man"]], [[Warhammer 40k|killing a defenseless xeno child]], etc...
* The aforementioned defenseless xeno-child needed to be killed either because it was guaranteed to grow up to be a monster, would grow to compete for resources needed for survival, would be corrupted, was already a monster, or any number of reasonable justifications that would leave a modern man in frustrated tears trying to justify not killing it. Welcome to Warhammer 40,000.
*Magic is [[Warp|inherently malevolent]] and actively seeks to [[Cenobites|corrupt]] and [[Khorne|destroy]] those unfortunates 'gifted' with magical abilities. And everything around them at the time.
*You either die a [[Sanguinius|worthy death]] or you live long enough to see yourself becoming something that [[Mortarion|you've]] [[Perturabo|always]] [[Fulgrim|hated]].
*Everyone will most likely die in the end. Especially the ones important to and including the main character.
*Always polluted, never sunny.
*No ice cream. No lollipops either.
*Death or suicide will only make things much, much worse in [[H.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraftian]] levels, as a hive of disgusting, incomprehensibly evil supernatural daemons are waiting patiently to eternally torment your un-life and roast your soul alive day and night forever and ever, again and again and again and again.
*Tremendous potential for offensive/dark comedy/[[lulz]].
*[[God-Emperor of Mankind|And if you ever, EVER try to change this shitty world or try to help one person just a little, you will probably suffer terrible consequences,]] because altruism is a dying philosophy. (And because your reasoning is flawed.)
*Life sucks.
*There's only war.
*You're probably going to get eaten by Tyranids.
*no gf
*Good luck and [[Dwarf_Fortress|have fun.]]
*Even using the wrong calendar is [[heresy]].

== Stuff considered Grimdark ==
{{cleanup}}
[[File:Tyrus.jpg|400px|thumb|A world where the only way to beat grimdark is by introducing something even grimmer and darker]]
[[File:The_grimdarkian_by_ironshrinemaiden_d1i73bl.jpg|400px|thumb|[https://www.deviantart.com/ironshrinemaiden/art/The-Grimdarkian-91030161| The Grimdarkian, by IronShrineMaiden]]]
* '''''[[Warhammer 40,000]]''''' (Naturally, coined the term).
* '''''[[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]]''''', <strike>but less than you'd think. It's a lot closer to nobledark</strike> until the world [[Derp|was]] [[Bullshit|actually]] [[End Times|destroyed]]. Now, [[Age of Sigmar]] continues it and is, slightly, better in so much that it is unlikely to be destroyed, though [[Warhammer Meta-Setting|that may imply an even worse eternal stalemate]].
* '''The World Wars''', especially the Western Front of WW1, the Eastern Front of WW2, and everything involving WW2 Japanese army/navy and PoWs/civies.
* '''The countless wars of the 1990s in Africa''', including, but not limited to: The Rwandan Genocide, Liberian child soldiers, Sierra Leonean amputations, slave labor in the Congo, etc.
** Post Colonial Africa in general until the 21st century and even then there's not particularly nice places like Somalia.
* '''''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'''''
* '''''[[Dark Sun]]'''''
* '''''End of War'''''
* '''''Blood''''', The main character is a undead wild west gunslinger who has to bring down a dark god's cult!
* '''Shakespeare's tragedies''', especially ''Macbeth'' and ''Hamlet''.
* '''''[[1984]]'''''
* '''''Soylent Green'''''.
* '''''[[Paranoia]]''''' (though used for parodying 1984).
* The majority of the tragedy genre of stories.
* '''''[[RIFTS]]'''''.
* The '''''Half-Life''''' universe after the resonance cascade.
* '''''Portal''''' once you get past the memes.
* The Helghast from the '''''Killzone''''' universe.
* The '''Kerberos''' trilogy, but special mentions to '''Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade'''. A series of films that basically gave birth to Killzone singlehandedly (Seriously, look at the comparisons between the Helghast and the film's Protect Gear, [[Original character, do not steal|it is ''blatant'']]). Set in an alternate-history where Japan was occupied by Germany rather than America at the end of WW2. In Jin-Roh, the nation is constantly in social turmoil with left-wing communist terrorist guerillas using children as bomb couriers against two police force of Japan: the normal-looking police force (Backed by the Japanese KGB/CIA hybrid) and the '''ORIGINAL''' Helghasts called the Kerberos Panzer Cops. Jin-Roh is a political thriller film that largely talks about the problems of the "Good guy, bad guy" dichotomy and how juvenile it is for stories to portray these things in real life. All of the films have a downer ending, so if you are looking for a happy ending, you're gonna get dissapointed. Despite what [[/pol/|some people]] [[SJW|may argue,]] the Kerberos trilogy is a condemnation of all extremist ideas and actions. Its a Mamoru Oshii film of Ghost in the Shell fame, what do you fucking expect.
* Everything in '''''Gears of War'''''. The fact that the primary weapon in the series features a [[Chain Weapon|Chainsaw bayonet designed to utterly rip out the innards of anyone unfortunate to be at the receiving end]] is already by itself Grimdark.
* Everything in the Resistance universe.
* The MachineGames '''''Wolfenstein''''' games. The Nazis crushed the Allies in 1947 with insane technology and won World War II. The setting pulls no punches in depicting how nightmarish the world would become if the Nazis were free to enact their racist and reactionary ideology to its fullest. Manhattan was nuked off the earth, London is now a slum filled with humiliating monuments to the Nazi victory (and a giant robot that literally crushes any uprisings), indigenous peoples in Africa and South America are being exterminated wholesale, there are concentration camps on the Moon, Hitler has been deified, and untermensch live in hiding and constant fear for their lives.
* '''''[[Blame!]]'''''.
* '''''Devilman'''''. (especially CRYBABY)
* '''''[[Berserk]]'''''
* '''''[[Goblin Slayer]]'''''.(Pretty much [[Berserk]] if it was set in a Dungeons and Dragons world)
* '''''[[Emergence]]'''''. (177013)
* '''''[[Kingdom Death]]''''' (Makes 40k's setting seem pleasant and cheerful).
* '''''Eastenders''''' (especially at Christmas).
* '''[[Grimdark Songwriting]]'''
* '''''[[Don't Rest Your Head]]'''''
* '''''SLA Industries''''': Imagine if the Emperor was not only still walking around, but was a callous buisnessman with a permanent skeleton face and no bling armor. Imagine a civilization that exists almost entirely to strip mine itself in the name of consumerism, with snuff television being the primary source of entertainment and anyone trying to do buisness not on SLA's pay roll being branded a "Soft Company" to be exterminated. Oh, and truly horrid aliens that were thought extinct centuries ago are now making a comeback AND occult fuckery of varying flavours is manifesting in increasing amounts in Mort City, SLA's capital.
* '''''The Matrix'''''
* '''''[[World of Darkness]]''''', with special mention going to [[Wraith: The Oblivion]], a game so bleak it's rumored to have actually caused fits of chronic depression in players.
* '''''[[CthulhuTech]]'''''
* '''''[[Call of Cthulhu]]''''', depending on how you do it.
* Everything from '''''[[H.P. Lovecraft]]''''' and the '''''Cthulhu Mythos''''', though this can vary when you add in other Mythos writers like August Derleth.
* Playing mortals in '''''[[Exalted]]'''''
* '''''Neon Genesis Evangelion''''' (Especially End).
* '''''Muv-Luv''''' Often compared to 40k in how bleak and brutal the series is.
* '''''[[Midnight]]''''' setting for D&D.
* '''''[[FATAL]]'''''.
* '''[[Rebecca Black]]'''.
* '''''I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream'''''. Just the title itself should give you a clue on how horrific the game is. (The video game is terrifying, especially with its endings, and the short story it is based on is even more horrifying). Humanity has been wiped out except for five people, who are trapped inside a complex controlled by a misanthropic, reality-warping supercomputer keeping them alive to torture them.
* The '''Medieval Dark Ages''' that Warhammer 40,000 was originally based on.
* '''''[[The Witcher]]'''''. Racism, genocides, dozens of monsters that want to eat your face whenever you enter a random forest. Or cave. Or ruins. The video game adaptation even features a medieval Hitler running the [[Inquisition|Witch Hunters]], a fanatical order of [[Black Templars|racist scumbags dedicated to wiping out both mages and non-humans]] in the name of the Eternal Fire. Meanwhile, the neighboring empire starts a series of wars against northern kingdoms (where the series takes place), in which both sides descend into scorched earth warfare, all the while backstabbing their allies and generally being a colossal wall of dicks to the point that close to 70% of civilian population in war-zones died from raiding, famine and occasional outbreaks of extradimensional plagues. To add insult to injury, the whole world is doomed due to the (slowly) encroaching Ice Age, and the only person that could save it took two glances at this shitshow and decided to fuck off to a parallel universe and let them all die, ''because it would be a mercy''. (To be fair, though, she comes back, if only to save her adoptive mother and father from said Ice Age, as she still maintains her 'fuck the rest of humanity' attitude.
* '''''Dark Souls'''''. The entire ''world'' is ''dying''. Specifically, most of the population is undead, you die constantly, and you have to fight enemies larger and filthier than you are, [[Heresy|including a naked bitch with a spider vagina]]. Also, [[Extra Heresy|FAKE TITS]]. Stuck in an infinite loop where a hero constantly saves the world, and everything goes back to normal before hitting another grimdark cycle every thousand years. Compare with nobledark and check your mileage.
* '''''Drakengard''''' and its related franchise: '''''Nier'''''. Basically, the "god" in this setting is a massive dick so he infects humans with zombie aids out of boredom and watch them kill each other for the [[lulz]]. Caim (the player), the former prince of a fallen kingdom (due to his parents being killed by a black dragon) had to fight the zombie army. He unironically [[rip and tear|enjoys slaughtering any living things]] after waging a bunch of other conflicts and lost his ability to speak after he made a pact with a dragon in exchange for companionship and power (in Drakengard, making such a pact with another creature makes you lose a certain part of you). He had to team up with a blind pedophile priest, a baby eating elf witch, and a ageless shota. His sister unknowingly to him is a crazy incest bitch, driven mad by the pain she endures because she was forced to become a "Goddess of the Seal", some kind of administrator chosen by the "god" to maintain space and time. The job sucks, she had to be separated from her family and she's unable to kill herself because her caretaker would prevent that from happening. And to top it off her parents die tragically. And then you have the villains. Manah, an abused 8 year old child descended from one of the evil clone sister's brother from the prequel, was controlled by the eldritch forces of "the watchers" (read: the dick head "god" himself) who are in charge of the zombie armies with humanity's extinction being their goal. Due to the influence of the watchers group on the Empire kingdom of its setting, the world is engulfed in flames and corpses. The true ending for the game is that everyone except Caim dies and he somehow end up moving a magical doomsday device created by the god to other world (Tokyo Japan of our world to be exact), detonate it and doom the human race. It is said that Drakengard as a series has a fuck ton of timelines and a timeline was born from each of the endings with each ending being bad, or if not worse than the previous. Surprisingly the ending mentioned above is consider canon and it is where the sequel Nier took place (after 1462 years no less) with more grimdark ensuing. Drakengard 2 was pretty bright light since it was directed by a different director but is still part of branch timeline while Drakengard 3 is the prequel retelling how the god tries to destroy the world by sticking an evil parasite flower on some psychopathic girl. Each time the girl died it creates an evil clones of her that will try to rule the world with their evil song magic. Obvious, it's also grimdark since it led to the tragic grimdark rape sauce that is the plot of the first game.
** In '''''Nier''''', the world sets 1462 years into the future. After our "hero" and his dragon fucked up the world by killing and detonating the doomsday device, it release some kind of magical evil virus that mindraped and turned people into salt if they don't submit. After countless grimdark conflicts involving child soldiers, human experiments and more resource shortage, the scientist decided to separate the rest of the survivors souls (gestalt) from their bodies, hoping they could outlast the pandemic. But of course all these attempts are futile failure because Nier, our "hero" ended up killing the only thing that could save humankind, dooming them all to extinction.
*** Finally we have '''''Nier: Automata''''', 8480 years later, where new androids were created by the last human survivors. One of the Nier's companions Emil, a bizarre magical weapon created from some crazy experiment (he is over 8480 years old or so at this point) had to clone himself over 9000 times just to fight the aliens, which not only made him lose his mind and memories but also his sanity. Oh and the humans that escaped to the moons turn out to be long dead. When the rest of androids find out, they proceed to kill themselves in a batshit frenzy. To make this sound even more painful and tragic, the androids have the human concepts of pain and emotions programmed to them, making their death even more painful to be felt.
* '''''Mass Effect''''': While its universe overall is hardly grimdark overall, the Reapers and what happens to "harvested" individuals is some of the sickest forms of grimdark possible. During the Reaper War, trillions of people across the galaxy were vaporized, dissolved slowly, and/or converted into cyber zombies or brainwashed slaves. And that's just the latest Reaper War. The Reapers have committed so much galactic genocide beforehand, they turned it into a "regularly" scheduled event and made the galaxy their farm/laboratory.
** There are many other forms of Grimdark in the relatively Nobledark/Noblebright universe of Mass Effect, one of the most notable being the Genophage, a bioweapon deployed against the Krogan race as to halt the Krogan Rebellions. This bioweapon was basically a massive, permanent genetical Fetus Deletus that drove Krogan birthrates down extensively and creates a lot of stillborns, leaving them vulnerable to extinction.
* '''''Killzone''''', again. The Second Extrasolar War alone deserves its own page of Grimdark: Humanity and their alien descendants, the Helghast, engage in a near-racial war of genocide, more genocide, and even more genocide. Technology has devolved in many areas, and battles turn into endless slaughters as hundreds of thousands of men and women are thrown into a Verdun/Stalingrad hybrid scenario. What's even more horrible is how literally '''everyone''' is evil. Not just the Helghast. Literally all of humanity is warped. The Earth-based UCN? Corrupt and bureaucratic. They want to strangle all their colonies with an iron fist and they intentionally keep the colonial military, the ISA, weaker than it otherwise could be so the centralized military could easily crush them if they rebelled, (UCN cruisers for example are basically dreadnoughts in comparison to those of the ISA), which has caused more than a few problems for the ISA when fighting the Helghast. The Vektans? Hypocritically imperialistic, believing the Helghast deserve to perish for their militarism and (failed) invasion of their planet. The Helghast? Racist, imperialistic genocidal maniacs, believing themselves to be "superior" and even some thinking they need to kill every human in the universe, for "Helghast Purity".
** The Helghast are a literal representation of a society and people warped by Grimdarkery: The planet of Helghan is inhospitable, forcing almost all its inhabitants to wear gas masks. Society is highly fascist, militaristic, and any form of dissent is met with "reeducation" (A bullet to the head), while the government itself is highly nepotistic, where opportunistic scumbags manipulate Helghast Nationalism for their self-benefit. Also, technology and living standards in the civilian sector is extremely poor, as the majority of the advanced technology went over to the military.
** The fanbase of the series is certainly odd though due to the fact that this concept that everyone is evil has went completely over their heads and due to the blatantly unfair treatment of the Helghasts (kind that makes the Treaty of Versailles seem all fair and good by comparison) in the lead up and aftermath of the First Extrasolar War, they have a tendency to see the Helghast, despite being the antagonists, [[derp|as the good guys]]. Their totalitarian society and the fact that the Helghast commit more or less every warcrime known to man apparently didn't make it obvious that this is not so.
* '''''Gears of War''''', again. Decades of civil war, genocide and weapons of mass destruction has turned your home planet into a quasi-dead world. The human race is close to extinction, women are reduced to birthing machines, your government is an uncaring fascist scumbag, the weather is often rain consisting of razor sharp ice crystals that could cut you into ribbons, you're fighting a never-ending war with genocidal monsters from the underground and the world is literally '''dying''' from super fuel.
**To make matters even worse. Even before the Locust War, humanity was locked in a near 80 year war between two rivaling superpowers over the aforementioned super fuel. The COG and the UIR. Both governments are ruthless, imperialistic, fascistic, communistic bastards of a government whose war crimes will make the likes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany look like amateurs. When even the Locust have a point by calling us out for being exactly the same genocidal monsters as they are, you know Gears of War is fucked. Oh and the planet is called Sera, or Ares when said backwards.
* The '''''Resistance''''' series, again: Humanity is losing a brutal war of genocidal attrition against a parasitic alien species, the Chimera. Russia, Asia, and nearly all of Europe has been converted into a desolate wasteland, suitable for the Chimera species. Whatever is left of humanity has been driven into cave dwellings. Humans captured by the Chimera are converted into a Chimera Hybrid (Basically the Chimera equivalent of [[Arco-flagellant|Arco-Flagellants]]).
* '''''Hellgate London'''''.
* Most of '''David Bowie''''s songs about 1990.
* World Devastators in '''''[[Star Wars]]'''''. Seriously, if you read about them without knowing that they are from Star Wars, you could easily mistake them for something from 40k. And we're not talking about Star Wars Legacy and the genocide of the Mon Calamari.
* The first two '''''Hellraiser''''' movies
* '''''Event Horizon'''''
* '''''GANTZ'''''
* '''''[[Cyberpunk 2020]]'''''.
* '''''[[Shadowrun]]'''''. While not the worst in the grimdark department, Shadowrun definitely has its moments (the Renraku Archology Shutdown being a prime example); for instance the oppressive megacorporations reducing people to an identification number, with people not having one ([[Derp|for... reasons]]) don't exist legally.
* '''''[[Hellsing]]'''''... just all of Hellsing... Though it can easily slide into grimderp. (A little girl seeing her mother killed while hiding in a closet? Yeah that's intense. In a moment of desperation, shove a rod into the guy's eyeball, only for him to not be mortally wounded? That's pretty unfortunate. Said guy deciding to fuck the corpse as his smashed eyeball hangs from the socket? That's just silly.)
**'''''Drifters''''', by the same author. The protagonists are a bunch of [[murderhobo|kill-happy murderhoboes]] drawn from various psychos from all throughout history into [[Isekai|a generic fantasy world]] who have decided to [[Great Crusade|save the world by conquering it, one country at a time]]. One of the major powers of the setting turns out to have been founded by ''Adolph friggin' Hitler''. Even Joan of Arc, who IRL was noted for being a pacifist, is warped into a bloodthirsty psycho. The [[BBEG]], who wants to kill all humans (and is noted to be a step up from his subordinates, who want to kill [[Necron|everything]]) is all but outright states to be ''Jesus''.
* '''''Bioshock''''' and '''''Bioshock 2''''' (as well as '''''Bioshock Infinite''''', though it comes hidden behind a smiling facade of barbershop singing and the Fourth of July).
* Anything from the '''''[[Xeelee Sequence]]'''''.
** The Interim Coalition of Governance for example, is such a grim-ridden shit-hole that they make the Imperium of Man look like pussies filled with sun-shine and rainbows in comparison and make the [[Adeptus Custodes]] shit themselves in collateral fear. Despite achieving time travel, conquering the entire Universe through xenocide that would make the Necrons look like children and shooting Neutron Stars at .99c at the speed of light, The ICoG is still a minor nuisance compared to the Xeelee and their enemies, the Photino Birds. Stephen Baxter was able to construct the insignificance and petty malevolence of Man in a few books better than GeeDubs more [[Matt Ward|questionable]] [[CS Goto|authors]] did in decades. [[tl;dr]] the IoM wishes they would be as cool as the ICoG. A small example is a soldier, Pirius invents an incredible way of outmaneuvring the enemy and does a huge impact on the war: [[awesome|he captures a Xeelee ship]]. Turning back time and going to the past, he is...sent to a penal unit guaranteeing death. Literally for thinking outside the box.
** All of Steven Baxter's works arguably qualify. '''''Evolution''''' can be summed up as "humanity almost overcame its flaws, fixed the damage it did to Earth, and ushered in a [[noblebright]] future, and it might have worked, but [[Rocks_fall,_everyone_dies|just then a supervolcano erupted, wiped out human civilization, and everyone died]]. The end. There's even a chapter in the middle of the book outright stating it. Also that humans [[Imperium|are nothing but vicious bastards who rape, kill, and destroy everything they touch]] and have been ever since our ancestors were rats under the feet of dinosaurs, but other animals aren't much better.
* '''North Korea''', which is essentially [[1984|"Real Life Oceania"]], a totalitarian nightmare almost completely isolated from the rest of the world with a leader whose name you are literally forbidden from saying without the prefix "supreme leader". Universal conscription is in place for men with service lengths of over ten years from age 17 to 30 (for comparison, in South Korea, where compulsory military service length is also among the highest in the world, the service length is 21 to 24 months depending on the chosen branch). The country has no access to the internet and only has it's own intranet with government controlled websites. Long gone are the days when the government had any interest in making the country good. Now all they care about is simply staying in power, no matter how much poverty and how many famines the rest of the country has to suffer for it. And if you get on the government's really bad side, you and at least 2 other generations of your family get sent to prison camps to be executed or become the playthings of the prison guards until you die.
* '''''The Goon''''' comic series by Eric Powell (because circus hillbillies, werewolves with midget hand phobias, and the Zombie Priest are the least of it all).
* '''''Children of Men''''': A future where humans are no longer fertile and going extinct, and then someone finds a pregnant woman and nearly everyone in the world fights over her.
* '''''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]''''' AKA Game of Thrones: Good guys screw up monumentally or never win, the only people who get ahead are amorally manipulative assholes and everyone is going to be massacred and enslaved by the evil ice elf necromancers in the end. And if they somehow survive, then another war for the Iron Throne will happen after the winner gets their revenge-boner satisfied and later, their kids would need to clean up the wankstains.
* '''''Dishonored''''' - Grimdark, and steampunk. Only in the "Kill fucking everyone" ending though.
* '''''Dark Seed''''', Grimdark to the core! the first game is about the main character being fucked in the head. Hr giger's artwork helps too.
* '''''[[Humanity Fuck Yeah|X-Com]]''''' (The remake and the original, as a parody of the G.I. Joe Badass stereo type, you're struggling with funding and even your gods in human form, some of whom make certain chapters of Astartes weep, can get fucked over by Sectoids!)
* '''''Puella Magi Madoka Magica'''''. Being Meguca is suffering.
* '''''[[Adventure Time]]''''''s backstory.
* '''''Path of Exile'''''. The game's setting is basically a documentary on the corruption of [[Roman Empire]]. Basically there is this continent called the Wraeclast. [[Tomb Kings|The land is pretty much cursed with undeath]] and [[chaos|mutation]] due to Thaumaturgy aka magic in the form of gems that grants ability, which came from the beast, some kind of eldritch abomination living in the mountain and the source of all this evil magic shit. Many great Empire rose and fell on the continent with their own fucked up and downfall. [[Fall of the Eldar|The first empire: The Vaal were somekind of Aztec, Mayan inspired Empire who loves to sacrifice people for power, so much that they were responsible for corrupting the beast, which partly responsible for what Wraeclast is today]]. After that, a new Empire called "the Eternal Empire" was built on top the former and began outlawing Thaumaturgy and gems for the next 1000 years, until a tyrant was throne after he cheat a death maze trial and was killed in a rebellion staged by Voll, who is obsessed with the old purity ideal and decided to trust Malachai, a previous evil asshole Thaumaturgiest employed by the previous Emperor to destroy the beast, the source of all magic (in detail, Voll was convinced by Malachai into thinking that only those who study Thaumaturgy could destory Thaumaturgy). Obviously, [[Nagash|Malachai ended up betraying Voll as well as everyone in the Empire, as well as the godamn world by merge with the beast and unleash a series of cataclysm that made what Wraeclast is today, and the bastard achieve a twisted sense of immortality where he is now but a evil monster living inside the beast, who is obsessed with creating nightmarish monsters]].
**Despite the Voll's fucked up, part of the Empire survived in the form of an island nation south called Oriath. [[Imperium of Man|It was ruled under a Theocratic government. Following the laws of purity with an iron fist, where they reject impurity so much that anyone who reject their doctrines is met with either slavery, death or exiled to Wraeclast (which the player came to be)]]. [[Nazi|They are also racist, dressed in stylish uniform fashioned with eagle, gold and the typical red armband, all the more reinforce their real life counterpart]]. [[Roman Empire|Since they inherit the previous empire's slavery culture, they enslave a group of archipelago tribal minority known as the Karui, serving as the Rome equivalent of barbarian tribe slave race for Oriath and oh boy, how Oriath loves to oppress the shit out of them, using them for free labor, torture them, experiment them and putting them in the grand arena as gladiators entertainment]]. They also worship this golden figure with red eyed [[Emperor|called Innocence, who is the major god of Oriath, the Templar's most beloved GOLDEN subject of worship]] and they believe themselves to be the most pure and "innocence" while calling others like [[heresy|the karui and the heretics to be impure and "Sinned"]].
***As if things are not bad enough, later game where after the player killed the beast, it awoke the gods from the slumber. Gods, who were once mortal but sold their humanity for power in order to ascend. As a result, the gods are no better than the humans, most them were downright psychopath(there's a god called Yugul who was once a scholar obsessed with fear that he study about it so much he eventually ascend to godhood, became somekind of four leg walking mouth thing), mentally depressed ([[genestealers|there's this insect goddess called Ryslatha who is afraid of loosing her children that she makes everyone hers by having her parasite control everything that moves]]) or just a downright bloody warlords (the Karui wargod, who is the one to encourage his tribes man to stop being peaceful and tell them to go kill shit and babies, which are actually Ryslatha's and is therefore responsible for her ugly transformation). Although some gods were good, they ended up being corrupted by their followers for fuck how longs while the beast forcing them to slumbering away. After their returning, some human made contact with them through their mind radio advertisement, and were made to become their followers, where they were [[chaos|granted mutations (or blessing, some would say)]] and went on their own ape shit rampage across the world to claim their own territories or invade others. Most of the Karui slaves in Oriath ended up getting the worst mutation of all since [[Angron|they worship this Kitava god (an evil Karui god whom was repeatedly punished for his gluttony, yet despite its mouth being mutilated in such way for him to stop consuming anything, he still does and even managed to reach godhood) in order to free from their slavery and shitty treatment from their Templar tormentor]], [[Khorne|all the more powered up Kitava with their desires for vengeance and blood. The slave's faith for Kitava is so overwhelming that not one on Oriath is safe from Kitava's power]], even the Templar, after their god Innocence that had been recently decimate by the player are now vulnerable to Kitava influences, that they switched side without a second thought, easily giving up their old faith like the asshole heretic they had always been. The only god who managed to retain its sanity from all this madness is called Sin, Innocence's brother who is this creepy black winged figure that could make everyone thought of angels of death whenever he pops up. Despite this, he is smart enough to realized the danger of godhood and create the beast in order to force them asleep (this includes his wife and daughter, whom were also deities like him, and were also corrupted that they had to be put down by the player because even Sin finds it painful to kill his own kin and lover). Even after the player has killed all the gods, Wraeclast remains the same, Thaumaturgy and gems still exist, but at least Oriath is no longer rule by an extreme religious organization, right?
* '''''[[Space Station 13]]''''' : Space paranoia simulator. Some might not consider this game grimdark, but the lore is set in a dystopian future where capitalism and unforgiving bureaucracy rules the universe, your life is expandable, and the media is controlled; your only choice is working until you die, or getting killed by either rival corporate operatives, space wizards, cultists, deathsquads or spies posing as your co-workers.
* '''''Barotrauma''''' : Inspired by Space Station 13, centered on a submarine crew in the underground oceans of Europa. Crew members are expendable, you're ''always'' outgunned, the submarine is almost [[Death World|constantly under attack by massive sea creatures]], and most missions are much more likely to end in disaster than success. Also, you explode as soon as you step outside the sub.
* '''''[[Pokemon Tabletop Adventures]]''''' (optionally).
* Original '''''Grimm's Fairy Tales''''' ("Hansel and Gretel", for example).
* '''''Alien''''' (as in the biomechanical, parasitic, acid-blooded brainchild of Ridley Scott and the late H.R. Giger).
* '''''[[Halo]]''''' (the setting of Halo is one grand scale of a Cosmic Horror Story centered around absolute hopelessness and bleakness of a Universe governed by hyper malevolent gods. Our good guys, the UNSC? It's a semi-authoritarian 'Big Brother is Watching You', fascistic style government that have no qualms dumping nukes on a civilian population if rebellion is sighted. The UNSC also have no problems dicking over their only alien 'friends' to benefit humanity, while also being bogged down in a political quagmire. The Covenant are ''much, much worse'', while anything from the Forerunner trilogy is just a high concoction of Nightmare Fuel inside a depressing milkshake.
**Now with [[Halo#Halo Fleet Battles and Ground Command|newly added fluff in the Tabletop Games and other books,]] Halo is going eerily straight down the WH40K route. [[Space Marines|Covenant now having different chapters and sects,]] [[Warp|Slipspace shifting more like space hell,]] [[Inquisition|the UNSC/UEG sending secret police to silence and torture innocents]] [[Abbadon|and an ancient Eldritch A.I. of malevolent aura that shares the same name to a certain armless failure.]] Seriously we ain't making this shit up!
* '''''[[Battletech]]'''''.
* '''''Factorio'''''. Subtle, but, lone human, aliens want to kill you, everything you do makes smog, and your goal is to cover the world in industry, concrete, machines, and gun turrets. The world isn't dead when you arrive, but you're damn well going to kill it yourself or die trying.
* '''''Kane & Lynch.''''' Sweet Emperor, Kane & Lynch. Forget your GTAs and Paydays. In it, you control two murderous middle-aged fugitives, one of which is explicitly mentally troubled, and not in a funny way. The kind of true underworld scum that can only be described as genuinely repulsive. That, plus the fact that nothing ever goes right for anyone in the story just adds to it.
* '''''Attack on Titan''''' (You cannot win, ever. And if you do, you've probably lost all your friends, who've been eaten by giant freaky Mutants, who don't even need food. Yeeeah).
** To put things bluntly, it turns out even the Titans are perpetually suffering, the whole setting runs on a system of human sacrifice and cannibalism that would make the Aztecs proud, this is a series where facing the apocalypse does ''not'' bring out the best in humanity but instead remains as fractious, self-destructive, and divisive as ever (which is honestly one of the points of the story), and the leaders of humanity make the [[High Lords of Terra]] look competent. Things are such a clusterfuck with no hope of change that one of the characters has decided the only way things can get better is to wipe out every human that isn't a member of their ethnic group, and what's worse the plot seem to be proving them ''right''.
* '''''Metro''''' series (both the books and games, but mostly in the books, where the last known humans are hiding in underground subway tunnels, and when not trying to finish each other off are fighting endless hordes of [[mutant]]s [[/b/|and other, much worse things]]. Also, if you're one of the stalkers, the few brave ones that head to the surface to [[Blood Ravens|loot anything they can find]], you risk [[Tyranid|being eaten by flying daemons]]. Hell, it even has [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Metro-2033-Dmitry-Glukhovsky/dp/0575086254 the same "abandon all hope" vibe in the intro], just like 40k. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.)
** Note as the books go on the grimdarkness does tone down by showing the areas outside of the city to be in much better living conditions and other metros.(though not all the books are written by the same author).
* '''''Madness Combat''''' - no regret, no remorse, no reason, only [[Khorne|madness]].
* '''''LISA the RPG.'''''
* '''''The Darkness''''' videogames. Fairly average if utterly spoiled gangster is almost killed and inherits an ancient lineage of shadow monsters that feed off of shadows. Said gangster then decides to go on a revenge-killing spree against his uncle who ordered the whole thing while also fighting off the will of the monsters and protecting his girlfriend.
* The first two '''''Hyperion''''' books.
* '''''Elfen Lied''''' (where the next step of the evolution of mankind is a group of schizophrenic homicidal mutant girls with invisible tentacle hands and a hair-trigger temper who will either kill you in the worst way possible or [[Genestealer|infect you with their gene to increase their numbers]].)
* Most of '''Stephen King's''' works.
** As the joke goes, some people say that Stephen King's works are so fucked up they should come with a content warning. The reply is that they ''do'' have a content warning, they have the words "written by Stephen King" on the front.
* '''''S.T.A.L.K.E.R.''''' You travel a desolate landscape filled with mutants in all the horrific varieties, failed science projects (courtesy of the secret cabal of scientist settled there after USSR' s dissolution), anomalies that you often can't see and kill you instantly and a lot of renegades/bandits/fanatics/zombies. Your gear breaks all the time, resources are scarce and your goal is to get to the [[Wikipedia:Chernobyl disaster|highly dangerous Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant]], which is also protected by lots of fanatics with the best gear available. If you make it through that hellish place that is The Zone, you'll likely get one of the 5 really grimdark endings, and if you paid a lot of attention to certain seemingly useless items along the way, you may get one of the other two grimdark endings. The rest of the world largely ignores what's happening inside The Zone, aside from a few scientists that study the deadly phenomena and the international military that maintains a cordon around The Zone so the nasty stuff doesn't get out and sometimes send expeditions inside, killing everything and everyone in sight. Also, [[Meme|A NU CHEEKI BREEKI IV DAMKE]].
* '''''The Slenderman Mythos''''' (HE ALWAYS WATCHES).
* [[Dante|Dante "you hurt my feefees so I'll put you in hell" Alighieri]]'s '''''[[Warp|Inferno]]'''''. Put simply short, God is a fucking Sadist. If you suffer from depression/PTSD so much that you commit suicide, God will mutate you into an immortal tree that still feels pain and is constantly torn apart by harpies forever. How merciful. Sinners who committed Gluttony are punished by being eaten/mutilated alive by Cerberus, who transforms your corpse into slowly regenerating shit mud, all while a costant snowy rain (or rainy snow) hits your head; after being whole again, thou art eaten while trying to flee in despair, and it starts anew.But that's not the worst punishment. How about being under constant fireball rain in a desert for loving a person of the same gender? And being annihilated by snakes, then rebuilt? Or you find funnier being stuck in the ice? For ever. Because some old dude called Minos decided so.
* The '''''F.E.A.R.''''' series (even the third vanilla-by-comparison game is fucked up).
* '''''Total War: Attila''''' (Unlike the previous Total War titles, which were about your faction's rise to power from small backwater city/tribe/country into a mighty empire able to boss around its neighbors into doing your bidding, this one is about the decline of your faction as you desperately try to survive the onslaught of the Huns, who's sole purpose in the game is to worship Tengri by burning, pillaging, and raping their way through the known world. Particularly if you are the Romans. Winning is defined by being the last guy standing who gets to clean up the rubble and dead bodies, trying to rebuild their world after Attila destroyed it. Seriously, even the music sounds depressing and foreboding as fuck.)
* '''''[[Darkest Dungeon]]'''''. Your ancestor awakened some kind of God that is pretty much Cthulhu's brother and sent you a letter before killing himself, asking you to mop up the huge mess he created. Enjoy sending parties of 4 adventurers ranging from badass lepers to sickle-wielding jesters to their deaths in cultist-infested ruins, sewers filled with mutated cannibalistic pigmen, sea caverns serving as anthropomorphic sea creatures and forests corrupted by evil. And I'm not going to talk about the Darkest Dungeon itself. Also, have fun dealing with those bandits that are raiding the Hamlet for which you spent a fuckton of resources in upgrades.
* '''''The Day After''''', and its worse Brit counterpart, '''''Threads'''''.
* '''''Lord Of War'''''. The worst is that it's based on real events.
*'''''Now and Then, Here and There'''''. The DARKEST [[Isekai]] ever made. Period. Imagine if you will, that you were isekai'ed into a world that took direct inspiration from the ''Rwandan Genocide''. Yeah, we are in that type of territory here boys. The setting takes place in an alternate world, ''10 billion years'' into the future where the sun is about to go into a red giant and whatever scraps of humanity are fighting each other for the last remaining sources of water. Expect a lot of child soldiers, child abuse, child torture, child rape and ethnic cleansing to a scarily realistic degree. This is a post-post-apocalyptic world that is designed to break the viewers. It is an anime darker than 40k despite the 'happy' ending due the sheer levels of nihilism and unforgiving horrors of human depravity. As such, it is one of the few isekais that /tg/ could respect.
* '''''[[SCP Foundation]]''''' universe as a whole is borderline grimdark, as many aspects of the Foundation are mixed between absurd comedy, derp, and pure grimdark. At its very worst, the SCP Foundation has things that make the [[Daemonculaba]] look nice by comparison. Above all: [[Inquisition|Secure. Contain. Protect. Imagine a semi-totalitarian world power, funded by world governments to capture and contain anomalous entities, objects and locations so that the rest of mankind can live in a world that makes sense.]] We're talking animate statues that move when you blink (predating that episode of [[Doctor Who]]) and a creature that kills anyone that sees its face in ''any'' form. One of the most Grimdark anomalies is a girl pregnant with something that could cause the end of the world if it is ever born and the only way to stop it from being born is to regularly put her through something unimaginably horrible (The author has said that they never will reveal what exactly it is but it probably involves [[Rape]]) and periodically erase her memories to make sure she doesn't get used to it. And not all of these threats can be contained or stopped and are roaming free to harm innocents. And some of the captured SCPs are not necessary hostile or evil, but are still imprisoned in a worse case scenario. Oh, and the apocalypse has already happened several times over, whenever it does humanity is replaced with clones, and they have lost track of how many times they have done this. You can't even escape by dying, as the most of the possible afterlifes are just as bad if not far worse. While the SCP Foundation tries to avoid being outright bad guys, they are willing to do ANYTHING to keep the world normal and most of the other factions are morally grey at best, and the few good guy factions tend to cause a lot of unintentional harm. But still, [http://www.scp-wiki.net/black-white-black-white-black-white-black-white-black-white Secure. Contain. Protect.] Just another day at the office.
* '''''Shisha no Teikoku''''', the Empire of Corpses. Steampunk, Grimdark, Zombies, Cross-References and Conspiracies everywhere. It has even become possible to ressurect the dead, giving them their soul and intelligence back, but only 2 characters profit from it in the end, while everyone else stays a slave.
* '''''[https://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/ The Eternal War]''''', as the name suggests
* '''''[[Dystopian Wars]]''''', as the name suggests
* '''''Clockup Games''''' where you get a firsthand look a sex cult and their destructive side effects.
* '''''World War Z''''' (the book). After zombies overran most of the world, many people had it so bad that they simply lost the will to live. Fighting in the Paris Catacombs with weaker weapons that wouldn't cause a cave-in due to hazardous gasses everywhere. Russian soldiers rioting over unfair treatment and enforced secrecy ordered under pain of death to kill one in ten of their own squadmates - with rocks - to teach them the price of freedom and democracy. Which they then happily traded away. The survival of the human race hinged on governments following a plan including elements of eugenics and leaving settlements of people behind as zombie bait. People resorted to cannibalism to survive in Canada. North Korea entirely vanished without a trace. Pakistan and Iran nuked each other. After the war officially ended, there are still loose zombies wandering around, Russia has started a breeding program to deal with severe underpopulation, several species are extinct, and diseases thought to be wiped out are coming back en masse.
* '''''Space Runaway Ideon'''''
* '''''[[Isekai|Re:Zero]]'''''
* '''''Uzumaki'''''. Basically a Lovecraftian horror manga where a seaside town gets [[rape]]d by spirals. Not as weird as it sounds. Or maybe it is as weird as it sounds but not as bad. Also has enough body horror to put most [[Chaos Spawn]] to shame.
** Pretty much anything by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junji_Ito Junji Ito.] Except ''Junji Ito's Cat Diary: Yon & Mu''.
* '''''[[Doom]]'''''. Demons from Hell have overrun Mars and Earth. You are the lone space marine capable of anything. Somewhat of a subversive case of grimdark: it's not you who is afraid of demons, [[awesome|it's the demons who are afraid of you]]. Commence with the [[Rip and Tear]].
* '''''Armored Trooper Votoms''''', an old-school mech anime. [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Mankind has been at war for so long that even the computers created to direct strategy don't know what the goal is]]. War isn't glorious either, most of the first arc is about a squad that goes rogue and raids their own side's armory to find some loot. While the mech designs aren't pretty or fancy, they are more industrial and utilitarian than many contempoaries, being repurporsed exo-suits. The main character is a [[Perpetual]] done right, through a mix of natural regeneration abilities, skills and nigh supernatural luck; unlike, you know, [[Vulkan]], who was just handed something that should have probably belong to all Primarchs just so that he could make [[Horus|some]] [[Sanguinius|people]] [[Ferrus Manus|jealous]]. Take notes, [[Games Workshop|Gros Wotour]], take notes...
* The '''''Prototype''''' games. New York City is infected with a virus created by a generically-unethical corporation called GenTek that mutates people into mutant zombies and/or fucking huge deformed beasts. A secret division called Blackwatch is sent to brutally contain the virus, except it turns out they originally created the virus as a way to purge minorities. This may sound like Resident Evil but the resemblance ends here because you play as Alex Mercer (Prototype 1) and James Heller (Prototype 2), both of them infected by a strain the virus and became superhumans who can shapeshift and gain someone's memories by consuming them (read violently absorbing them into their bodies) and can grow weapons like claws or a blade arm.
* Saw: [[Cegorach|I just wanna play a game.]]
[[File:Digimon_Tamers_Nope_Nope_Nope!.jpg|300px|right|thumb|[[RIP AND TEAR|It was going to be a kids show they said. It was going to be as whimsical as Pokemon they said...]]]]
* '''''[[Digimon: Digital Adventures|Digimon Tamers]]'''''. (Digimon as a franchise is noted to be surprisingly dark and adult for a kids anime in the 'Mon' genre, but Digimon Tamers is exceptionally depressing even by the series standard. Children attempting suicide, child abuse, attempted murder on a child, multiple on-screen deaths of major characters, torture, psychological mind rape on a young girl, PTSD on said young girl, eldritch abominations, horror and psychological horror. You think Tamers would have a happy ending? Lolnope, Tamers has a bittersweet ending in which the main kids lose their Digimon partners ''for ever''. This is what happens when you allow a guy notorious in psychological horror anime to do a kids show. There is a reason why Tamers is considered the Neon Genesis Evangelion for kids.)
** '''''Digimon Adventure Tri''''' (aimed towards adult fans of the series) takes Tamers up a notch in just plain creepyness. Deaths, assisted suicide, infanticide of Digimon babies, psychological damage, grief-induced madness, corruption, attempted genocide, racial supremacy, racism, immense property damage with collateral damage and attempted rape from the series' former mentor and teacher becoming a creepy sexual predator molesting one of the main characters and choking another one to near death (Both female by the way). Digimon doesn't fuck around.
* Most good 'Real Robot' anime/video games. Further discussion will result in [[skub]].
* '''''Full Metal Alchemist''''': The World is coated by a side of Noblebright at the beginning but morphs into 1984 the more you watch/read. The world Amestris starts out as fine and dandy (despite being a fascist military Dictatorship (the head of state is literaly called [[nazi|führer]])), then it morphs into a world where the Main Country (Amestris.) is at constant war with almost all it's neighbors commits Genocides Left and right and Murder's anyone who finds out the dark truth.
* '''''Shin Sekai Yori''''' also known as From the New World is a novel by Yusuke Nishi (and it has an anime adaptation, which is freaking awesome, everyone should watch it). Basically it's a dystopian story with people using magic to run their society instead of machines in a world that has deliberately regressed to the medieval level. Every child who doesn't manifest magical abilities by a certain age is killed, and all existing non-magical humans have been genetically engineered into a slave-race of mole-people so long ago they've forgotten their origins. The magical people are instead engineered to commit unwilling suicide should they use their powers to harm another human (mole people are fair game, though), and those of them who are too strong and can't manage to control themselves become Lovecraftian abominations.
* '''''Bloodborne''''' or the love child of Dark Souls (gameplay) and Lovecraftian mythology (its main inspiration for setting and theme). Another masterpiece from FROM software and Hidetaka Miyazaki. TLDR, the game is a mix of elritch horrors, omnipotent creatures which are fundementally gods and Dark Souls, though this time there is no fire to link, only FEAR.
* '''''Bet On Soldier/Iron Storm''''': WW1 got extended by 80 years, leading to a world where war is everything (including a televised past time), peace is considered a horrifically dissident ideal and there is a shadowy cabal behind the scenes plotting to make the war last forever.
* Noir in general, from Raymond Chandler's novels to games like This is the Police.
* '''''Magical Girl Site''''' (so grimdark it makes Meguca look Noblebright)
* '''''Wanted'''''. A comic book series which inspired the 2008 action flick. The villains won the war against the heroes and completely erased them from reality. The world of Wanted is one of the most horrific comic book series as it deconstructs the 'action macho man' of the superhero genre and insults the reader (As in break the fourth wall) if they ever felt like rooting for the 'protagonist'. How bad is Wanted? Crime is not only rampant but is actually part of the law, enforced by the Fraternity (Justice League for bad guys), and the only way to even have the closest thing to a 'safe and happy life' is by murdering your next door neighbor out of paranoia. Furthermore, as the world is cut up into sections and ruled by different supervillains, you will most likely be born in a country ruled by either a psychotic bastard who shoots children for shits and giggles, a Lex Luthor archetype who hungers for more unrestrained power, a literal Nazi from the future who wants another Holocaust, or a megalomaniac and sociopathic Chinese emperor who makes Mao Zedong like a chump or a completely immortal 'President-for-Life' Mugabe expy that will probably rule for eternity.
** Our 'protagonist' is a sociopathic, violent, sadistic rapist who assassinates people in ridiculous violent manners that makes the Punisher, Konrad Curze and Batman look like Constable Care in comparison. His first 'character development' was shooting his neighbor in the face because he was too damned nice... yeah... our 'heroes' are literally no different than the villains at all. If you could even call them 'heroes'. While characters in WH40K and Gears of War commit atrocities usually because they have a reason, idea or dogma behind their actions, the villains of Wanted commit them because [[Lulz|they felt like it.]] Don't even get us started with the supervillains who are so repulsive that they are barely redeemable. Wanted is one of those franchises that just makes you ''feel'' like a bastard for even trying to root for anyone. In terms of the moral scale, if DC is the classical Black and White franchise and Marvel is the classical Grey and Gray franchise, than Wanted is the classical Black and Black franchise. [[Chaos]] wishes it could be this efficiently evil.
* '''''Grim Dawn'''''. In a world called Cairn there is magic, monsters, and humans using 19th century tech. A group of mages failed some sort of ritual and accidentally called in a ghost called an Aetherial, setting off a chain of events that would lead to the "Grim Dawn". They invaded the world by possessing many creatures and humans for their own world domination plan, and the ensuing chaos allowed the Cthontic Cult (Mix Khorne and Slaaneshi pain cults) to come out of the shadows just as the Aetherials started getting shit done. This results in a never ending struggle between humans and multiple otherworldly powers. An optional meeting with a god from the universe tells the player that there are many gods watching this world and none of them, him included, gave a shit about their followers since this is just one of many realities they observe and the tragic event is nothing more than a normal day for him. So players have to fight through undead ([[Tomb Kings|who are cursed to forever linger in the world, only to get back up as soon as they are defeated]]), a land corrupted by the aether's green shit that is as harmful as the warp itself, and a crimson forest filled with Cthonic Cultists. The factions of the 'Good Guys' aren't much better either. There is either a necrophiliac ice ninja that will enslave the dead or a pretentious templar order whose god is just as bad as the others. The only hope lies in survivors from the aetherial encounters that gained unnatural powers which may potentially corrupt them in the process. Nothing will ever change though since the world now is filled with horrifying creatures and humanity is reduced to pockets of bandits squabbling over the pitiful remnants of their civilization. Invasions are still going strong despite your efforts at the very end of game and other gods are ready to back stab, corrupt, raid and torment every living creature in the world for their own selfish needs.
** The new expansion '''''Ashe of Malmouth''''' adds more grimdark and even a rare instance of sick fuckery in modern video game. The city Malmouth is said to be the first place hit with Aetherials forces so the entire place is nothing but a fucked up zombie town with buildings made out of human flesh. But before the player can get to that "fun party" however, they would need to cross the jungle, bog place of Ugdenbog, a wild swamp and evil infested shithole filled with cannibals and witches that got gangbang from both the Aetherials and Cthontic forced during the grim dawn. You are even allow to side with the local cannibals in Barrowholm (a much lesser evil mind comapre to the Cthontic and Atherial mind you). Once you got to Malmouth, the true sick fuckery begin. The local Aetherials had spare a few human survivors just so they could hunt them down and replenish for their needs of flesh. What's worst is that they have abducted local females (especially younger one) and use them as breeding cattle to produce more "test subject" and "soldiers". Doesn't that sounds like [[Daemonculaba]]? It also means that the enemies like Aetherial Scamp and Aetherial Imp, those little shit that are the size of a child you fought are actually.....yeah, I'm done with this shit.
* '''Peter Watts'''. Brutal neuropunk sci-fi horror, as bleak as H. P. Lovecraft but with a list of scientific citations at the end to let you know just how realistic it really is. Hits you with a world-ending catastrophe and then manages to make it a thousand times worse -- an alien invasion DURING a hard-takeoff singularity, for example. Sociopathy and post-human augments abound. [http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm Also, the books are free!]
* '''''Armored Warfare'''''. Terrorist/ultra-nationalist/anarchists with tanks, corporations that rule and enslave large portions of the world and the rest of the world might as well be a wasteland, as far as we know.
* Pandora from the '''''Borderlands''''' games. A whole planet covered in tonnes of rubbish, industrial equipment, pollution and debris from mining operations by huge intergalactic corporations. A classic example of unregulated capitalism where the few inhabitants (mostly from the abandoned mining operations) fight for survival against hideously mutated and highly dangerous wildlife and go completely mental in the process. What little rational civilisation there is is constantly under attack from all sides, including by the Hyperion corporation which wants to purge the planet of all life and start again from scratch. To do this the [[BBEG]] has built an army of robots and seeks to awaken an ancient, all-powerful, immortal, alien warrior ([[Derp|which, as it turns out, is very easy to kill]]). Pandora is essentially a [[Death World]]. [[Herp|And people still go and live in this shithole]] just to search for hidden caches of [[Pretend|ancient alien technology]]. TL;DR Australia on steroid with alienz lmao.
* '''''Call of Duty: Black Ops 3'''''
* '''''Homefront''''' (the game, not the similarly-named but unrelated movie)
* '''''Made in Abyss'''''. It is one of those [[Trap]] anime/manga that fools unsuspecting viewers into watching a cute, whimsical Studio Ghibli esque show filled full of wonder and adventure....what the series '''WON'T''' tell you is the amount of Grimdark it would throw at you at the most unsuspecting turn. You want to see cute moe loli children getting tortured, horribly disfigured, experimented on, brutally killed, discarded and abused? Made in Abyss got your back! You want to see a [[Deathworld]] so extreme it even kills you when you think of trying to escape? Made in Abyss is completely centered around that! You want to see a society run on child labor, in which death and injury is so common that a 12 year old knows how to amputate an arm and be unfazed by dead bodies? Made in Abyss is proud to include these! You want to see a [[Nazi|Josef Mengele Cosplayer]]/[[Awesome|Evil Daft Punk]]/[[Furry|Super Furry Loli Fetishist]]/[[Meme|Completely Best Dad EVAR!]] as the main villain? Made in Abyss is a proud sponsor of this! You want to have a deep and dark philosophy on how deep one's humanity can go before completely losing it and what counts as truly human before succumbing to the human excess of wants, needs and pride? Made in Abyss have plenty to showcase this! You want to see what would happen when Laputa's Flying Castle and Madoka Magica fucked Berserk? Made in Abyss is the end result of their sweaty lust! You want to hear absolutely beautiful music and see eye-poppingly gorgeous art which is contrasted against the raw, brutal and savage realities of the setting? Made in Abyss would win over you! You want to get emotionally attached to a bunch of [[Furry|moe furries]] and [[Fist of the North Star|cry manly tears]] without feeling too dirty? Don't worry, we in /tg/ can tolerate it... just about...
* '''''Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind'''''. A manga/anime film made by Hayao Miyazaki, yes you heard us right. The man who was the main founder of Studio Ghibli and gave us childhood gems such as Tortoro, Spirited Away and Ponyo, gave us a Science-Fantasy Epic of the brutality of war. Sure there was Princess Mononoke, but that was basically a spiritual sequel to Nausicaa. The setting of Nausicaa is centered around a post-apocalyptic [[Deathworld]] in which humanity had nuked itself back into the early renaissance via kilometer tall, biomechanical, nuclear-firing [[Exterminatus|GOD-WARRIORS.]] Most children don't make it to adulthood and the remaining human civilizations are on the verge of collapse due to scarcity of resources and the ever growing encroachment of the Sea of Death/Corruption, a forest of highly toxic fungal jungles and incredibly violent mega-insects that goes [[RAGE|completely anal if you dare pluck a 'Shroom or two.]] To make matters worse, [[Adeptus Mechanicus|the state of technology has been declining over the years either due to loss of knowledge]] [[FATAL|or the sheer amount of dead children failing to reach the proper age to spread such knowledge.]] Nausicaa, especially the manga, does not shy away from human slavery, biological WMDS, genocides, nuclear holocaust, a gratuitous amount of inferred and overt infanticides, inquisitorial purging and the likes. By far the most mature and grittiest of Miyazaki's works. The one main thing that Nausicaa stands out from the rest is its titular character. Princess Nausicaa is an actual pacifist and a self-impose Jesus archetype. Yet despite such [[Noblebright]] characteristics, she is an absolute '''''BADASS'''''. Nausicaa may hate fighting and war, but she is not afraid to split some heads open and gut your belly empty. She is also a surrogate mother for a giant walking WMD and a surrogate big sister for a psychic boy with the [[PROMOTIONS|assets to boot;]] this gives her extra brownie points for being [[Awesome]]. Seriously, Merida and other Princesses has nothing on this chick.
**Because of the fact that Nausicaa for all intents and purposes, kickstarted the foundation of Studio Ghibli in the first place, its influence had a profound impact on Ghibli's future works. It basically was the progenitor of every Ghibli trope imaginable. You got the strong female heroine and her equally strong and capable male deuteragonist? check. A setting based upon fantastical elements and a blatant anti-war/pro-environmentalist message? check. Giant, awesome planes? check. Scenery populated by eye-candy artwork? check. A quirky, animal side character? check. The bad guys being revealed to be either not so evil/misunderstood/have morally grey beliefs? check. Furthermore, Nausicaa influenced other works such as the Chocobos from Final Fantasy being a complete copy of Nausicaa's Horseclaws, as well as the God-Warriors being the main inspiration of the motherfucking ''EVAs'' (Seriously, the main creator behind Evangelion first got the idea after animating the God-Warriors for Nausicaa. Seriously look it up, the resemblance is uncanny).
** Another studio Ghibli film called '''''Grave of the Fireflies''''' is far worse. The plot of film is "A pair of orphans starve to death in Japan at the end of WWII." That is the entire plot. This movie utter torture to watch and a great reminder of why war may be fun in games but is the worst thing imaginable in real life.
*'''''[http://www.synthiciderpg.com/ Synthicide]'''''. "When robots are gods, killing humans is fair game." In the deep darkness of the far, post-mutagen virus future, Human life is worthless (Murder and theft against them and each other is entirely legal), murder of sentient bots (Who are given free-range to torment humans with impunity after being let go from service to the major faction that makes them), however is one of the greatest offenses, and one the PC's are bound to commit at some point in their careers. Also, everything has a black and white color pallete.
* '''''Destiny/Destiny 2''''''s backstory. Basically, there was a very short-lived race of people called "The Krill" which lived only ten years on a planet called Fundament (fair note, Fundament is a gas giant, and Jupiter's orbit takes 10 years. So the Krill may have lived to a few hundred). There was a ruler called the Osmium King, and a traitor named Taox killed him. His daughters, Xi Ro, Aurash, and Sathonna took a ship to the planet's core where they met the Worm Gods, or Ahamkara. What happened is that the [[Khorne|Worm Gods grant immortality, but in order to become immortal you have to kill or the worm will eat you]], this was called The Sword Logic, and the Krill were re-named The Hive after killing that fucking traitor Taox. They proceeded to exterminate every living thing in the galaxy, [[Xeelee Sequence|harboring xenophobia and militarism which would make the Imperium look tolerant and pacifist in comparison]]
* The aftermath of '''''Avengers: Infinity War'''''. After the [[Rubric Marines|battledust]] settles, no one really wins at the end of the movie. Even the villain, who won, was badly injured and the victory was very costly.
* '''''Spec Ops: The Line''''', due to disguising itself as a run of the mill shooter, but disregard for orders and going in all guns blazing in quest of "becoming a hero" and "saving everyone", unlike most FPS, rather realistically leads from bad to worse, resulting in the player committing vile acts and outright war crimes. At the time of its release, its atmosphere and presentation made it a standout. Due to being heavily reliant on the player having no foreknowledge that it'll drown them face-first in the horrors of war, the game has undergone a sort of "Rosebud effect", and at worst can be considered grimderp. Granted, even then it's far less so than the examples below, and can be considered a period piece of sorts whose themes retain relevance.
* '''''The Suffering''''' and '''''The Suffering: Ties that Bind'''''. Two messed up stories about an unwell guy who may or may not have murdered his family tries to survive the worst prison in all of Maryland while it's being infested by nightmarish creatures symbolic of the countless atrocities committed on it (Being not only a prison, but also the former site of a WWII POW camp run by a paranoid lunatic, an old-timey mental institution run by an...eccentric who still haunts the place, and a puritan village that saw it's own recreation of the Salem Witch Hunts). The sequel sees the man in equally worse surroundings as Baltimore has it's own infestation of the monsters symbolic of the city's corruption and is now haunted not only by two deranged murderers, but also a figure from his past who supposedly know the truth about his family.
** In ''Ties That Bind'', it's implied that ''every'' city of decent size has the potential to be turned into a haunted hellscape. Because humans are shitty and have been doing shitty things to each other for all of recorded history, and hence ''every'' city has a number of bloodsoaked ghosts created by atrocities and desperate for vengeance.
* The first two seasons of '''''Animals of Farthing Wood''''', a animated series for kids ''infamous'' for having graphic depictions of violence and a death rate of major characters on par with Game of Thrones. Though somewhat at the low end of the Grimdark spectrum, the fact this show was for kids earns it major points for being grimdark. The third series noticeably toned down on the Grimdark elements and ended up being the least well regarded. Notable deaths in the series include but are not limited to:
** '''''The Pheasants''''', a couple of, well, pheasants who die at a farm in an extremely cruel manner. First, the wife is forced by her husband to take his watch and is spotted by the farmer, then shot. The husband, overcome with grief, elects to go back and find Adder, hoping to atone for causing his wife's death. Instead, he sees the cooked corpse of his wife and breaks down in tears, unable to pull himself together and is also shot dead by the farmer.
** Three baby mice are born in one episode. The very next episode they are all killed onscreen by a shrike, a bird infamous for impaling its prey, [https://cdn-static.denofgeek.com/sites/denofgeek/files/2016/10/9nsgawb.png/ as seen here].
** The hedgehogs, while trying to cross a road, have to fight not to curl up into a ball... but eventually, the husband goes crazy, unable to stop himself from curling up, and his wife elects to stay with him, leading to both their deaths when a lorry runs them over.
* '''''Ava's Demon''''', a webcomic who's cutesy style doesn't hide how fucking dark this world can be. For starters, in the opening itself, a planet is destroyed by Silent Scavengers, which are Tyranids and Necrons mixed together, then the main character ends up impaled when they crash land, her soul going to turn into space dust until she agrees to help the demon who's been possessing her since she was born to get revenge on TITAN, who can at best be described as the God-Emperor if he were every negative stereotype about the Imperium taken to the extreme and then some. How bad is TITAN? It's implied he turned a star into a black hole solely because of its planets inhabitants wouldn't do what he wants. And trust us, things can only get worse in this setting.
* '''''Dragon Ball Z: History of Trunks'''''. Could just be expanded to Trunks' timeline in general. Dragon Ball has always been known as a sort of noble bright anime, but ''this'', damn. Everyone is either dead, dying, or living in fear of two walking machines of pure evil. And then when Trunks does actually take care of his enemies, another more powerful one shows up and just sends everything back to the way it was. Even the parody of this movie is oddly depressing.
* '''''Power Rangers RPM''''' plays with this trope, being what is effectively ''Terminator'' meets ''Mad Max'' "for kids." It is still Power Rangers, and does still have its fair share of comic relief, but this is also the season where a young girl is brainwashed into becoming a child soldier for Skynet and HAL 9000's demented love child, while also having her humanity stripped away and replaced with cold metal. That's not even starting to mention the fact that most of the planet is wiped out, with billions dying over the course of what seems like a few weeks.
* '''''Postal'''''. Not the sequels, which play the violence for laughs and topical humor, or the crap Uwe Boll movie, just the first game and it's remake (''Postal Redux''). Once you get past all the shock and outrage of being a forefather of the [[Satanic Panic|"Ban Violent Video Games"]] movement, you'll realize that this game is genuinely fucked up with its imagery and the protagonist is a mentally unwell individual.
* '''''Resistance : Fall of Man.'''''
* '''''Romero's "Dead" series''''', especially the later entries. ''Night'' is grim for the heroes, even if the overall story ends somewhat happily with the zombies taken care of. On the other hand, ''Dawn'' and ''Day'' are much darker, with zombies overrunning society, and though both end on positive notes, the journey there is a grim fight for survival. Most of the heroes die in ''Dawn'' (all of them if you count the depressing alternate cut), and in ''Day'' most of the characters, even the heroes, are hateful, unhinged, and/or just plain crazy.
* ''''' Requiem for a Dream'''''. If you have seen this movie, this is self-explanatory.
* '''''Blakes 7'''''. The BBC broadcast this against coronation street. And it was written by Terry Nation. It opens with a show trial after the hero gets set up to join a terrorist cell post mind wipe, gets accuses of paedophilia, and then exiled to the world of warhammer where Brian Blessed is king of the cult of scientology. Then you get 4 seasons of basically terrorists fighting the evil space empire, with the worlds most sarcastic computer, special effects that make your mates larp when they were 14 years old look high budget (ffs the federation are armed with caulking guns and some pipe). It's fucking GLORIOUS.
* '''''The Promised Neverland'''''. An anime/manga about a bunch of cute children raised in a nice orphanage, that is really a farm set up by demons who raise the children as food. Hence the "Neverland" part of the title, the children don't grow up, because they are killed by monsters. A handful girls get to survive until adulthood by getting selected to act as mothers to children, but they are still prisoners who can't leave the farm. If they are unlucky they will have to watch over their own children until the day they are killed.
** The world outside the farms is even worse. A thousand years ago the world was divided between humans and demons. The children are in the demons' half. Demons used to hunt humans until the two sides made a truce where the world was divided in two halves to keep peace and humans were handed over to the demons to farm as food and the wealthy family of humans who made the deal are out to kill the escaped children to uphold it. Demons actually need to eat humans or they degenerate into mindless animals that attack everything in sight, except of the demon nobility thanks to them consuming blood that removed the need. And they still insist on hoarding the best quality human meat for themselves while leaving the commoners to feed on meat from humans raised on factory farms where the humans are force fed until they die. This inferior quality meat isn't enough to keep demons from degrading and so the demons' human allies are doing horrifying expirements to produce better quality meat. Something could have been avoided if the demon nobility didn't make sure that only they were free from dependence on human meat as means of maintaining their control with their supply of meat, because as you can probably tell, they don't care about the commoners.
* '''''Dorohedoro'''''. Described by its own author as "a song with really dark lyrics, but a melody that's so happy that you want to dance to it". So happy grimdark? The title can literally be translated as "from shit to shit". Seriously, the setting wouldn't look out of place among a 40k [[hive world|underhive]]. The entire setting is a massive slum, with horrible pollution, mass poverty, and human body parts polluting the waterways. Your options for living are being a normal human, living in poverty and treated like toys, lab rats, and livestock by the various magic users. Or being a [[psyker|magic user]], and either be lynched by the terrified normies or captured by other magic users and boiled down to make drugs. And if you're a magic user, regardless of how good you are when you die you're [[Warp|guaranteed to be sent to hell to be tortured by devils for all eternity]] ([[Daemon Prince|unless you become a devil yourself]]). Or being a devil, and worry about being [[Tzeentch|screwed over by your boss for shits and giggles]] or eaten by Store, who is implied to be an angel and treats devils the same way devils treat mortals. Or being said boss, [[Necron|and dick around with people for all eternity because you're absolutely bored with existence]], can't die, and are horribly lonely since you can't form a meaningful bond with anyone else. Of course "your options" being metaphorical in this sense, since you are either born a normal human or magic user and can't change who you are (which is a major plot point for several characters). Three of the most moral people in the entire setting are a mob boss and two different flavors of serial killer. Even when the normal people manage to fight back by [[God-Emperor|creating a god through the merger of thousands of souls of those killed by magic users]], it immediately tries to kill ''everyone'' just to end its suffering. The only time the weather changes in the series is when it rains, which causes magic users to fall sick because it's the manifestation of the will of said god and if you're a magic user it ''hates'' you. Well, at least the food is good.
* '''''Lobotomy Corp/Library of Ruina'''''. Two games made by a Korean game studio named Project Moon, and well known for its dark setting. [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2098034966 I have decided to leave most of the detailed explanations to this guide here to avoid further paragraph bloat.] To put it simply, the first game: '''Lobotomy Corp''', is about a corporation trying to harvest energy from monsters that are extracted from humanities collective subconsciosness: Abnormalities. Each Abnormalities has special powers to mess with people's mind or just straight up kill people in a very gruesome way and the corps' employees has to suppress them. [[SCP Foundation|Does that sounds familiar?]]/Read Wonderlab, and it gets even worse. SPOILER ALERT: It turns out the energy is not only used to power every other corporation's devices, it is also used to power up some kind of positive energy beacon that spread its power aka Light to everyone in the city just so they could feel hope and be "saved". The plAn failed several times due to the failure of containing and suppressing Abnormalities. The reason why the plAn can be carried out despite its constant setbacks is all thanks to a certain time control technology that could rewind the time back before the incidents happened. Which means, the guy that has to manage this shithole has to go through this tiresome process of witnessing his employees' death again and again until he finally reaches a satisfactory conclusion. The employees that die are revived from every time rewind without ever remembering their death, but not the manager, nor the Sephiroth, whom are [[Dreadnought|brain jar robots]] that oversee their own departments in the Corp. As you play through, the difficulty spikes as the suffering from constant rewind has made the Sephiroth lose their minds which leads them from time to time to throw fits, forcing the manager to calm/supress their ass down. There was this robotic AI waifu assistant Angela that was created to help managing the place. For some reason, she was given the ability to feel emotions just so she could experience the same cruel passage of time and the scenery of Abnormalities killing the employees, driving her nuts. It was made all the more painful for her since she can perceive time in even slower rate, making her existence all the more painful. As the game progresses and the difficulty spikes even futher answers can now be given as to why is it the founders of the Corp decide to go through all this tragedy and torture to save the unknowing masses blind to their suffering and why exactly do the the city people need to be saved?
** Now things starts to get interesting in the second game: '''Library of Ruina'''. Turns out everyone living in the city has become "ill", as in mentally depressed/suffering from disease of the mind due the constant needs to meet certain demands for their jobs everyday, up to the point they could not have any free will to do anything they like.
*** More lore is dumped in the second game as it explains that world they lived in is controlled by Corporations: '''Wings''', who holds the most power and are forcing everyone to pay expensive taxes or else get fucked by their schemes. Their unfair demands create an enormous circle of poverty, forming countless '''Backstreets''' where death and crimes became the norm. In order to pay their unfair expensive tax, people resort to other ways of earning steady incomes. Some become a '''Fixer''', mercenary policemen who would fight for anyone for the right price (Note: there is no functional police department in the setting). Some become part of the '''Syndicates''', the Fixers' criminal counterpart who earn their keep by doing crime instead. Note that neither Fixers or Syndicates members have any choice but to keep climbing their ranks. Sure the higher their rank, the better their living conditions become, but it is a never ending grind that will eventually result in their deaths or depression to the point of suicide due to the amount of killing they've done.
*** Moving on to the upper class. Rich people live in '''The Nest''' and are well educated. But just like the Fixers and the Syndicates, they are not free from paying taxes and are also forced to climb their own social ladder in order to survive. Not to be mentioned the dangers of Backstreets still exist in some isolated areas of The Nest. Worse still is that the corporations they've worked for can and will use them as test subject to test their super precious technology: '''Singularity''' and see how much they get fucked up. They are basically office wage slaves with higher mortality rate.
*** Speaking of Singularity, it is a form of futuristic, magic-like technology (nanomachines, teleportation, laser, etc... you could only see from a typical scifi-movie) own by The Wings. Each Wing has their own Singularity and despite their usefulness however, they are still complicated technology, which can led to horrible accidents if it were mishandled, yet they were treated by The Wings like money tree. Sometimes a Wing could fell and left its Singularity sold on the market, to be purchase by other Wings. The catch being any instructions or informations regarding this Singularity had fell along with its Wing, meaning the buyer has no idea how it works other than knowing what it is truely capable of on surface or through some easy testing. Despite not knowing how to really using it however, the buyer [[capitalism|insisted on profiting it by making merchandises from it or marketing it as some kind of super transportation]]. For example: W-Corp's train are capable of transporting passengers to their destination in 10 seconds. What really happens is that the train entered into some kind of warped dimension and stucks inside for 2000+ fuckoff years. During that time, some of the passenger's body functions just stopped functioning, as they become unable to feel pain or hunger as the "time" for their body just stopped. What really happened was that T-Corp collaborate with W-Corp by using their time singurarity put the passenger's biological timer in stasis, ensured their survival in this seemly endless journey (T-Corp gets to profit from this remember). After 100 days, the passengers began tear each other apart out of boredom and insanity, to the point they eventually tearing themselves into bits that merges with one another. Case in point we don't talk about [[Chaos Spawn|Love Town]]. The crazy part is that the dimention portal Singularity is the purchased one, and thus W-corp has no idea how to fucking use it, yet used it on civilians anyway, but it is only because they can cancel out their own ignorance by using their own Singurarity, that is Material Restoring. By the time the train arrives, the W-Corp's agents came and restoring passengers using their Singurarity. Just like at L-Corp, using their biometrics, they restore the passengers body state to the time when they only experienced 10 seconds on the train, as if [[Just as Planned|nothing ever happened]]. Rich investors and other corporation's board chairman do knew about this, yet refused to speak out, not that they care since W-corp introduce them to the expensive option of first-class passenger seat (aka cryo stasis tube) for them if they are so afraid of even experience a train ride to hell, even though they won't remembered a damn thing when the train ride ends. The plebs can fall apart in the train and patch back up for all they care! So yeah, so much for dangerous technology. They are but a mere capitalism scheme, where corporations band together to juggle around the lives of innocents for a few cashes.
*** By letting a bunch of morally corrupted gold diggers handling such a dangerous technology, who is there to control them? meet '''The Head''', aka the shit heads that put everyone in their misery. They are the ones with absolute power in the setting. Not even the Wings wishes to fuck with them, for they have the best combat force out of them all, and being the [[Great Horned Rat|giant rat that made all the rules]]. It is hinted that they intended for the humans to suffer under the stresses of survival and death, as if they were treating the humans in the city like test subjects inside a vivarium they had created. In the games' ending, it was revealed they have [[Imperial Truth|strong obsessions with philosophies that defines humanity]] and [[Men of Iron|dislike for machines that look and act like humans]]. Although not much about them has been revealed yet, those little details is enough to label them as some kind of [[nazi|facist organization with an extremist ideology]]. They were known for shaping the world that is today with their armies of '''Arbiters''', aka [[Officio Assassinorum|Singularity-infused assassins]](which may or may not be comprised of hags). They are so powerful, one of them could take on everyone in the Wing and evict the Wing. Other than Arbiters, they have their own super fixers called '''The Claws''', who are comparable to a high grade Fixers with benefits of being mass produced. They also have the '''The Eyes''', aka '''The Beholders''' agents (or some kind of spirit/demon/telescreen hologram as it was revealed) that [[1984|report The Head for any potential tax evaders as well as any potential threats by surveillance the masses]]. No one fucks with The Head. NO ONE.
** And all these examples are just the tip of the iceberg to show how Grimdark life is in this setting. It gets potentially worse as '''Distortions''', which are related from the first game's Abnormalities, are monsters from the minds of an individual rather than humanity as a whole and due to the failed results of the plAn from the first game are now roaming the city to further spike up the mortality rate, making everybody's live even more miserable. Despite that, the Fixers still demand payment to kill them (which a new association was created to deal with them according to the ending/read Distortion Detective) and The Head refuses to even lend a hand in dealing with them (because distortions are considered a product of humanity, which is much more tolerable when compared to robots who act like humans). Oh and it is impossible to not live in the city, for the outside lies the '''Outskirts''', where monsters, robotic death machines and other abominations created from fail experiments reside. It is a wasteland composed of pretty much everywhere but the city, caused by the constant resource wars from the past and it is literary impossible for humans to lived in there. Even if it could, it would be filled with hostile exiles, outlaws or whatever godforsaken engineered intelligent species.
*** Interestingly, the setting's corporation culture could be a nod to the modern day capitalism in South Korea (It is a Korean game after all), and it in general shows how shitty life is under capitalism with the taxes and all that. Just slightly better to its Northern Communism brother I suppose.
** Further more the third upcoming game '''Limbus Corp''' has promises of further progressing the storyline and give more world building.
* '''''Warframe's lore.''''' What's so dark about Warframe? You're a space ninja which just chops stuff up and shoots right? Oh you're DEAD wrong. The main characters, the Tenno, are children survivors of an accident when a ship tried to use a metaphysical realm called [[warp|The Void]] to perform a faster-than-light jump to Tau Ceti (which was previously terraformed for their arrival). And what do we know about using metaphysical realms to travel faster-than-light? It goes [[Gellar Field|fuckingly bad]], invest in a warp drive.
**The Tenno were discovered by the Orokin, [[that guy|pansy hedonistic little faggots]] which sent them there, and were treated like absolute shit. To get an idea of just how awful the Orokin were, imagine the repressiveness, feudal structures, and lack of regard for human life found in the Inperium of Man… with a tech level comparable to the Dark Age of Technology. The only person who treated the Tenno with absolute respect was a scientist called [[this guy|Margulis]]. When the robots sent to terraform Tau Ceti, the Sentients, evolved intelligence and came back to anally rape the Orokin, their built-in weakness was void stuff, which the Tenno were full of. After a victory over the Sentients, the Tenno [[rape|bitchslapped the Orokin and bludgeoned them like the fucks they are]].
***The Orokin are just a bunch of [[Marines Malevolent|shitbags in general]]. They treated Tenno, Lorist healers, and Grineer like absolute shit until they need their help. They execute scientists when they fail to produce results, because a GREAT way of increasing productivity is executing a scientist who is doing the work. And the way they maintain their immortality is by capturing children, and mind-raping them to download their own consciousness into theirs. The reason that they couldn't control the Warframes and needed the Tenno to do so is because they [[that guy|lack basic human empathy]], they just abuse and torture everyone under them.
**The Grineer were slaves to the Orokin which are now free, and are now absolutely terrorizing the system. They're a bunch of rotten clones which are highly augmented, and they kill everyone who isn't them, which aren't any better. Oh, and dialogue implies that they process their dead into corpsestarch.
***The Corpus are the second faction, being greedy money-grubbers who care only for profit, and imprison a colony of debt-bondage slaves called "Fortuna", just to rub it in, and so on. Oh, and said Solaris are people whos HEADS have been stuffed into their torsos so they can easily reposes their limbs and organs for dept that is passed through the generations. Oh, and ya not able to pay with your limbs alone? They will scoop your brain out of your skull and shelve it for a set ammount of time... or the rest of your natural lifespan. As you are awake and lost in your thoughts.
****And, of course, this is done to kids, severing their necks and replacing them with a connector to more esily stuff their heads into their scooped out torsos once they are old enough to lug around a wrench. Pretty much all Post-Orokin civilizations are pieces of shit.
***And if evil bureaucrats, and shitty clones who want to kill everything that isn't them bad enough, we have the Infected, which are a [[Tyranids|hive mind of twisted forms that kill everything they can stick their bloody tendrils into]], bottom line is, Warframe is a shitty place.
* '''''[[Unhallowed Metropolis]]''''', a game representing probably the outer limits of how Grimdark you can go without sliding into Grimderp.
* ''''Fragged Cyberpunk''''': A prequel to the more optimistic Fragged Empire. Fragged Cyberpunk focuses on the twilight years of humanity as Habsburgian levels of genetic erosion and degradation leave it only a few centuries of life, while the powers that be, that could cure it do not bother and instead focus their efforts on terraforming hospitable worlds for their new, engineered super species. All the while herding humans into cramped cities on dead planets that are effectively concentration/death camps for what remains of mankind.
* '''''Clive Barker''''' in general. His works include Hellraiser, Rawhead Rex where an ancient god of male sex eats kids, the Midnight Meat Train where an ancient cult feeds people to an underground society of monsters so New York isn't destroyed, and... let's just say there's a reason he's basically a BDSM enthusiast given way too much handle.
* '''''[[EYE: Divine Cybermancy]]''''' (Basically, Wh40k with French people)
* '''''Half-Life''''', a video game series which helped revolutionize FPS games, has a surprisingly dark story and lore. In the first game, you play as Gordon Freeman and defeat an invading alien race after an accident you helped indirectly cause. Then comes the second game, where it turns out the alien boss you killed in the last game was keeping the Combine at bay, a race of inter-dimensional conquerors who bulldoze Earth in a matter of hours and occupy it, running the planet’s resources dry and slowly driving mankind to extinction while irreparable damage is done to the ecosystem, with a steadily losing resistance and Gordon’s old boss overseeing everything the Combine does. You come back and help turn the tide in the fight... but throughout all this, guiding your every action, is the G-Man, an enigmatic figure with Tzeentch levels of planning and manipulation. Ultimately, every action you take is for his benefit. You cannot make any real choice because he will make it for you. In other words, no matter what Gordon or anyone else does, the G-Man will always be right there, waiting in the wings, to slightly... adjust it to his benefit. And there’s almost nothing that can be done to stop him.

== Grimderp ==
{{topquote| Why don't people band together to fix things? Because GRIMDARK. Why hasn't an external system supplanted the current, barely functioning one? Because GRIMDARK. How does such a woefully inefficient system manage the logistical nightmare of endless total war? Because I murdered a baby seal, that's why! You should feel bad.|Terrible Writing Advice (The GRIMDARK Episode)}}

Grimderp is what happens when a writer takes grimdark so far that it goes [[derp]]. The writer puts something in that makes the setting more grimdark, but it's generally reliant on at least one party involved [[Fail|suddenly abandoning all sense of reason and logic]], or else caused by a lack of forethought on the implications of how the element interacts with the world. Many long-runner grimdark works will become this sooner or later, as either the setting or the cast's morality (rather a usually extreme lack thereof) will induce complete and utter apathy in the audience and cause them to give up out of sheer pointlessness. Most "dark" anime/manga tend to be more or less grimderp, as attempts to attract mature audiences ends in violence, blood, and sex without consequence (at BEST, mind you. [[Rape|At worst...]]), all in gratuitous quantities.

To be clear, grimderp is not just that something is "dark" or that a character behaves stupidly. Human beings make dumb, short-sighted, irrational, and morally objectionable decisions all the time, just crack open about any book on human history. Grimderp is when a character breaks character to do something they would normally never do or engage in behavior that is logistically impossible [[Gav Thorpe|("there are as many elves as the plot demands")]], simply "because it's dark". To put it in another way, it is basically the author(s) writing dark things for the sake of [[Edgy|edginess]]. The end product often comes out as painfully juvenile and sounding like something out of a 13-year-old fanfic that thinks adding barbwire coated in feces to everything makes something 'deep'.

That is not to say it is impossible to make an absurdly dark fiction without straying off course into grimderp territory. The post-apocalyptic short story, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison avoids the grimderp label due to the historical context the story was written in as well as the philosophical debate on the idea of cruelty as presented through AM. Is AM a spiteful, cruel monster or a product of man's penchant for violence and warfare trapped in its own database prison? Another example that avoids this title would be Stephen Baxter's [[Xeelee Sequence]], whose entire ethos is a critique and ruthless deconstruction on the entire [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] and [[Cthulhu|Cosmic Horror]] tropes whilst still crafting an unbelievably depressing multiverse. So yes, it is possible to write pure concentrated grimdark, but it should be done with a level of delicacy and self-awareness for it to be seen as legible.

* The Last of Us: Part 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed The Last of Us, is Grimderp in its purest form: Characters prolong suffering simply out of the blue. Basic logic is thrown out as countless characters dive headfirst into a rabbit hole of violence, suffering, and depression, often to the point of [[Edgy|literal edginess]].
* The Dothraki of "[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]". We are asked to believe that an entire culture can sustain itself by raiding settled people (when the Mongols and Plains Indians they're based on hunted and herded large animals), and then ''killing and not even selling or eating the livestock'', eating horses whenever possible despite borderline worshipping them and relying on them as beasts of burden or war steeds, solve literally all their disputes with murder and defeat their enemies with mass charges (despite real nomads having small populations, and winning battles with cavalry skill and/or surprise). At the point where the story says that "a wedding without at least three deaths is considered a dull occasion" and mentions warriors casually raping dancers (the first fight to the death started over two warriors wanting the same dancer), the whole thing just looks like an [[edgy]] [[Magical Realm]] based on "hordes of eastern savages" clichés.
* [[My Little Pony|Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons]] is a fanfiction about magical ponies so grim, dark, and derp that it would almost be comical if it wasn't so fucking horrifying. With characters that get shit on (both figuratively and literally) more than the [[Lamenters]], and with a world so bleak (and missing the point of Fallout, FiM, ''and'' the original Fallout: Equestria) that an heroing <s>seems like</s> WOULD ACTUALLY BE the happiest ending (<s>Assuming it will end, it probably never will as long as there's enough cybernetics to keep rebuilding the constantly-dying protagonist)</s> HOLY SHIT IT ACTUALLY ENDED!), it's the prime example of how to make readers stop giving a fuck about the story at all.
* On that note, 90% of all grimdark fics are grimderp since writers are under the impression that [[Edgy|just making things dark makes it good writing]]. There are exceptions, but they are rare, because Sturgeon's Law is a thing. On the flip side, however, [[DOOM: Repercussions of Evil|certain examples]] have reached the apotheosis of Grimderp and become gut-bustingly hilarious.
* Warhammer 40,000 gets called out as this by some. Certainly it's a valid criticism of certain parts, but as we said earlier, [[Skub|you could argue about what is and is not grimderp in 40k for weeks without conclusion.]] For example, the Imperium is excessively self-destructive and tyrannical to its own people, but in the hands of a good writer, it's meant to underline how corrupt and desperate the Imperium has become without the Emperor's guidance, and how even those who are neither incompetent nor malicious still have to make brutally difficult choices. In the hands of a lesser writer, it's unnecessary evil purely for the sake of evil. We should call our next book "[[C.S. Goto|Darkness of Darkest Dark!]]"
** Historically, the Grail myths drift, not from [[Ecclesiarchy|Christian sources]], but Celtic ones (and beyond the Celts, older civilizations), and a typical feature of these myths happens to be the healing of a King through forces of restauration and regeneration (i.e. to put one in touch with his sources, with his roots), and the King was typically seen in agrarian societies as the King of a land, avatara of a Sky-Father, and [[Alarielle|the Queen as the Earth Goddess]]. The [[Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Psychic 101|Geokinesis psychic discipline]] has a power called '''Earth Blood''' who would do just that; if only [[Adeptus Custodes|someone]] let Librarians enter the Imperial Palace to do some Perceval style healing.
**[[Khornate Knights]]
**The [[Grey Knights]] (who seem to get this a lot, really) equipment and how it is made. Specifically, every bolt shell that the Grey Knights use is consecrated by the blood sacrifice of a righteous man or woman in a borderline Khornate ritual (and it has to be a ''good'' person, not just anyone. How the Imperium determines if someone is sufficiently "good" or not remains an open question). Those Aegis armors? Made from thousands of psykers (including ''children'') burned in a furnace to channel their power to the armor. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people have to die to make ''one'' Grey Knight combat-effective. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] as to whether it is grimderp or not, as it raises the question of where the Grey Knights find enough good people to consecrate all of the bolter rounds they go through every battle (especially in the 41st millenium, of all places).
**[[Gellar Field]]s being powered by the dreams of a comatose psyker being used as a battery (which also burns out and has to be replaced regularly). While very dark, it crosses the line into grimderp when one realizes 1) that Gellar Fields were said to be invented long before psykers began appearing among humanity, and 2) psykers are apparently rare enough in the Imperium that the Imperium has [[Black_Ships|an entire institution]] dedicated to rounding up psykers and bringing them back to Terra to make use of them, like making [[Astropath]]s or feeding the [[Astronomican]] and the [[Golden Throne]]. And according to recent editions the Black Ships are just barely meeting the quota to keep the [[Golden Throne]] going, so it's not like there are a lot of spare psykers around to be made into Gellar Field batteries.
**Originally, the [[Black Templars]] were treated as refusing to suffer the witch no matter who they were, to the point of refusing to ally with any Imperial instutition that made use of them. This got retconned to only hate ''enemy'' psykers in 6th edition after it was pointed out it would be really hard for the Black Templars to do anything if they refused to tolerate Astropaths or Navigators, and thus have no Warp travel or faster-than-light communication.
**[[Imperial_Worlds#Agri-World|Agri-Worlds]]. Seemingly in response to the common fandom sentiment that [[The_Imperium_of_Man#However.2C_is_the_Imperium_really_that_bad.3F|most worlds in the Imperium are actually quite decent places to live]], just so long as you don't get invaded by [[Orks]], [[Chris Wraight]] in ''Lords of Silence'' outlines a typical Agri-World, describing a horrific hellscape wracked by permanent Dust Bowl conditions and so much pesticides that the sky turns orange and it is not safe to walk around outside without a biohazard suit, and goes on to say that all Agri-Worlds are like this. This has caused a lot of [[skub]] within the community. Some say that this practice is perfectly acceptable grimdark, and that unsustainable farming practices aren't exactly unusual in human history (look at slash-and-burn farming practices in Brazil, or aquifer use in the United States). However, what people find issue with is the claim that ''all'' agri-worlds are invariably like this, when [[Your Dudes|the fact that conditions on various planets in the Imperium vary massively from world to world as needed for the plot and there is almost no standardization]] has always been considered one of the big selling points of the setting (not to mention contradicting descriptions of Agri-Worlds in [[Ciaphas Cain]] and the [[Last Chancers]]). The other aspect that people tend to find unbelievable is that the Imperium is claimed to not even use crop rotation in their Agri-Worlds, simply farming the same crop over and over again until the soil gives out and the planet becomes a [[Death World]]. The Imperium may have lost a lot of its ancient knowledge, but crop rotation as a practice goes back to the freaking ''Stone Age''. [[Derp|Its absurd to see knowledge that basic being lost in the horrors of Old Night]], or not been rediscovered in the time after. This also means the Imperium would literally have run out of planets thousands of years ago if this was true.
** The nature of how Imperial ships work has caused a great deal of [[skub]]. Namely the fact that the weapons of Imperial ships are loaded by hundreds of chem-bulked, rabid slaves dragging them into place while being whipped, the exertion being so great that many die frothing at the mouth by the effort or have their hands crushed by chains. They do this completely by hand, hauling the munitions across the ship with chains. This despite the fact that hydraulic power systems have existed since the 18th century. They don't even use inclined planes or levers, something which humanity has been using to haul large objects where they want them to go since the days of Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and Easter Island. Or they could literally just use a [[Chimera Transport|Chimera]] or a team of grox to do the job, you know, the reason why humanity built large vehicles and domesticated large animals? Meanwhile the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] is using autoloaders, and is deliberately keeping the technology from the rest of the Imperium so they will have an advantage in case another civil war ever breaks out (this being changed from shells loaded by slaves to Imperial ships having inefficient, barely functioning autoloaders due to lack of resources or Mechanicus hoarding making captain use maintenance teams from press ganged citizens who keep the autoloaders operational through blood, sweat, tears and their lives in service for a Imperium what will never know or care for their lives or sacrifices would honestly be more grimdark). Some say this is perfectly acceptable grimdark, others say that this is just too ridiculously inefficient to take seriously, even for the Imperium.
**The Marneus Calgar comic has caused a shitstorm with the recent revelations that the average life expectancy of the BEST place in the Imperium is in the mid-thirties, which is fucking [[FAIL|'''STUPID''']]. Because that means that the life expectancy of other non-Ultramar worlds are drastically shorter, which makes the machinations on how the Imperium is run, fucking unsustainable. If child mortality rates are ''that high'', then entire worlds would have quite literally run out of humans especially in warzones, while entire sectors' worth of economies would collapse or stagnate as more kids die before they grow up and be a productive member of society. This creates a drain in resources and long-term stability; it was already considered unsustainable during MEDIEVAL times, so you could just extrapolate this to a million worlds and the Imperium should collapse under its own inertia and weight by this point. I don't care how 'disposable' human life is, it is still a resource and the [[Emprah]] fucking hates wasting resources. We get that the comic writer is trying to shoehorn even more feudalist themes in the comics, but the problem is, this is not Krieg we're talking about, but fucking ''Ultramar''. So either the author does not know what sense of scale is, or that he does not understand the works of [[Roboute Guilliman|Guilliman]] because Grandpa Smurf [[Rage|'''WOULD. NOT.''' let this shit fly under the radar.]] The author has confirmed, however, that it was added to make Ultramar feel more grimdark. To give you some context, Somalia in the mid 1960s has a higher life expectancy than this. This is not grimdark, this is just fucking stupid that breaks the suspension of disbelief. It is one of the few things that both 4Chan and Reddit concurrently agree upon as fluff breaking.
**To be honest, the whole idea of humans being the "teeming multitudes" faction [[Imperial Guard|winning battles by sheer weight of numbers]] and which [[Skaven|breed quickly and are easily replaced]] is kind of silly if you know anything about human reproduction. Among species on Earth, humans are notable for being one of the ''slowest'' reproducing species out there. It takes nine months for a human to gestate to maturity in the womb, more than any other animal aside from elephants and whales, and even after birth humans take longer to reach maturity even compared to our close relatives the Neanderthals and ''Homo erectus''. Additionally, it takes a huge amount of parental care to care for a child and raise them to functional adulthood, more than any other animal. On top of this, pregnancy is incredibly crippling for human females, and women have a one in three chance of dying in childbirth if giving birth without any external aid or midwives (as would be the case for a citizen of the underhives), something almost no other species has to deal with. The way our species generally works is we breed incredibly slowly but live an incredibly long time and invest a lot of resources to make sure those few that are born survive to adulthood, which basically makes us the [[elves]] of the animal kingdom. Barring some major technological breakthrough like artificial wombs or genetic engineering to reduce the crippling side effects of human pregnancy or long adolescence, humans are unlikely to be able to outbreed anything. And while some factions in the Imperium do have access to artificial wombs (like the [[Mechanicus]], most of humanity in 40k are shown to still reproducing the old fashioned way. Even if humanity starts out with a huge population it can throw at any problem, that population is going to be depleted pretty fast because humanity [[Eldar|can't replace their losses]]. Even if are the greatest resource the Imperium has, they're still trying to fight a war of attrition against foes including [[Daemons|ones who can't even be properly killed]] and two races who can easily outbreed humanity; [[Orks|one reproduces by fighting]] and [[Tyranids|the other are a rapidly reproducing horde of space locusts who go from conception to combat-ready within a Terran week]]. However, fans tend to ignore this because of the whole “to be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions” thing that is part of the general lack of regard for human life that makes 40k 40k, so people give it a pass.
** Some 40k sources claim that millions if not billions of guardsmen are killed EVERY SECOND. Even with the scale of the imperium taken into the account, having many times the current population of the Earth die every minute would be ridiculous for the whole of Imperium, let alone just the Imperial Guard.
**[[Deathwatch|Watch Captain Artemis]] saying [[Heresy|better to let the galaxy burn and allow the Imperium to fall to Chaos than allow the xenos to live]], right before [[Battle_of_Coheria|fucking up an eldar ritual that would have awakened Ynnead early and fucked over Slaanesh]], indirectly [[Gathering Storm|causing all of the ruckus of 8th Edition]]. Granted, while this does come from the [[Deathwatch]], who tend to be rabidly anti-xenos even by the Imperium's standards, this is for ''Chaos'', the Archenemy, the [[Big Bad Evil Guy]] of the Warhammer 40k setting, the one faction that even the notoriously xenophobic Imperium will begrudgingly admit is a bigger threat than the xenos and will team up with them to fight against it. A loyalist saying they ''prefer Chaos'' over anything, even as the lesser of two evils, should be grounds for an insta-[[BLAM]]ing and a red flag for Chaos corruption. And no, Watch Captain Artemis was not [[BLAM]]-ed for this, nor is this treated as the beginnings of his corruption and a slow fall to [[Chaos]]. And so a loyalist Space Marine managed to [[Fail|single-handedly save Slaanesh]]. Seriously, Chaos champions have been elevated to [[Daemon Prince|Daemon Princehood]] for less.
** The whole thing reached the lowest point by 3rd edition, considered the Darker and Edgier version of 40k, this is when some of the silliest things mentioned in this wiki were added or accentuated, after that 40k required more than 5 EDITIONS of fluff update, novels, characters and additional background to finally come back from "we no longer care" to an actual war with stakes and actual chances for all sides involved.
* [[Star Wars]]: Although Star Wars is 40k's high fantasy twin. There has been a few grimderp things that came out recently in Canon that has given 40k a run for its money. According to Canon, specifically the novel Ashoka, the Galactic Empire forces farming worlds by gunpoint to harvest a particular breed of crop to be used as rations for their troops. The problem? These crops were specifically designed to [[Wat|soak up every bit of nutrients on the planet until it becomes sterile.]] Meaning that the particular farming world is only capable of harvesting the crops a few times [[FAIL|''AT BEST'']] before it becomes a sterile death world. Let's put this in context here, the Galactic Empire is currently fighting a galaxy-wide insurgency and being a galaxy-wide government, the GE NEEDS a sustainable way to produce food in order to keep its giant military well-fed for long-term campaigns. So forcing farming worlds to produce crops that intentionally leave their worlds sterile after a few farming cycles is just fucking [[EPIC FAIL|'''STUPID'''.]] Because realistically, the GE would have quite literally, ran out of food in a decade, collapsing due to galaxy-wide famine. [[FAIL|This shit is so fucking stupid and retarded that it makes the abovementioned IoM agri-world farming practises look eco-friendly in comparison.]] Even if they did something somewhat reasonable like restricting this practice to worlds that sided with the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone Wars as a punishment, it's just spiteful beyond all reason.
** Seriously, this is a level of grimderp surpassing the [[Skub|Yuuzhan Vong]]; sure, they were be a race of machine-hating, masochistic religious zealots, but even they had organic technology to compensate, some were capable of pragmatism and they didn't make unsustainable food sources... and this is before they overhauled their society.
* [[Drowtales]]: The whole series is Grimderp on steroids, but there are a few particularly nauseating examples: nothing like the protagonist [[Mary Sue]] of innocence and purity blowing up the light elf MILF slave called Maya in an argument with a rival, an argument in which she feels morally justified right after buying a fighting slave which was doomed to die in underground Arenas even most Drow find disgusting, ran by a complete monster of a drow, regularly visited to watch slaves die, that's right, by the protagonist Ariel. Maya dies crying in her native tongue about "what she did to deserve this", crying she'll never see sunlight again. Protagonist feels a bit bad about a few days, and only that when she sees a few naked light elf slaves for sale, reminiscing Maya's face. Years pass and she thinks all the slavery and needless murder isn't so cool... just before visiting a surface colony who was taken from humans. She and her lesbian lover have an orgy on the settlement they just conquered by massacre. After a blissful after-sex sleep, the settlement is counterattacked by desperate humans coming to save their kin... which are promptly murdered by the half-light half-dark elf paladin of Sharess (Yes, a [[Mary Sue]] worshipping a total [[Baldur's Gate]] rip-off) who is all high and righteous when she is burning innocent humans who wanted to save their kin from slave traders about to buy the survivors. The protagonist's lesbian empath Drow (yes, with a length of purple hair paint, straight out of Deviantart) friend berates the cornered humans with a lame excuse line of "I feel your pain, why don't you take your survivors and run?!" when the said humans scream in desperation to save their families from the town's locked buildings, die horribly and our "I'm glad my clan Sarghress prevents slavery, let's shake hands and feast on the food we just plundered!" protagonist shakes hands on it. It's not even depressing, it's plain fucking logic diarrhea with enough depressive themes to OD an edgy 13 year old. (considering the authors were that old when they started...)
* Jeph Loeb's run on [[/co/|Ultimate Marvel]]: people dying brutally (most well known being Wasp getting eaten by the Blob) and completely gratuitously (Dr. Strange is killed the one page he shows up on and is completely forgotten afterwards), lore rape worst than anything Ward ever did (the heroic Pyro is now a rapist version of the mainline Marvel Pyro with no explanation, Thor going from new age hippie to mainline-style viking with no explanation... at least that last one is kinda cool). Overall it was so bad it effectively made the Ultimate Marvel universe (with the exception of Spider-Man and his cast) completely unusable. Small wonder that years later, Marvel thought smashing it and the main Marvel universe together would be a good idea.
* Koutetsujou no Kabaneri, an anime with a similar premise to the already-grimdark ''Attack on Titan'': It's set in (presumably feudal) Japan, where people are hiding behind walls and communicate with each others using trains to travel from town to town, and trades the giants and horses for guns and [[zombie]]s. Several of the characters have moments of team-killing ineptitude that end up prolonging the conflict far longer than it should:
**The [[samurai]] don't bother with armor and generally aren't very combat-savvy when it comes to zombies, and their [[Lawful Stupid]] tendencies turn any defense against a wall breach into an utter clusterfuck. The antagonist is [[Abaddon|an absolute failure AND wanted for crimes against humanity]], being a [[Edgy|pretentious Che Guevara wannabe]] [[Chaos Pretty Marines|with pink hair]] and wielder of an ugly-yet-somewhat effective [[Sword|sabre]]. He also has a devoted following despite being thoroughly unable to grasp the basics of warfare and its ethics (he thinks children are cowards for not being able to fight monsters that ambush and run through trained adult fighters with ease, and [[What|considers destroying one's own resources and castles to be a viable strategy]]). Meanwhile, the main protagonist has found not one, but TWO miracle solutions that would allow mankind to fight back against the zombie plague, but no one will listen to him, especially not the main antagonist, both because of the above and because ''of course they wouldn't'', it's <s>grimderp</s> GRIMDARK.
**Ironically, Ancient Shintoism (a main religion of that period) has the only known anti-[[Nurgle|zombie]] deities: ''Kukuri hime no kami'', a goddess of purification ([[Reasonable Daemonette|''despite'' being rather sado-masochist]]) whose followers would bind a corpse with ropes, place a big stone on the chest and bury it (coffins are optional). [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|Insane as it was]], it was the most common form of burial in the Jomon period, and never went completely out of date through all the medieval period. Despite the rites being a perfect defense against [[Dark Souls|an undead invasion]], apparently they didn't take in this setting. Three guesses why.
*Most dark fantasy/"Ryona" hentai like Redo of a Healer (see [[Edgy]] for details), Kuroinu, Maggot Baits and whatever bargain basement hentai game developer puts the heroines through horrifying rapes, tortures and debauchery with no way to escape, all for little more purposes than to degrade, humiliate and mind-break them.
* [[FATAL]]
* [[Black Tokyo]]
* Teenagers bad attempts at recreating stuff they like such as Creepypasta's.
* About half of Garth Ennis's work goes so far around the bend that, if you don't stop caring about anyone in the story and put it down first, it becomes compelling or hilarious. Practically all of his original stories are drowning in grimderp (and author ax grinding). Prime examples include;
** The Boys: Almost every superhero is an irredeemable sexual deviant and loose cannon whose only crime fighting accomplishments come from corporate PR lies, and the story's protagonists are little better.
*** Surprisingly averted with it's Amazon Prime adaptation. By actually making most of the heroes less unambiguously rotten, cutting down the childish silliness, making the violence less gratuitous and more justified, and making the Boys themselves more human, the series actually manages to be WAY darker than the comics. Hell, Billy Butcher actually contemplates MURDERING A CHILD in the series, which is something the way more psychotic Butcher of the comics would not.
** Crossed: One of his most infamous creations. Most of the world is dead or turned into [[Slaanesh|murder-raping sadists]] á la the Reavers from Firefly due to a virus with a visible symptom being boils forming a cross pattern on the infectee's face. Showing any courage will get you killed or turned into one of the aforementioned murder-rapists, and there are survivors that are just as fucked up as the infectees. Supposedly a dig at arm chair survivalists, it's now mostly remembered for being edgy for the sake of edginess and being overall boring as hell.
* Hatred: Remember how your family told you that GTA was breeding criminals and that games created "monsters"? Well, Hatred tries to cash in on that by making a game dedicated to killing innocent people and making a "parody" out of those reactions, but [[FAIL|fails miserably]] to do that. This is because not only is our main "hero" a complete asshole with literally nothing redeeming about him, but most of the gameplay consists on you shooting unnarmed civilians and members of the policy/military that are '''extremely''' easy to beat, and coupled with the monochrome colors the game becomes ''very'' boring in a ''very'' quick pace. And unlike these old games that caused oh so much controversy, Hatred doesn't even have that good old orkish humor and tries to [[Serious Business|take everything inside it seriously]], which makes the "Grimdark" aspect come off as ''very'' dumb.
* [[Carl Sargent]]'s total rape of the [[Greyhawk]] setting in ''[[From The Ashes]]''. Something of a unique case in that the grimdark was well-done; it's that he had to fuck over the game's oldest and most-beloved setting (see the article for details) to do it that made it Derp.
* Most of the anti-[[HFY]] content in the [[World of Darkness]], especially the unmitigated misanthropy in parts of [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]. Humans vary from 'Idiotic sheep permanently at the bottom of the food chain' to 'Apathetic fools responsible for most of the world's ills' to 'Cackling, moustache-twirling villains', civilization and all its fruits are EVIL!, and the tribe of bestiality-born werewolves that want to exterminate the human race down to pre-Stone Age levels are presented as heroes that're unequivocally morally justified in their actions (both in and out of setting, if some of the Apocalypse scenarios are anything to go off). [[FAIL|Yeah.]]
* Anything made by biggest hack in Hollywood, <s>Zack</s> Hack Snyder.
* LifeWeb: A complex SS13 spinoff taking place in a cave fortress of a neo-medieval world in the far future, combat is more lethal, and it claims to explore subjects like murder, corruption, rape(with no regard for age), torture, cultism and general human suffering. In reality, the themes it "explores" just means "it's in the game and you can do it" and it's a farce on every level possible.
* The ''Hearts of Iron IV'' mod ''The New Order: Last Days of Europe'' has numerous dystopian "failstates", but the most notorious is the SS Ordenstaat Burgund, also known as Burgundy. Covering northeastern France and Belgium, Burgundy is ruled by [[Nazi|Heinrich Himmler and the SS]] as a giant concentration camp. Its sole purpose is genocide, first on the local and ultimately on the [[Exterminatus|global]] scale. When it isn't killing its own inhabitants, it's backing SS agents throughout the Third Reich's sphere of influence to further its cause of EEEVIL. Economic minister Oswald Pohl even points out that killing massive swathes of the nation's population just for not being Aryan isn't sustainable, but Himmler regards such criticism as treason. Realistically, Burgundy should have collapsed on itself before the game started, but it can stick around regardless. Playing as it is as difficult and miserable as you'd expect from a Holocaust management sim.
** Recent updates have focused more on the "derp" than the "grim", apparently as a reaction to Burgundy's pre-rework supervillainy. Unlike before, where it could last into the '80s [[Plot Armor|because the plot would break otherwise]], nü-Burgundy experiences [[Not As Planned]] moments on a near-[[Abbadon|FAILbaddon]] scale. Himmler [[BLAM|shooting Oswald Pohl]] for his "treason" not only tanks the economy but also makes economic management ''impossible''. Over time, the slaves, French and Belgian collaborator legions, and even Burgundy's own ministers will eventually get fed up and rebel. If Himmler purges them, ''literally everyone else'' will rise up in an event called the "Burgundian Spring". Even in the rare event that Himmler actually gets his nuclear Holocaust, it ultimately fails; the "pure" Aryans he chose to preserve emerge from their bunkers...and peacefully join post-apocalyptic society without issue. Why? Himmler told them that only true Aryans would survive the nuclear holocaust, so they assume that [[Derp|all the survivors are Aryan ''by definition'']], [[Wat|even if said survivors are Jewish or black]].

== Grim Tragedy ==
Naturally in a universe such as 40k, the grimdarkness of the setting would mean nothing if not tied into the ironic tragedy of the lore. This includes:

*[[Imperium|A species]] so afraid of the dauntless perils of Chaos that they will brutally harass and execute entire populations out of mere suspicion, all to stop the spread of ruin while indirectly strengthening those who seek to destroy them (''particularly'' Chaos). They, as a people, have progressed massively in population, technology and power since their species conception, yet they, more than anyone else, have lost one vital element: their humanity.

*[[Eldar|A race who]] was once at a zenith of civilization and prosperity, capable of bending the very Gods to their will. But by their own hand reduced themselves to scattered isolated fleets and colonies always on the run; their pompous and arrogant leaders hide behind a dwindling sense of security based in superiority over other races who are far more successful and perhaps destined to be greater than they ever were. [[Dark Eldar|A number among them]], after their unholy and insidious near-demise, continue (with oblivious glee) to empower [[Slaanesh|the very being that brought them to ruin]] in order to save themselves.

*[[Orks|A race of creatures]] who possess the brightest "potential"; with near mastery over the psychic, near-natural physical perfection and almost limitless numbers from their highly successful methods of reproduction... And yet they are genetically restricted by an unquenchable thirst for conflict which drives each to idiocy, leaving them hopeless of advancing beyond simple barbarians.

*[[Necron|An ancient people]] who were so envious of their neighbors' lifespans that they were ready to cripple the entire galaxy just for the sake of petty superiority - a superiority neutered by their unwitting transformation into metaphorical and literal automatons. They are now mindless machines who, bar few, care nothing of their past and seek only one thing: Conquest. And those who still have their personalities are either insane, demented, depressed, brooding, psychotic, or any combination of these in various proportions.

*[[Tau|A newborn race]] who innocently believes that there can be peace and acknowledgement among each other. Unfortunately the sinister methods they employ hoping that it is for [[Greater Good|something better]] is slowly, but steadily driving them into the decadence that plagues the other species. In doing so they become proof, both of the fact that [[Horus|anyone]], [[Emperor|no matter their intentions]], can be corrupted, and also of the kindness that the rest have forsaken for damnation and despair...

*The fact that, despite tens of thousands of years of knowing nothing but war, these peoples are woefully unprepared for what is to come. No matter how many regiments can be raised or Craftworlds restored, what is out there is [[Tyranids|all consuming, diabolical and numberless...]] Unless, they are themselves on the verge of extinction, and as such, desperately trying to cross over the great void between galaxies, which implies fighting against [[Ork|invincibles foes]] and [[Ultramarines|fate dodging cheaters]] unnaturaly empowered by the grief of an [[Games Workshop|unspeakable Eldritch Abomination beyond the cosmos]]. The good option is that there are a thousand galaxies worth of the fucking bugs; the bad option is that there are billions upon billions of galaxies worth of the fucking bugs. The worse option is that billions upon billions galaxies worth of what is essentially the perfect organism is running away from something worse.

== See also ==
*[[Noblebright]]
*[[Edgy]]
*[[Eversor]]
*[[Lamenters]]

== External Links ==
* [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/grimdark KnowYourMeme has examples from outside of /tg/]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQAWBeFnkg8 Trope Talk: Grimdark], a analysis of the "Grimdark" style of storytelling and why it works (and why sometimes it doesn't)
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Vance Motherfucking Stubbs

2021-12-10T12:31:14Z

195.194.119.220:

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[[Image:VanceMFStubbs.png|450px|thumb|right|The motherfucker himself.]]
{{topquote|I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep. I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a Lion.|Alexander the Great}}

He's '''Vance. Motherfucking. Stubbs.''' An [[Imperial Guard]] general and total badass from [[Dawn_of_War#Soulstorm|Dawn of War: Soulstorm]] and the only character introduced in the expansion anyone unironically likes, despite having arguably the worst voice actor (his performance is just bad, and not with enough ENGRISH or ham to be unintentionally funny like Boreale or Carron). This is mostly because his competition is a Necron Lord with some of the most obnoxious robo-mummy asthma ever who clearly wants to be as cool as Thomas Maccabee but isn't, the wussiest Khornate lord to have ever disgraced the Blood God, a bald brother genericus with a dumb accent, a Cannoness whose entire personality can be summarised as "Sister of Battle", a Farseer with an especially annoying high pitched voice that makes her sound like she's actually two preteen Eldar girls with one sitting on the other's shoulders so they can pretend to be an adult like [[Girls und Panzer|some cartoon,]] a painfully generic Archon with a stupid hat, and "I can't believe it's not Shas'O'Kais" but with the added tendency to go into melodrama of a bad anime protagonist. He's the most badass Governor General....ever....well maybe at tie with [[General Sturnn]] who's equally awesome, but wasn't a governor.

No, you cannot say his name without Motherfucking in the middle.

==About the Motherfucker==
Vance Motherfucking Stubbs leads the 252nd Kaurava Conservator Regiment for the Imperial Guard in the game. He is armed (apparently like every other Command Squad leader in the Galaxy) with a set of Power Claws and a Bolter strapped to his arm. He may also, in fact, have a Thunder Hammer for a penis, but his harem of lovers were all too exhausted to comment on the matter.

The entire Imperial Guard campaign featuring him is sheer [[AWESOME]]. When the player chooses to play as the Imperial Guard in Soulstorm, then it is written in the army selection menu that Stubbs recently transferred before the Kaurava Hijinks that resulted in nearly every single force to appear in the [[Kaurava System]]. The Guard, like any player controlled army, starts with one region (in the Guard's case is the Dussala Precinct). Mind you, compared to the other forces that come to the system, the 252nd Conservator Regiment is at that time underpowered, with low morale and simply sucks. Stubbs therefore whips them with sheer manliness (and a series of reforms) turning the 252nd back into a fighting force that shouldn't be trifled with and proceeds to <s>re-conquer the system one region at a time</s> Lose to '''DA ORKZ'''. With the release of DoW3, it has been confirmed that the Orkz under Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter were the canonical victor. Yes, we're not quite sure what happened either. '''WUT 'APPENED? WE IS ORKS AND YOU IS NOT, UMMIE, DAT'S WUT 'APPENED!'''

[[File:ORKZ ARE DA BEST.png|300px|thumb|right|Despite Stubb's best efforts, Orkz snatched the victory. Why? CAUSE ORKZ ARE DA BEST]]
[[Image:Stubbs.jpg|300px|thumb|right|He remains cool, regardless of situation]]
If the Guard is victorious in the conflict, then the system is revitalized as Stubbs commissions multiple projects that rebuilds the worlds and improves their industrial capabilities. Additionally the planets become militarized due to the large number of newly constructed military academies that produce superior regiments that are second only to the Kasrkins trained at [[Cadia|Cadia's]] Kasrs (a impressive feat considering that Kasrkins are elite even by Tempestus Scions/Storm Trooper standards).

The Emperor protects indeed.

Worth mentioning is the attack on the [[Ecclesiarchy]] controlled Sama District. Stubbs knew well that it didn't matter how much he and his men would make amends, the Regiment would never be free from being suspected by the Sisters, as the Warpstorm over Kaurava IV happened on Vance's watch. Not to mention that even if they did repent, the Sisters of Battle of the Order of The Sacred Rose would make them do so with excessive amounts of flamers and purging. Vance had no other option in this case. Stubbs refused any of these accusations and thought himself and his men not responsible for the whole mess, thus he did something that was crazy enough to work...mainly to march into the Sama District in full-force and simply conquer the place. And if the Guardsmen are victorious, then Vance will utter a speech that the Emperor was with the Conservators this day.

==The whole losing 100 Baneblades thing==
When facing the Imperial Guard at their stronghold in Dawn of War: Soulstorm, Stubbs' Commissar informs him that all 100 of the [[Baneblade|Baneblades]] that would have been available to defend had just been sent off to help the Imperial Guard elsewhere in the Kaurava system, and any more Baneblades that are needed will have to be constructed via a series of pieces sent out by supply Rhinos. This absurdity of simply "losing" 100 Baneblades has spawned a number of jokes amongst players, mostly associating him with being "Tactically incompetent" as opposed to [[Creed]]'s "Tactical Genius". (Speaking of tactical genius it may be worth mentioning that shortly after this incident Abaddon was run over by a column of Baneblades he found stuffed in his mailbox) Also it can be disregarded as Chaos Propaganda started by <s>[[Alpha Legion|Alpha Legion Chaos Marines]]</s> {{BLAM|*BLAM!!!*}} [[Chaos Space Marines| THOSE CHAOS SPACE MARINES]] THAT DO NOT EXIST!!

However, there have been rumors that the Baneblades never left, but they were hidden by [[Creed]], or perhaps taken by the [[Blood Ravens |Blood Magpies]] ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNK5-uE5JFg| IT IS THE BAAAAAAANNNNEEBLAAAAAAADEEE] ). Adding on top of this, Baneblades are supposed to be rare (with three per regiment being the average), made only at major Forge Worlds. Fortunately for the Imperium, the in-game background for Stubbs's Baneblades is that the invasions and mass destruction miraculously uncovered the rather terrifying (for the enemy) fact that at least half of the entire supercontinent city of Kaurava I is in fact built on top of a continent-sized manufactorum, probably from the Great Crusade, devoted to the mass-production of Baneblades.

This enabled Stubbs to roll out more Baneblades in a month than Forge Worlds (individually, of course) produce in a century. Best of all, the fact you can build more manufactorums in-game suggests that the Mechanicus could probably mass-produce the ''factories'', too. With the pacified Tomb World nearby to draw in the Mechanicus plus the carrot Stubbs now has with the Baneblades and whatever other STC data uncovered (maybe Fellblades and other awesome stuff?), along with Stubbs's clear care for the little people, it is likely he could convince/trade for the Tomb World being studied and Forgeworld-ified by various important Forge Worlds, giving him access to their unique data (such as Executioners and Vanquisher cannons). Sure, the individual Forge Worlds never share anything, but then, none of them have had the technological buffet on a scale Vance does to bargain with. That, and he doesn't seem the sort to give a crap about keeping tech to himself. Then he can happily send copies to every Forge World if he can pay captains to visit. Then the Imperium wins by default. Regardless, Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is seen as one of the most awesome Imperial Guard generals because of his calm, stern voice, even when his army is on the brink of defeat.

<s>Relic never bothered to announce who actually canonically won the Kaurava conflict</s> Scratch that; Orkz were the victors, see above. - only that it sure as the [[Warp]] wasn't the Space Marines. Hence, many players simply accepted the fact that Stubbs won the war because of his utter badassery that no other character was able to posses. And also the rumors that he found the 100 Baneblades again and used his variation [[Creed|taktikul jinyas]] to deep strike said Baneblades into the main bases of armies. We would have said [[Indrick Boreale]] was the canon winner of the Kaurava conflict - if only he didn't screw it up by canonically losing horribly.

Alas, as it turns out he wasn't quite badass enough to stand up to Gorgutz' WAAAGH, which was able to defeat him and force him to retreat from Kaurava. Given the fact that Gorgutz got bored and left the Kaurava system for Acheron some time afterward, one can only hope Stubbs took advantage of the ensuing Ork civil war to reclaim the system, just as he swore he would.

But at least we know what happened to the 100 Baneblades: Gorgutz krumped them.

==Badass Facts==
[[File:Relic00014.jpg|450px|thumbnail|right|What really happened to Carron that day. (Yes, the giblet on the ground is in fact his spleen! Why is it on the ground, he may or may not have shat it out.)]]
What is truly stunning about Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is the intense humanity he exhibits; whilst almost every commander in Soulstorm was poorly developed or simply [[Firaeveus Carron|pants-on-head retarded]], Stubbs was [[Fist of the North Star|comparatively sympathetic]] - determined to win back his regiment's good name in the eyes of the Emperor and who strove to make sure the sacrifices of his men weren't for nothing, and was determined to restore honour to his unit, heedless of what heretical scum would stand in their way. He shows manly [[Rage|rage]] at the tortures the [[Dark Eldar]] subjected captured soldiers to, and unlike Aleksander, who panicked in [[Dawn of War|Dark Crusade]] when Eliphas sent him telepathic messages, Stubbs gritted his teeth and shrugged it off, spurring his men onwards towards their objective in an effort to shove a formation of [[METAL BOXES]] up Carron's ass.

Few men approach the manliness level of Vance Motherfucking Stubbs. The only ones that do are all [[Imperial Guard|Imperial]]. It says a lot.

Stubbs also has a fucking awesome name. Few, if any, in the 41st Millennium can approach that level of awesomeness, even <s>"Holt"</s>. <s>{{BLAM}}</s> {{BLAM|*SLAP*}} '''COMMISSAR''' Holt!

Vance is also as badass, to inspire a single guardsman to noscope one shot a living saint in SS (see the video for lulz that'd make the Avatar of Khaine that the ultrasmurfs killed go 'Ha... like a bitch'). Further lulz includes the Chaos Stronghold Defeat where we see Vance's four (Literally!) Imperial Guardsmen one-shotting pretty much every Chaos-worshipping bitch in the area, as well as Vance himself, balls-slapping the [[Fail|failure of a Chaos Lord,]] [[Firaeveus Carron|Firaeveus Carron]]. This shows how badass and cool Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is and how his very presence can turn the Guardsmen's standard-issue balls-of-steel into Adamantium-tipped power-balls that would be so heavy they could bitch-slap a Titan if they so need it.

Additionally, Vance is not only a motherfucker himself, [[Reasonable Marines|but a pragmatic motherfucker.]] On his siege on the Tau special moon base, Vance ordered his men that instead of destroying the Space Commie Cannon ([[Wat|giant ass cannon in Soulstorm that destroys advanced life forms but saves the trees...]]) [[Creed|he thought it would be much more practical to use it against those cunt-face blueberries.]] The work paid off as Vance and his men hilariously start to pile drive the Tau with their own technology as those space weeaboos start to shit their grey-ass; before pussy whipping the Tau Ethereal in front of the Tau Commander stationed at the moon. Instead of actually destroying any further Tau technology, to prove how much of a pragmatist he is, the motherfucker-in-chief decides to hoard some Xeno relics as bargaining tools for the [[Ordo Xenos]] and other similar Imperial groups in order to gain the upper hand to protect the prestige of his men. What a motherfucker.

Also on his defeat of the Eldar, he was reported to have secretly [[Love Can Bloom|boned]] [[Caerys]] to the point of fucking her precognition which might explain why she constantly [[Fail|fails]] [[Farseer|at her job,]] that or she might have accidentally tried to peek at Vance's mind only to see multiple images on his...ehem...[[/d/|'Thunderhammer']] [[Extra Heresy|which may have promptly made her wet herself and lose all psychic concentration.]] Heck she may even secretly have joined Vance's harem of lovers as she wasn't canonically seen getting killed. Vance's harem possibly includes several chosen [[Imperial Guard|Guardswomen]] (Who are often left exhausted and near death after his 'regimental training'), an entire squad of [[Howling Banshees]] (He really makes them 'Howl' if you know what I mean...), several Dark Eldar [[Wyches]] (Even they admit that he's merciless as he brutally pulverizes them since they're Xenos and stuff) and even a couple of [[Sisters of Battle|Sisters]] (Who have not immolated themselves but dropped their guns in awe as he gave them a new meaning to 'divine intervention'). But as usual, when asked about this potential [[Heresy]] Stubbs just shrugs off with a cool breeze as cold as [[Fenris]] before continuing his duty in obliterating the enemies of Man. The [[Emprah]] works in mysterious ways and Stubbs is no exception.

No, it isn't possible to say Vance Motherfucking Stubbs without 'Motherfucking' in the middle, or spelling it in all caps.

==...In actuality==
[[Image:StubbsDW.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Even in his stronghold defeat cutscene, he's still badass.]]
As of DoW3's release, the victor of Soulstorm was revealed to be none other than.... [[Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter]], rather than Vance Motherfucking Stubbs. This of course caused much [[RAGE]] at the release of the game, which coupled with the games radically different gameplay and lack of the Imperial Guard as a faction and generally being shit, only continued to divide people's opinion further. However, we do not know if Vance survived or was killed in combat, although given that he gets away to fight another day in his defeat outro, the former is more likely. What happened next is not clarified, so feel free to imagine whatever version of subsequent events you like.

Although, really, if anyone deserved to win by virtue of sheer awesomeness other than Stubbs, it was definitely Gorgutz. Plus let's be real, Gorgutz is a frequently reoccurring character while Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is a one off; narrative rules were on Gorgutz's side the moment he was confirmed for Dawn of War 3. Of course, Gorgutz doesn't exactly stick around after his victories, so it is entirely possible that after he fucked off to find the Spear of Khaine, Stubbs could have retaken the system with the Orks' leader gone. Although given that Stubbs' reputation would probably have been destroyed by his defeat, it's likely he was executed for incompetence and picking a fight with the Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Astartes. Gorgutz's victory cutscene also states that Kaurava's Ork hordes will come to plague Ultima Segmentum for countless years to come, so it's unlikely that Stubbs would have been able to reclaim it, especially as Soulstorm happens towards the tail end of the 41st millennium where the Imperium is due for getting smacked by the rise of many major Necron Dynasties, WAAAGH! Ghazghkull, the arrival of Hive Fleet Leviathan, and the 13th Black Crusade almost simultaneously.

<strike>While true, it was also assumed by players that Vance was the winner. So, now players are left with two winners and two different endings both being true for the sake of DoW III having Gorgutz.</strike> *KRUMP* NO DEY DIDDNT! DEY JUS' SED DAT BOREALE GIT LOST! YA 'UMIE GITS KEEP SAYIN' DAT, BUT YOO NEVA SHOW US ENNY PROOF DAT DEY DID! 'SIDES, DERE'S DA STANDARD OV KAURAVA FINGY IN DoW 2 DAT SEZ WE WON!!

In all likelihood, the rumour probably started with BigDickCheney using the Imperial Guard as his faction of choice when he uploaded the Soulstorm stronghold defeat videos onto Youtube. While Thule was quickly declared the canonical winner of Dark Crusade, Relic was annoyingly silent for years after Soulstorm beyond saying that the winner wasn't the Blood Ravens in Dawn of War 2 and so the usual game of Chinese Whispers ended up becoming rock hard canon in the heads of fans despite the lack of proof. So much so that hints that Gorgutz was the actual winner stated in (admittedly easily missed) lore blurbs for items in Retribution went unnoticed until Relic made its answer impossible to ignore.

The whole mess was born out of a case of an admittedly small group of fans assuming something was true even though there was no real evidence for it and the people in charge of the official canon not bothering to correct them until the fanon was already entrenched with this small group. Stubbs winning at Kaurava was one of those "everyone knows!" things even though you'd be hard pressed to find an average fan who knew that or even the flimsy and indirect evidence of it happening anywhere in Dawn of War 2. The lesson to take away from this is that fans shouldn't assume something is true just because some one on the internet say it is, especially when the dev's have never supported this 'fact'.

==See Also==
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cno-_CM0yyU Commissar, I would like to see this city built up again. I would like to see towers and spires of gleaming white. I would like to see our men on parade routes, not tours of duty! I WOULD LIKE TO SEE EVERY CITY ON THIS PLANET, EVERY COLONY ON THIS BESOTTED, MISERABLE SYSTEM TURNED TO THE SERVICE AND INDUSTRY OF THE IMPERIUM IN THE EMPEROR'S NAME!]-(Ain't Stubbs an idealistic badass?)

==In the Soulstorm campaign==
Vance is your early melee tank who is able to protect your precious flashlight trooper from all kinds of nasty melee units like Ork Boyz, Assault Marines and Banshees. He can recruit 4 kinds of bodyguard such as Commissar, Warrior Priest, Pysker and Kasrkin Sergeant.

Commissar gives extra morale. Psyker gives detection to stealth units as well as their [[heresy|dangerous]] psychic abilities. Warrior Priest gives extra morale, speed and health([[cheese|with the awesome ability to make Vance invincible if the your base has reached tier 3]]). The Kasrkin Sergeants is only available after Ibram's Vestment is unlock and it gives Vance extra 100 hp, 150 morale.

So in summary, if you want Vance to be a [[eliphas|mega]] [[Gorgutz|tank]], you need to have every bodyguard as a Warrior Priest which not only gives Vance lots of health, but also allows Vance to use the Priest's invincibility 5 TIMES.

Though if you want Vance to be shooty, you needs to have all Kasrkin Sergeants (who are pretty cheap and fast to recruit by the way) and they will shoot everyone to shits with their advanced flashlights Hellgun.

Psyker's detection is kind of useless if Vance has the Targeting Optics wargear and it's psychic abilities is not really that useful since you rely on your flashlight troopers' dakka damage most of the time.

Commissar's extra morale isn't worth to recruit but it can put out some dakka and it does not requires Ibram's Vestment so it would be a early placement for Kasrkin Sergeants.

By the time Vance is fully upgraded, he can eat buildings and vehicles for breakfast and tanking relic units like the frigging Nightbringer toe to toe with his invincibility.

==Codex Stubbs==
Now your Guardsmen can be led by this badass.

'''Vance "Motherfucking" Stubbs. Governor General of Kaurava:'''
Vance Stubbs may replace the Company Commander of a Company Command Squad or the Tempestor Prime of a Militorum Tempestus Platoon Command Squad (in which case the Militorum Tempestus Platoon Command Squad becomes an HQ choice) for 110 points.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Name !! WS !! BS !! S !! T !! W !! I !! A !! Ld !! Sv
|-
| '''Vance Stubbs''' || 5 || 5 || 3 || 4 || 3 || 4 || 3 || 10 || 4+/5++
|}
TYPE: '''Infantry'''
 Warlord Trait: '''Bellowing Voice'''
 Special Rules:
*A Father to his Men: Every Astra Militarum model within Vance's Command Radius has +1 Leadership.
*Hatred (Tau)
*'''Ambidextrous''': Vance Stubbs may fire both his Storm Bolter and his Plasma Gun during the shooting phase (he must still fire at the same target as his unit) or when firing overwatch.
*'''Voice of Command'''
*Senior Officer
*Stubborn
Wargear:
*'''Plasma Gun'''
*'''Battle Claws''': These are a pair of Master-Crafted Power Claws that grant +1 Strength.
*'''Storm Bolter'''
*'''Carapace Armour'''
*'''Bionics''': Improves Vance's Toughness by 1 (already represented in his profile) and grants the Feel No Pain special rule.
*'''Macharian Cross''': After deployment is complete (including deploying infiltrators and moving scouts) but before determining who has the first turn, any single infantry squad within 6” of Vance Stubbs may be redeployed up to 12” but otherwise must abide by all of the mission's deployment zones and rules.
*'''Ibram’s Vestment''': Grants the Preferred Enemy special rule to friendly models within 12".
Frag Grenades
*'''Frag and Krak Grenades'''
*'''Melta Bombs'''

==8th Edition==
One fa/tg/uy's attempt to drag Vance Motherfucking Stubbs kicking and screaming (mostly kicking arse) into 8th Edition:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U6o1jP8ue2cPy_s_xyyGGtQ0SoKjBjQfskfYAWqz58I/edit?usp=sharing Can be found here.]

== Gallery ==
<gallery>
Image:VanceStubbsHate.JPG|Tau Propaganda
Image:VanceMotherfuckingStubbs1.png|Vance Motherfucking Stubbs checking out his impressive claws.
</gallery>

{{IG-Characters}}

[[Category: Dawn of War]]

Vance Motherfucking Stubbs

2021-12-10T12:28:29Z

195.194.119.220:

{{Awesome}}
{{cleanup}}
[[Image:VanceMFStubbs.png|450px|thumb|right|The motherfucker himself.]]
{{topquote|I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep. I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a Lion.|Alexander the Great}}

He's '''Vance. Motherfucking. Stubbs.''' An [[Imperial Guard]] general and total badass from [[Dawn_of_War#Soulstorm|Dawn of War: Soulstorm]] and the only character introduced in the expansion anyone unironically likes, despite having arguably the worst voice actor (his performance is just bad, and not with enough ENGRISH or ham to be unintentionally funny like Boreale or Carron). This is mostly because his competition is a Necron Lord with some of the most obnoxious robo-mummy asthma ever who clearly wants to be as cool as Thomas Maccabee but isn't, the wussiest Khornate lord to have ever disgraced the Blood God, a bald brother genericus with a dumb accent, a Cannoness whose entire personality is "Sister of Battle", a Farseer with an especially annoying high pitched voice that makes her sound like she's actually two preteen Eldar girls with one sitting on the other's shoulders so they can pretend to be an adult like [[Girls und Panzer|some cartoon,]] a painfully generic Archon with a stupid hat, and "I can't believe it's not Shas'O'Kais" but with the added tendency to go into melodrama of a bad anime protagonist. He's the most badass Governor General....ever....well maybe at tie with [[General Sturnn]] who's equally awesome, but wasn't a governor.

No, you cannot say his name without Motherfucking in the middle.

==About the Motherfucker==
Vance Motherfucking Stubbs leads the 252nd Kaurava Conservator Regiment for the Imperial Guard in the game. He is armed (apparently like every other Command Squad leader in the Galaxy) with a set of Power Claws and a Bolter strapped to his arm. He may also, in fact, have a Thunder Hammer for a penis, but his harem of lovers were all too exhausted to comment on the matter.

The entire Imperial Guard campaign featuring him is sheer [[AWESOME]]. When the player chooses to play as the Imperial Guard in Soulstorm, then it is written in the army selection menu that Stubbs recently transferred before the Kaurava Hijinks that resulted in nearly every single force to appear in the [[Kaurava System]]. The Guard, like any player controlled army, starts with one region (in the Guard's case is the Dussala Precinct). Mind you, compared to the other forces that come to the system, the 252nd Conservator Regiment is at that time underpowered, with low morale and simply sucks. Stubbs therefore whips them with sheer manliness (and a series of reforms) turning the 252nd back into a fighting force that shouldn't be trifled with and proceeds to <s>re-conquer the system one region at a time</s> Lose to '''DA ORKZ'''. With the release of DoW3, it has been confirmed that the Orkz under Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter were the canonical victor. Yes, we're not quite sure what happened either. '''WUT 'APPENED? WE IS ORKS AND YOU IS NOT, UMMIE, DAT'S WUT 'APPENED!'''

[[File:ORKZ ARE DA BEST.png|300px|thumb|right|Despite Stubb's best efforts, Orkz snatched the victory. Why? CAUSE ORKZ ARE DA BEST]]
[[Image:Stubbs.jpg|300px|thumb|right|He remains cool, regardless of situation]]
If the Guard is victorious in the conflict, then the system is revitalized as Stubbs commissions multiple projects that rebuilds the worlds and improves their industrial capabilities. Additionally the planets become militarized due to the large number of newly constructed military academies that produce superior regiments that are second only to the Kasrkins trained at [[Cadia|Cadia's]] Kasrs (a impressive feat considering that Kasrkins are elite even by Tempestus Scions/Storm Trooper standards).

The Emperor protects indeed.

Worth mentioning is the attack on the [[Ecclesiarchy]] controlled Sama District. Stubbs knew well that it didn't matter how much he and his men would make amends, the Regiment would never be free from being suspected by the Sisters, as the Warpstorm over Kaurava IV happened on Vance's watch. Not to mention that even if they did repent, the Sisters of Battle of the Order of The Sacred Rose would make them do so with excessive amounts of flamers and purging. Vance had no other option in this case. Stubbs refused any of these accusations and thought himself and his men not responsible for the whole mess, thus he did something that was crazy enough to work...mainly to march into the Sama District in full-force and simply conquer the place. And if the Guardsmen are victorious, then Vance will utter a speech that the Emperor was with the Conservators this day.

==The whole losing 100 Baneblades thing==
When facing the Imperial Guard at their stronghold in Dawn of War: Soulstorm, Stubbs' Commissar informs him that all 100 of the [[Baneblade|Baneblades]] that would have been available to defend had just been sent off to help the Imperial Guard elsewhere in the Kaurava system, and any more Baneblades that are needed will have to be constructed via a series of pieces sent out by supply Rhinos. This absurdity of simply "losing" 100 Baneblades has spawned a number of jokes amongst players, mostly associating him with being "Tactically incompetent" as opposed to [[Creed]]'s "Tactical Genius". (Speaking of tactical genius it may be worth mentioning that shortly after this incident Abaddon was run over by a column of Baneblades he found stuffed in his mailbox) Also it can be disregarded as Chaos Propaganda started by <s>[[Alpha Legion|Alpha Legion Chaos Marines]]</s> {{BLAM|*BLAM!!!*}} [[Chaos Space Marines| THOSE CHAOS SPACE MARINES]] THAT DO NOT EXIST!!

However, there have been rumors that the Baneblades never left, but they were hidden by [[Creed]], or perhaps taken by the [[Blood Ravens |Blood Magpies]] ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNK5-uE5JFg| IT IS THE BAAAAAAANNNNEEBLAAAAAAADEEE] ). Adding on top of this, Baneblades are supposed to be rare (with three per regiment being the average), made only at major Forge Worlds. Fortunately for the Imperium, the in-game background for Stubbs's Baneblades is that the invasions and mass destruction miraculously uncovered the rather terrifying (for the enemy) fact that at least half of the entire supercontinent city of Kaurava I is in fact built on top of a continent-sized manufactorum, probably from the Great Crusade, devoted to the mass-production of Baneblades.

This enabled Stubbs to roll out more Baneblades in a month than Forge Worlds (individually, of course) produce in a century. Best of all, the fact you can build more manufactorums in-game suggests that the Mechanicus could probably mass-produce the ''factories'', too. With the pacified Tomb World nearby to draw in the Mechanicus plus the carrot Stubbs now has with the Baneblades and whatever other STC data uncovered (maybe Fellblades and other awesome stuff?), along with Stubbs's clear care for the little people, it is likely he could convince/trade for the Tomb World being studied and Forgeworld-ified by various important Forge Worlds, giving him access to their unique data (such as Executioners and Vanquisher cannons). Sure, the individual Forge Worlds never share anything, but then, none of them have had the technological buffet on a scale Vance does to bargain with. That, and he doesn't seem the sort to give a crap about keeping tech to himself. Then he can happily send copies to every Forge World if he can pay captains to visit. Then the Imperium wins by default. Regardless, Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is seen as one of the most awesome Imperial Guard generals because of his calm, stern voice, even when his army is on the brink of defeat.

<s>Relic never bothered to announce who actually canonically won the Kaurava conflict</s> Scratch that; Orkz were the victors, see above. - only that it sure as the [[Warp]] wasn't the Space Marines. Hence, many players simply accepted the fact that Stubbs won the war because of his utter badassery that no other character was able to posses. And also the rumors that he found the 100 Baneblades again and used his variation [[Creed|taktikul jinyas]] to deep strike said Baneblades into the main bases of armies. We would have said [[Indrick Boreale]] was the canon winner of the Kaurava conflict - if only he didn't screw it up by canonically losing horribly.

Alas, as it turns out he wasn't quite badass enough to stand up to Gorgutz' WAAAGH, which was able to defeat him and force him to retreat from Kaurava. Given the fact that Gorgutz got bored and left the Kaurava system for Acheron some time afterward, one can only hope Stubbs took advantage of the ensuing Ork civil war to reclaim the system, just as he swore he would.

But at least we know what happened to the 100 Baneblades: Gorgutz krumped them.

==Badass Facts==
[[File:Relic00014.jpg|450px|thumbnail|right|What really happened to Carron that day. (Yes, the giblet on the ground is in fact his spleen! Why is it on the ground, he may or may not have shat it out.)]]
What is truly stunning about Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is the intense humanity he exhibits; whilst almost every commander in Soulstorm was poorly developed or simply [[Firaeveus Carron|pants-on-head retarded]], Stubbs was [[Fist of the North Star|comparatively sympathetic]] - determined to win back his regiment's good name in the eyes of the Emperor and who strove to make sure the sacrifices of his men weren't for nothing, and was determined to restore honour to his unit, heedless of what heretical scum would stand in their way. He shows manly [[Rage|rage]] at the tortures the [[Dark Eldar]] subjected captured soldiers to, and unlike Aleksander, who panicked in [[Dawn of War|Dark Crusade]] when Eliphas sent him telepathic messages, Stubbs gritted his teeth and shrugged it off, spurring his men onwards towards their objective in an effort to shove a formation of [[METAL BOXES]] up Carron's ass.

Few men approach the manliness level of Vance Motherfucking Stubbs. The only ones that do are all [[Imperial Guard|Imperial]]. It says a lot.

Stubbs also has a fucking awesome name. Few, if any, in the 41st Millennium can approach that level of awesomeness, even <s>"Holt"</s>. <s>{{BLAM}}</s> {{BLAM|*SLAP*}} '''COMMISSAR''' Holt!

Vance is also as badass, to inspire a single guardsman to noscope one shot a living saint in SS (see the video for lulz that'd make the Avatar of Khaine that the ultrasmurfs killed go 'Ha... like a bitch'). Further lulz includes the Chaos Stronghold Defeat where we see Vance's four (Literally!) Imperial Guardsmen one-shotting pretty much every Chaos-worshipping bitch in the area, as well as Vance himself, balls-slapping the [[Fail|failure of a Chaos Lord,]] [[Firaeveus Carron|Firaeveus Carron]]. This shows how badass and cool Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is and how his very presence can turn the Guardsmen's standard-issue balls-of-steel into Adamantium-tipped power-balls that would be so heavy they could bitch-slap a Titan if they so need it.

Additionally, Vance is not only a motherfucker himself, [[Reasonable Marines|but a pragmatic motherfucker.]] On his siege on the Tau special moon base, Vance ordered his men that instead of destroying the Space Commie Cannon ([[Wat|giant ass cannon in Soulstorm that destroys advanced life forms but saves the trees...]]) [[Creed|he thought it would be much more practical to use it against those cunt-face blueberries.]] The work paid off as Vance and his men hilariously start to pile drive the Tau with their own technology as those space weeaboos start to shit their grey-ass; before pussy whipping the Tau Ethereal in front of the Tau Commander stationed at the moon. Instead of actually destroying any further Tau technology, to prove how much of a pragmatist he is, the motherfucker-in-chief decides to hoard some Xeno relics as bargaining tools for the [[Ordo Xenos]] and other similar Imperial groups in order to gain the upper hand to protect the prestige of his men. What a motherfucker.

Also on his defeat of the Eldar, he was reported to have secretly [[Love Can Bloom|boned]] [[Caerys]] to the point of fucking her precognition which might explain why she constantly [[Fail|fails]] [[Farseer|at her job,]] that or she might have accidentally tried to peek at Vance's mind only to see multiple images on his...ehem...[[/d/|'Thunderhammer']] [[Extra Heresy|which may have promptly made her wet herself and lose all psychic concentration.]] Heck she may even secretly have joined Vance's harem of lovers as she wasn't canonically seen getting killed. Vance's harem possibly includes several chosen [[Imperial Guard|Guardswomen]] (Who are often left exhausted and near death after his 'regimental training'), an entire squad of [[Howling Banshees]] (He really makes them 'Howl' if you know what I mean...), several Dark Eldar [[Wyches]] (Even they admit that he's merciless as he brutally pulverizes them since they're Xenos and stuff) and even a couple of [[Sisters of Battle|Sisters]] (Who have not immolated themselves but dropped their guns in awe as he gave them a new meaning to 'divine intervention'). But as usual, when asked about this potential [[Heresy]] Stubbs just shrugs off with a cool breeze as cold as [[Fenris]] before continuing his duty in obliterating the enemies of Man. The [[Emprah]] works in mysterious ways and Stubbs is no exception.

No, it isn't possible to say Vance Motherfucking Stubbs without 'Motherfucking' in the middle, or spelling it in all caps.

==...In actuality==
[[Image:StubbsDW.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Even in his stronghold defeat cutscene, he's still badass.]]
As of DoW3's release, the victor of Soulstorm was revealed to be none other than.... [[Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter]], rather than Vance Motherfucking Stubbs. This of course caused much [[RAGE]] at the release of the game, which coupled with the games radically different gameplay and lack of the Imperial Guard as a faction and generally being shit, only continued to divide people's opinion further. However, we do not know if Vance survived or was killed in combat, although given that he gets away to fight another day in his defeat outro, the former is more likely. What happened next is not clarified, so feel free to imagine whatever version of subsequent events you like.

Although, really, if anyone deserved to win by virtue of sheer awesomeness other than Stubbs, it was definitely Gorgutz. Plus let's be real, Gorgutz is a frequently reoccurring character while Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is a one off; narrative rules were on Gorgutz's side the moment he was confirmed for Dawn of War 3. Of course, Gorgutz doesn't exactly stick around after his victories, so it is entirely possible that after he fucked off to find the Spear of Khaine, Stubbs could have retaken the system with the Orks' leader gone. Although given that Stubbs' reputation would probably have been destroyed by his defeat, it's likely he was executed for incompetence and picking a fight with the Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Astartes. Gorgutz's victory cutscene also states that Kaurava's Ork hordes will come to plague Ultima Segmentum for countless years to come, so it's unlikely that Stubbs would have been able to reclaim it, especially as Soulstorm happens towards the tail end of the 41st millennium where the Imperium is due for getting smacked by the rise of many major Necron Dynasties, WAAAGH! Ghazghkull, the arrival of Hive Fleet Leviathan, and the 13th Black Crusade almost simultaneously.

<strike>While true, it was also assumed by players that Vance was the winner. So, now players are left with two winners and two different endings both being true for the sake of DoW III having Gorgutz.</strike> *KRUMP* NO DEY DIDDNT! DEY JUS' SED DAT BOREALE GIT LOST! YA 'UMIE GITS KEEP SAYIN' DAT, BUT YOO NEVA SHOW US ENNY PROOF DAT DEY DID! 'SIDES, DERE'S DA STANDARD OV KAURAVA FINGY IN DoW 2 DAT SEZ WE WON!!

In all likelihood, the rumour probably started with BigDickCheney using the Imperial Guard as his faction of choice when he uploaded the Soulstorm stronghold defeat videos onto Youtube. While Thule was quickly declared the canonical winner of Dark Crusade, Relic was annoyingly silent for years after Soulstorm beyond saying that the winner wasn't the Blood Ravens in Dawn of War 2 and so the usual game of Chinese Whispers ended up becoming rock hard canon in the heads of fans despite the lack of proof. So much so that hints that Gorgutz was the actual winner stated in (admittedly easily missed) lore blurbs for items in Retribution went unnoticed until Relic made its answer impossible to ignore.

The whole mess was born out of a case of an admittedly small group of fans assuming something was true even though there was no real evidence for it and the people in charge of the official canon not bothering to correct them until the fanon was already entrenched with this small group. Stubbs winning at Kaurava was one of those "everyone knows!" things even though you'd be hard pressed to find an average fan who knew that or even the flimsy and indirect evidence of it happening anywhere in Dawn of War 2. The lesson to take away from this is that fans shouldn't assume something is true just because some one on the internet say it is, especially when the dev's have never supported this 'fact'.

==See Also==
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cno-_CM0yyU Commissar, I would like to see this city built up again. I would like to see towers and spires of gleaming white. I would like to see our men on parade routes, not tours of duty! I WOULD LIKE TO SEE EVERY CITY ON THIS PLANET, EVERY COLONY ON THIS BESOTTED, MISERABLE SYSTEM TURNED TO THE SERVICE AND INDUSTRY OF THE IMPERIUM IN THE EMPEROR'S NAME!]-(Ain't Stubbs an idealistic badass?)

==In the Soulstorm campaign==
Vance is your early melee tank who is able to protect your precious flashlight trooper from all kinds of nasty melee units like Ork Boyz, Assault Marines and Banshees. He can recruit 4 kinds of bodyguard such as Commissar, Warrior Priest, Pysker and Kasrkin Sergeant.

Commissar gives extra morale. Psyker gives detection to stealth units as well as their [[heresy|dangerous]] psychic abilities. Warrior Priest gives extra morale, speed and health([[cheese|with the awesome ability to make Vance invincible if the your base has reached tier 3]]). The Kasrkin Sergeants is only available after Ibram's Vestment is unlock and it gives Vance extra 100 hp, 150 morale.

So in summary, if you want Vance to be a [[eliphas|mega]] [[Gorgutz|tank]], you need to have every bodyguard as a Warrior Priest which not only gives Vance lots of health, but also allows Vance to use the Priest's invincibility 5 TIMES.

Though if you want Vance to be shooty, you needs to have all Kasrkin Sergeants (who are pretty cheap and fast to recruit by the way) and they will shoot everyone to shits with their advanced flashlights Hellgun.

Psyker's detection is kind of useless if Vance has the Targeting Optics wargear and it's psychic abilities is not really that useful since you rely on your flashlight troopers' dakka damage most of the time.

Commissar's extra morale isn't worth to recruit but it can put out some dakka and it does not requires Ibram's Vestment so it would be a early placement for Kasrkin Sergeants.

By the time Vance is fully upgraded, he can eat buildings and vehicles for breakfast and tanking relic units like the frigging Nightbringer toe to toe with his invincibility.

==Codex Stubbs==
Now your Guardsmen can be led by this badass.

'''Vance "Motherfucking" Stubbs. Governor General of Kaurava:'''
Vance Stubbs may replace the Company Commander of a Company Command Squad or the Tempestor Prime of a Militorum Tempestus Platoon Command Squad (in which case the Militorum Tempestus Platoon Command Squad becomes an HQ choice) for 110 points.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Name !! WS !! BS !! S !! T !! W !! I !! A !! Ld !! Sv
|-
| '''Vance Stubbs''' || 5 || 5 || 3 || 4 || 3 || 4 || 3 || 10 || 4+/5++
|}
TYPE: '''Infantry'''
 Warlord Trait: '''Bellowing Voice'''
 Special Rules:
*A Father to his Men: Every Astra Militarum model within Vance's Command Radius has +1 Leadership.
*Hatred (Tau)
*'''Ambidextrous''': Vance Stubbs may fire both his Storm Bolter and his Plasma Gun during the shooting phase (he must still fire at the same target as his unit) or when firing overwatch.
*'''Voice of Command'''
*Senior Officer
*Stubborn
Wargear:
*'''Plasma Gun'''
*'''Battle Claws''': These are a pair of Master-Crafted Power Claws that grant +1 Strength.
*'''Storm Bolter'''
*'''Carapace Armour'''
*'''Bionics''': Improves Vance's Toughness by 1 (already represented in his profile) and grants the Feel No Pain special rule.
*'''Macharian Cross''': After deployment is complete (including deploying infiltrators and moving scouts) but before determining who has the first turn, any single infantry squad within 6” of Vance Stubbs may be redeployed up to 12” but otherwise must abide by all of the mission's deployment zones and rules.
*'''Ibram’s Vestment''': Grants the Preferred Enemy special rule to friendly models within 12".
Frag Grenades
*'''Frag and Krak Grenades'''
*'''Melta Bombs'''

==8th Edition==
One fa/tg/uy's attempt to drag Vance Motherfucking Stubbs kicking and screaming (mostly kicking arse) into 8th Edition:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U6o1jP8ue2cPy_s_xyyGGtQ0SoKjBjQfskfYAWqz58I/edit?usp=sharing Can be found here.]

== Gallery ==
<gallery>
Image:VanceStubbsHate.JPG|Tau Propaganda
Image:VanceMotherfuckingStubbs1.png|Vance Motherfucking Stubbs checking out his impressive claws.
</gallery>

{{IG-Characters}}

[[Category: Dawn of War]]

Vance Motherfucking Stubbs

2021-12-10T12:26:13Z

195.194.119.220:

{{Awesome}}
{{cleanup}}
[[Image:VanceMFStubbs.png|450px|thumb|right|The motherfucker himself.]]
{{topquote|I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep. I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a Lion.|Alexander the Great}}

He's '''Vance. Motherfucking. Stubbs.''' An [[Imperial Guard]] general and total badass from [[Dawn_of_War#Soulstorm|Dawn of War: Soulstorm]] and the only character introduced in the expansion anyone unironically likes, despite having arguably the worst voice actor (his performance is just bad, and not with enough ENGRISH or ham to be unintentionally funny like Boreale or Carron). This is mostly because his competition is a Necron Lord with some of the most obnoxious robo-mummy asthma ever who clearly wants to be as cool as Thomas Maccabee but isn't, the wussiest Khornate lord to have ever disgraced the Blood God, a bald brother genericus with a dumb accent, a Cannoness whose entire personality is "a Sister of Battle", a Farseer with an especially annoying high pitched voice that makes her sound like she's actually two preteen Eldar girls with one sitting on the other's shoulders so they can pretend to be an adult like [[Girls und Panzer|some cartoon,]] a painfully generic Archon with a stupid hat, and "I can't believe it's not Shas'O'Kais" but with the added tendency to go into melodrama of a bad anime protagonist. He's the most badass Governor General....ever....well maybe at tie with [[General Sturnn]] who's equally awesome, but wasn't a governor.

No, you cannot say his name without Motherfucking in the middle.

==About the Motherfucker==
Vance Motherfucking Stubbs leads the 252nd Kaurava Conservator Regiment for the Imperial Guard in the game. He is armed (apparently like every other Command Squad leader in the Galaxy) with a set of Power Claws and a Bolter strapped to his arm. He may also, in fact, have a Thunder Hammer for a penis, but his harem of lovers were all too exhausted to comment on the matter.

The entire Imperial Guard campaign featuring him is sheer [[AWESOME]]. When the player chooses to play as the Imperial Guard in Soulstorm, then it is written in the army selection menu that Stubbs recently transferred before the Kaurava Hijinks that resulted in nearly every single force to appear in the [[Kaurava System]]. The Guard, like any player controlled army, starts with one region (in the Guard's case is the Dussala Precinct). Mind you, compared to the other forces that come to the system, the 252nd Conservator Regiment is at that time underpowered, with low morale and simply sucks. Stubbs therefore whips them with sheer manliness (and a series of reforms) turning the 252nd back into a fighting force that shouldn't be trifled with and proceeds to <s>re-conquer the system one region at a time</s> Lose to '''DA ORKZ'''. With the release of DoW3, it has been confirmed that the Orkz under Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter were the canonical victor. Yes, we're not quite sure what happened either. '''WUT 'APPENED? WE IS ORKS AND YOU IS NOT, UMMIE, DAT'S WUT 'APPENED!'''

[[File:ORKZ ARE DA BEST.png|300px|thumb|right|Despite Stubb's best efforts, Orkz snatched the victory. Why? CAUSE ORKZ ARE DA BEST]]
[[Image:Stubbs.jpg|300px|thumb|right|He remains cool, regardless of situation]]
If the Guard is victorious in the conflict, then the system is revitalized as Stubbs commissions multiple projects that rebuilds the worlds and improves their industrial capabilities. Additionally the planets become militarized due to the large number of newly constructed military academies that produce superior regiments that are second only to the Kasrkins trained at [[Cadia|Cadia's]] Kasrs (a impressive feat considering that Kasrkins are elite even by Tempestus Scions/Storm Trooper standards).

The Emperor protects indeed.

Worth mentioning is the attack on the [[Ecclesiarchy]] controlled Sama District. Stubbs knew well that it didn't matter how much he and his men would make amends, the Regiment would never be free from being suspected by the Sisters, as the Warpstorm over Kaurava IV happened on Vance's watch. Not to mention that even if they did repent, the Sisters of Battle of the Order of The Sacred Rose would make them do so with excessive amounts of flamers and purging. Vance had no other option in this case. Stubbs refused any of these accusations and thought himself and his men not responsible for the whole mess, thus he did something that was crazy enough to work...mainly to march into the Sama District in full-force and simply conquer the place. And if the Guardsmen are victorious, then Vance will utter a speech that the Emperor was with the Conservators this day.

==The whole losing 100 Baneblades thing==
When facing the Imperial Guard at their stronghold in Dawn of War: Soulstorm, Stubbs' Commissar informs him that all 100 of the [[Baneblade|Baneblades]] that would have been available to defend had just been sent off to help the Imperial Guard elsewhere in the Kaurava system, and any more Baneblades that are needed will have to be constructed via a series of pieces sent out by supply Rhinos. This absurdity of simply "losing" 100 Baneblades has spawned a number of jokes amongst players, mostly associating him with being "Tactically incompetent" as opposed to [[Creed]]'s "Tactical Genius". (Speaking of tactical genius it may be worth mentioning that shortly after this incident Abaddon was run over by a column of Baneblades he found stuffed in his mailbox) Also it can be disregarded as Chaos Propaganda started by <s>[[Alpha Legion|Alpha Legion Chaos Marines]]</s> {{BLAM|*BLAM!!!*}} [[Chaos Space Marines| THOSE CHAOS SPACE MARINES]] THAT DO NOT EXIST!!

However, there have been rumors that the Baneblades never left, but they were hidden by [[Creed]], or perhaps taken by the [[Blood Ravens |Blood Magpies]] ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNK5-uE5JFg| IT IS THE BAAAAAAANNNNEEBLAAAAAAADEEE] ). Adding on top of this, Baneblades are supposed to be rare (with three per regiment being the average), made only at major Forge Worlds. Fortunately for the Imperium, the in-game background for Stubbs's Baneblades is that the invasions and mass destruction miraculously uncovered the rather terrifying (for the enemy) fact that at least half of the entire supercontinent city of Kaurava I is in fact built on top of a continent-sized manufactorum, probably from the Great Crusade, devoted to the mass-production of Baneblades.

This enabled Stubbs to roll out more Baneblades in a month than Forge Worlds (individually, of course) produce in a century. Best of all, the fact you can build more manufactorums in-game suggests that the Mechanicus could probably mass-produce the ''factories'', too. With the pacified Tomb World nearby to draw in the Mechanicus plus the carrot Stubbs now has with the Baneblades and whatever other STC data uncovered (maybe Fellblades and other awesome stuff?), along with Stubbs's clear care for the little people, it is likely he could convince/trade for the Tomb World being studied and Forgeworld-ified by various important Forge Worlds, giving him access to their unique data (such as Executioners and Vanquisher cannons). Sure, the individual Forge Worlds never share anything, but then, none of them have had the technological buffet on a scale Vance does to bargain with. That, and he doesn't seem the sort to give a crap about keeping tech to himself. Then he can happily send copies to every Forge World if he can pay captains to visit. Then the Imperium wins by default. Regardless, Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is seen as one of the most awesome Imperial Guard generals because of his calm, stern voice, even when his army is on the brink of defeat.

<s>Relic never bothered to announce who actually canonically won the Kaurava conflict</s> Scratch that; Orkz were the victors, see above. - only that it sure as the [[Warp]] wasn't the Space Marines. Hence, many players simply accepted the fact that Stubbs won the war because of his utter badassery that no other character was able to posses. And also the rumors that he found the 100 Baneblades again and used his variation [[Creed|taktikul jinyas]] to deep strike said Baneblades into the main bases of armies. We would have said [[Indrick Boreale]] was the canon winner of the Kaurava conflict - if only he didn't screw it up by canonically losing horribly.

Alas, as it turns out he wasn't quite badass enough to stand up to Gorgutz' WAAAGH, which was able to defeat him and force him to retreat from Kaurava. Given the fact that Gorgutz got bored and left the Kaurava system for Acheron some time afterward, one can only hope Stubbs took advantage of the ensuing Ork civil war to reclaim the system, just as he swore he would.

But at least we know what happened to the 100 Baneblades: Gorgutz krumped them.

==Badass Facts==
[[File:Relic00014.jpg|450px|thumbnail|right|What really happened to Carron that day. (Yes, the giblet on the ground is in fact his spleen! Why is it on the ground, he may or may not have shat it out.)]]
What is truly stunning about Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is the intense humanity he exhibits; whilst almost every commander in Soulstorm was poorly developed or simply [[Firaeveus Carron|pants-on-head retarded]], Stubbs was [[Fist of the North Star|comparatively sympathetic]] - determined to win back his regiment's good name in the eyes of the Emperor and who strove to make sure the sacrifices of his men weren't for nothing, and was determined to restore honour to his unit, heedless of what heretical scum would stand in their way. He shows manly [[Rage|rage]] at the tortures the [[Dark Eldar]] subjected captured soldiers to, and unlike Aleksander, who panicked in [[Dawn of War|Dark Crusade]] when Eliphas sent him telepathic messages, Stubbs gritted his teeth and shrugged it off, spurring his men onwards towards their objective in an effort to shove a formation of [[METAL BOXES]] up Carron's ass.

Few men approach the manliness level of Vance Motherfucking Stubbs. The only ones that do are all [[Imperial Guard|Imperial]]. It says a lot.

Stubbs also has a fucking awesome name. Few, if any, in the 41st Millennium can approach that level of awesomeness, even <s>"Holt"</s>. <s>{{BLAM}}</s> {{BLAM|*SLAP*}} '''COMMISSAR''' Holt!

Vance is also as badass, to inspire a single guardsman to noscope one shot a living saint in SS (see the video for lulz that'd make the Avatar of Khaine that the ultrasmurfs killed go 'Ha... like a bitch'). Further lulz includes the Chaos Stronghold Defeat where we see Vance's four (Literally!) Imperial Guardsmen one-shotting pretty much every Chaos-worshipping bitch in the area, as well as Vance himself, balls-slapping the [[Fail|failure of a Chaos Lord,]] [[Firaeveus Carron|Firaeveus Carron]]. This shows how badass and cool Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is and how his very presence can turn the Guardsmen's standard-issue balls-of-steel into Adamantium-tipped power-balls that would be so heavy they could bitch-slap a Titan if they so need it.

Additionally, Vance is not only a motherfucker himself, [[Reasonable Marines|but a pragmatic motherfucker.]] On his siege on the Tau special moon base, Vance ordered his men that instead of destroying the Space Commie Cannon ([[Wat|giant ass cannon in Soulstorm that destroys advanced life forms but saves the trees...]]) [[Creed|he thought it would be much more practical to use it against those cunt-face blueberries.]] The work paid off as Vance and his men hilariously start to pile drive the Tau with their own technology as those space weeaboos start to shit their grey-ass; before pussy whipping the Tau Ethereal in front of the Tau Commander stationed at the moon. Instead of actually destroying any further Tau technology, to prove how much of a pragmatist he is, the motherfucker-in-chief decides to hoard some Xeno relics as bargaining tools for the [[Ordo Xenos]] and other similar Imperial groups in order to gain the upper hand to protect the prestige of his men. What a motherfucker.

Also on his defeat of the Eldar, he was reported to have secretly [[Love Can Bloom|boned]] [[Caerys]] to the point of fucking her precognition which might explain why she constantly [[Fail|fails]] [[Farseer|at her job,]] that or she might have accidentally tried to peek at Vance's mind only to see multiple images on his...ehem...[[/d/|'Thunderhammer']] [[Extra Heresy|which may have promptly made her wet herself and lose all psychic concentration.]] Heck she may even secretly have joined Vance's harem of lovers as she wasn't canonically seen getting killed. Vance's harem possibly includes several chosen [[Imperial Guard|Guardswomen]] (Who are often left exhausted and near death after his 'regimental training'), an entire squad of [[Howling Banshees]] (He really makes them 'Howl' if you know what I mean...), several Dark Eldar [[Wyches]] (Even they admit that he's merciless as he brutally pulverizes them since they're Xenos and stuff) and even a couple of [[Sisters of Battle|Sisters]] (Who have not immolated themselves but dropped their guns in awe as he gave them a new meaning to 'divine intervention'). But as usual, when asked about this potential [[Heresy]] Stubbs just shrugs off with a cool breeze as cold as [[Fenris]] before continuing his duty in obliterating the enemies of Man. The [[Emprah]] works in mysterious ways and Stubbs is no exception.

No, it isn't possible to say Vance Motherfucking Stubbs without 'Motherfucking' in the middle, or spelling it in all caps.

==...In actuality==
[[Image:StubbsDW.jpg|400px|thumb|left|Even in his stronghold defeat cutscene, he's still badass.]]
As of DoW3's release, the victor of Soulstorm was revealed to be none other than.... [[Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter]], rather than Vance Motherfucking Stubbs. This of course caused much [[RAGE]] at the release of the game, which coupled with the games radically different gameplay and lack of the Imperial Guard as a faction and generally being shit, only continued to divide people's opinion further. However, we do not know if Vance survived or was killed in combat, although given that he gets away to fight another day in his defeat outro, the former is more likely. What happened next is not clarified, so feel free to imagine whatever version of subsequent events you like.

Although, really, if anyone deserved to win by virtue of sheer awesomeness other than Stubbs, it was definitely Gorgutz. Plus let's be real, Gorgutz is a frequently reoccurring character while Vance Motherfucking Stubbs is a one off; narrative rules were on Gorgutz's side the moment he was confirmed for Dawn of War 3. Of course, Gorgutz doesn't exactly stick around after his victories, so it is entirely possible that after he fucked off to find the Spear of Khaine, Stubbs could have retaken the system with the Orks' leader gone. Although given that Stubbs' reputation would probably have been destroyed by his defeat, it's likely he was executed for incompetence and picking a fight with the Ecclesiarchy and Adeptus Astartes. Gorgutz's victory cutscene also states that Kaurava's Ork hordes will come to plague Ultima Segmentum for countless years to come, so it's unlikely that Stubbs would have been able to reclaim it, especially as Soulstorm happens towards the tail end of the 41st millennium where the Imperium is due for getting smacked by the rise of many major Necron Dynasties, WAAAGH! Ghazghkull, the arrival of Hive Fleet Leviathan, and the 13th Black Crusade almost simultaneously.

<strike>While true, it was also assumed by players that Vance was the winner. So, now players are left with two winners and two different endings both being true for the sake of DoW III having Gorgutz.</strike> *KRUMP* NO DEY DIDDNT! DEY JUS' SED DAT BOREALE GIT LOST! YA 'UMIE GITS KEEP SAYIN' DAT, BUT YOO NEVA SHOW US ENNY PROOF DAT DEY DID! 'SIDES, DERE'S DA STANDARD OV KAURAVA FINGY IN DoW 2 DAT SEZ WE WON!!

In all likelihood, the rumour probably started with BigDickCheney using the Imperial Guard as his faction of choice when he uploaded the Soulstorm stronghold defeat videos onto Youtube. While Thule was quickly declared the canonical winner of Dark Crusade, Relic was annoyingly silent for years after Soulstorm beyond saying that the winner wasn't the Blood Ravens in Dawn of War 2 and so the usual game of Chinese Whispers ended up becoming rock hard canon in the heads of fans despite the lack of proof. So much so that hints that Gorgutz was the actual winner stated in (admittedly easily missed) lore blurbs for items in Retribution went unnoticed until Relic made its answer impossible to ignore.

The whole mess was born out of a case of an admittedly small group of fans assuming something was true even though there was no real evidence for it and the people in charge of the official canon not bothering to correct them until the fanon was already entrenched with this small group. Stubbs winning at Kaurava was one of those "everyone knows!" things even though you'd be hard pressed to find an average fan who knew that or even the flimsy and indirect evidence of it happening anywhere in Dawn of War 2. The lesson to take away from this is that fans shouldn't assume something is true just because some one on the internet say it is, especially when the dev's have never supported this 'fact'.

==See Also==
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cno-_CM0yyU Commissar, I would like to see this city built up again. I would like to see towers and spires of gleaming white. I would like to see our men on parade routes, not tours of duty! I WOULD LIKE TO SEE EVERY CITY ON THIS PLANET, EVERY COLONY ON THIS BESOTTED, MISERABLE SYSTEM TURNED TO THE SERVICE AND INDUSTRY OF THE IMPERIUM IN THE EMPEROR'S NAME!]-(Ain't Stubbs an idealistic badass?)

==In the Soulstorm campaign==
Vance is your early melee tank who is able to protect your precious flashlight trooper from all kinds of nasty melee units like Ork Boyz, Assault Marines and Banshees. He can recruit 4 kinds of bodyguard such as Commissar, Warrior Priest, Pysker and Kasrkin Sergeant.

Commissar gives extra morale. Psyker gives detection to stealth units as well as their [[heresy|dangerous]] psychic abilities. Warrior Priest gives extra morale, speed and health([[cheese|with the awesome ability to make Vance invincible if the your base has reached tier 3]]). The Kasrkin Sergeants is only available after Ibram's Vestment is unlock and it gives Vance extra 100 hp, 150 morale.

So in summary, if you want Vance to be a [[eliphas|mega]] [[Gorgutz|tank]], you need to have every bodyguard as a Warrior Priest which not only gives Vance lots of health, but also allows Vance to use the Priest's invincibility 5 TIMES.

Though if you want Vance to be shooty, you needs to have all Kasrkin Sergeants (who are pretty cheap and fast to recruit by the way) and they will shoot everyone to shits with their advanced flashlights Hellgun.

Psyker's detection is kind of useless if Vance has the Targeting Optics wargear and it's psychic abilities is not really that useful since you rely on your flashlight troopers' dakka damage most of the time.

Commissar's extra morale isn't worth to recruit but it can put out some dakka and it does not requires Ibram's Vestment so it would be a early placement for Kasrkin Sergeants.

By the time Vance is fully upgraded, he can eat buildings and vehicles for breakfast and tanking relic units like the frigging Nightbringer toe to toe with his invincibility.

==Codex Stubbs==
Now your Guardsmen can be led by this badass.

'''Vance "Motherfucking" Stubbs. Governor General of Kaurava:'''
Vance Stubbs may replace the Company Commander of a Company Command Squad or the Tempestor Prime of a Militorum Tempestus Platoon Command Squad (in which case the Militorum Tempestus Platoon Command Squad becomes an HQ choice) for 110 points.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Name !! WS !! BS !! S !! T !! W !! I !! A !! Ld !! Sv
|-
| '''Vance Stubbs''' || 5 || 5 || 3 || 4 || 3 || 4 || 3 || 10 || 4+/5++
|}
TYPE: '''Infantry'''
 Warlord Trait: '''Bellowing Voice'''
 Special Rules:
*A Father to his Men: Every Astra Militarum model within Vance's Command Radius has +1 Leadership.
*Hatred (Tau)
*'''Ambidextrous''': Vance Stubbs may fire both his Storm Bolter and his Plasma Gun during the shooting phase (he must still fire at the same target as his unit) or when firing overwatch.
*'''Voice of Command'''
*Senior Officer
*Stubborn
Wargear:
*'''Plasma Gun'''
*'''Battle Claws''': These are a pair of Master-Crafted Power Claws that grant +1 Strength.
*'''Storm Bolter'''
*'''Carapace Armour'''
*'''Bionics''': Improves Vance's Toughness by 1 (already represented in his profile) and grants the Feel No Pain special rule.
*'''Macharian Cross''': After deployment is complete (including deploying infiltrators and moving scouts) but before determining who has the first turn, any single infantry squad within 6” of Vance Stubbs may be redeployed up to 12” but otherwise must abide by all of the mission's deployment zones and rules.
*'''Ibram’s Vestment''': Grants the Preferred Enemy special rule to friendly models within 12".
Frag Grenades
*'''Frag and Krak Grenades'''
*'''Melta Bombs'''

==8th Edition==
One fa/tg/uy's attempt to drag Vance Motherfucking Stubbs kicking and screaming (mostly kicking arse) into 8th Edition:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U6o1jP8ue2cPy_s_xyyGGtQ0SoKjBjQfskfYAWqz58I/edit?usp=sharing Can be found here.]

== Gallery ==
<gallery>
Image:VanceStubbsHate.JPG|Tau Propaganda
Image:VanceMotherfuckingStubbs1.png|Vance Motherfucking Stubbs checking out his impressive claws.
</gallery>

{{IG-Characters}}

[[Category: Dawn of War]]

Khorne

2021-12-07T12:57:45Z

195.194.119.220: /* Gallery */

[[File:Khorne mark.png|center]]
{{heresy}}
{{awesome}}
[[File:khorne_by_baklaher-d7335e6.jpg|500px|thumb|right|Special K in all his glory, Sitting comfortably on his Skull Throne, being pissed off at everyone and everything, because to him it's all bullshit]]<div style="font-size:1.10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em"> BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! - The creed of Khorne being Overused to Death'''</div>

{{Topquote|Anger, which, far sweeter than trickling drops of honey, rises in the bosom of a man like smoke.|Homer}}

{{Topquote|The important thing in life is not victory but combat: it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.|Pierre de Coubertin}}

{{Topquote|[[Chaos Gods|They]]'re none of them good, but Khorne's the worst. Battle without honour and oath shouldn't be encouraged.|[[vermintide 2|Bardin Goreksson]]}}

==Introduction==
[[RAGE|'''Khorne''']], also known as Kharnath, Arkhar, Khorgar, [[Viking|Kjorn]], Khar, the Great Brass Bull, the Bloody Handed, the Axefather, the Bloodwolf, The Great Khorneholio, Special K, the [[Ulric|Wolf-Father]], Frowny Face McMurderaxe, Sergeant Slaughter, the Lord of Fighters, the Messiah of Mayhem, Call of Duty: Demon DLC, [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|The Paraplegic Sociopath]], [[If_the_Emperor_had_a_Text-to-Speech_Device|MegaSatan]], Definitely not fucking Khaine, [[Dwarf Fortress|Armok]], Stone Cold Steve Austin, Khornelias Fudge, Kellogg's Khorneflakes, Big Red, Chile Con Khornage, Daddy’s little princess (HEY, FUCK YOU!) and 8860 other names is the [[Chaos God]] of war, murder, savagery, hatred (though he is starting to question that one at times thinking it belongs more to [[Slaanesh|his arch enemy]] than it does him), murder, destruction, rage, wrath, murder, battle, barbarism and [[Vance Motherfucking Stubbs|manliness]]...oh and did we mention murder. He is also the mofo that the Klingons worship. As well as this he symbolises courage, athleticism, determination, daring, discipline, sportsmanship, honor, impulsiveness, struggling onward in the face of any odds, and survival of the fittest. But mostly he's simply about being angry.

He is commonly held to be the strongest [[Chaos]] God by default (though this is technically incorrect) and is associated with wolves and powerful hunting dogs, as well as lions and bulls. For another reason that is likely inspired by occultism, Khorne's sacred numbers Four and eight - and thus, his followers tend to organize themselves into groups of fours, eights and their multiples. Fun fact, this also means that the names of Khornate daemons are usually comprised of eight letters...Though exceptions exist. (The Chinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans value the number 8 due to its similarity with the Chinese character for prosperity does that make them Khornate worshippers?)
[[File:SkullThrone.jpg|400px|right|thumb|The Big K in all his glory contemplating on whose rectum he is going to shove his chainaxe into with extreme prejudice.(Spoiler: its everyone)]]
Khorne, by virtue of being the most prominent Chaos God, is also the second most powerful general "deity" in both iterations of Warhammer (Nurgle has him beat but only because of the fact that everything eventually comes to him) In both versions of Warhammer, his followers are characterized by an overbearing need to spill blood and engage in honest battle, as well as a violent code of martial honour and a "survival of the fittest" approach to morality. They tend to be dutiful, as well, but said duties involve whacking their axes into their enemy and painting their blood all over villages gargling their blood as mouthwash (if only because Khorne's only real command is to spill worthy blood in his name).

This is where Khorne and Slaanesh generally clash directly and openly as enemy gods, aside from the fact that everyone in the warp hates Slaanesh. While Khorne instills discipline, honor and a sense of selfless duty in his followers to obey a single purpose (usually spill blood in his name), Slaanesh is the polar opposite. Slaanesh instead tells his/her followers to do <strike>whoever</strike> whatever they want in their own selfish pursuit of pleasure, caring not for the consequences of their actions (e.g; using your authority to hoard food from your starving citizens, so you can indulge in bottomless gluttony every day).

This is also why Khorne is at odds with Tzeentch: Tzeentch sees things like honor and discipline as unnecessary hamstrings towards one's advancement and opts that everything is on the table when one wishes to further their position (why duel your Lord for his position when you could arrange for an "accident" to befall him, instead? Sure its a low-blow, but if your lord was too stupid to see that car bomb coming, was he really deserving of loyalty?). The same can be said of his disdain for sorcery. Tzeentch thinks that mortals using the power of the gods themselves is fair game in their pursuit of progress (so long as you can control it), while Khorne thinks that using anything else but your own strength alone means you are weak and his "survival of the fittest" ideal has no place for you.
That being said they have some points they agree on. for example using the power of the gods to augment your abilities (i.e. Cloaking your weapons in Warp-fire or Warp-Lightning), can be interpreted as simply using your power to control the power of the gods for your benefit. They also think it looks awesome, And Khorne is perfectly fine with using underhanded methods to deal with someone who is not worth your time (i.e. A “governor” of Jopall), which Tzeentch finds interesting.

Khorne also has the distinction of being the only Chaos God (or any god for that matter) whose word you can take at face value. The other gods don't realize that disdain for scheming and backstabbing isn't the same as being stupid. Nor do they realize that over-complicating things is actually the worst thing a planner can do. The more unnecessary variables to a plan, the easier it is for something to break. ([[Just as Planned|that said Tzeentchian plans have divination included into them, eliminating most tactical miscalculations]], [[Not as Planned|unless Tzeentch wanted it to happen.]]). So - you actually want results? Be practical. Involve only as many steps as you need. Beat someone until they're reduced to a bloody smear on the ground - no step 2 required.

Basically, Khorne isn't a stupid brute, he's actually pretty smart. The god of battles knows a thing or two about tactics and warfare. That said, Khorne's doctrine is inflexible. One, straightforward approach to anything. Simply put: Break everything in half. Which means that it all rides on an "all-or-nothing" deal. If his battering ram approach doesn't work there's little to be done to salvage the situation beyond everyone dying a glorious death. Usually this isn't the case for most battles, the Khornates' overwhelming need to quench their bloodlust gets in the way of reorganization. Of course, if things go according to plan, there are only few things that can stop the demonically-possessed no brakes hate train.

If Khorne had a voice actor it would have been BRIAN BLESSED but BRIAN chose Gotrek instead, the rejection sending Khorne's rage to new heights (unsubstantiated rumors say Khorne's considered sending Skulltaker and Karnak after BRIAN BLESSED, but Khorne realized all he'll get from that is two dead daemons with burst eardrums).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ZqFlw6hYg Here is his theme song.]
===Appearance===
Khorne is described as resembling a giant, iron-hewed warrior clad in red armour, with a massive sword and a winged helm that conceals a snarling face like that of a wolf. This humanoid form could be seen as something darkly meaningful, were it not for the fact that more or less everyone in both settings is conveniently human-shaped.
[[File:Khorne First.jpg|thumb|right|400px|The first depiction of Khorne in Warhammer art.]]
Of course, most artists at GW forget that he's supposed to look a giant Chaos Warrior and instead make him look like an overgrown Bloodthirster on a chair.

===Khorne and His Worship===
Khorne is the easiest god ever to worship. Where [[Tzeentch|other]], [[Slaanesh|more]] [[Nurgle|pussified]] gods may demand you to memorize overly long prayers and hymns, or to build huge houses of worship and other such unmanly bullshit, Khorne is venerated with one thing and one thing only: the time-honoured tradition of [[rip and tear|hack'n'slash]].

Khorne is worshipped on the battlefield. His hymns are the sound of steel on steel, his sacraments are the blows of hammer and axe, his only prayer the bellowing of the warcry "Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" and his libation is the blood spilled in his name.

In essence, you worship Khorne by being a good warrior. And as a warrior, you'll find your interests and his tend to generally align; he wants death but isn't picky on who, and you want to live to fight another day. Thus, the mere act of preserving your life will earn the pleasure of the god of battle. In a setting where there is no peace, only war, Khorne is always going to be massively powerful. Further, most of the armies embody one of his aspects - [[Space Marine|Powerful]] and [[Necron|fearless]] warriors are the [[Chaos|chosen]] of Khorne, but he favors those who use [[Ork|brute force assaults]] carried out with [[Tyranid|singular purpose and no remorse]] just as well. [[Just As Planned|Khorne wins in fights his forces weren't even involved in]].

However, Khorne is one of those honourable war-gods. So don't think that beating your enemies by anything other than sheer strength, skill and aggression will make him happy. And for the love of Sigmar/Emprah, don't try to cheat by picking fights with the weak or helpless or by giving him baby skulls. Khorne expects a form of savage, viking-esque dignity from his followers and for them to be generally [[Fist of the North Star|manly]], this means you have to fight worthy opponents and those generally able to at least hold up a sword. ''Only after'' the worthwhile enemies are out of the way; then you can gorge yourself on the blood of women and children all you want (or make them fight amongst themselves and recruit the survivors, or enslave them, or whatever). Most of the writers forget this, thinking that Khorne really gives no fucks about what you kill, and it makes Khorne [[Rage|snarl in anger]]. Though he continues to send his flesh-hounds to hunt down those who flee and abandon their brothers on the battlefield, be they Chaos or non-Chaos.

Aside from that and (obviously) never backing down from a fight, Khorne has no commandments whatsoever. But deviating from the aforementioned in the slightest is begging for the flesh-hounds to tear your ass apart.

Such as it is, it would be incorrect to think Khorne doesn't have priests dedicated to him. Though, being a warrior god, these priests tend to be warriors themselves and are often marked by their god. In essence, the only difference between them and a Chaos marauder/Space Marine is several pounds of armour. In Warhammer Fantasy, these priests are called 'Bloodfathers', and in lieu of magic that is gifted to their priests by other gods, Khorne just gives [[AWESOME|HOLYSHITAWESOME]] fighting skills and visions of bloodshed. In [[Age of Sigmar]], they're called Slaughterpriests and they basically lead by example, killing while screaming out Khorne's name. If the killing is good enough, Khorne will empower the priest and/or his allies; but if the killing is unworthy, the priest himself will feel Khorne's wrath.

Khorne is also venerated by working brass into your armour and weapons and donning fashionable high collars. Occasionally, a warrior so pleases Khorne that he gifts him with specially made ones that in addition to looking fabulous can also grant total fucking immunity to magic. After all, who needs spellcasting when you can make a motherfucker's spine disappear - with your bare hands no less?

Anyway, Khorne is worshiped by warriors, generals and basically anyone who likes battle. His chosen Space Marines legion is of course the World Eaters, in Warhammer Fantasy, the Norscans tend to venerate him with the greatest piety, especially the Aesling tribe, who are Khorne's most devoted servants in Fantasy.

===Khorne's take on magic===
As posted some time ago by an Anon who managed to perfectly sum up what Khorne's opinion on magic is: FUCK WIZARDS!!!!

While that's a pretty accurate summation, there's also some nuance to it that is not at all helped by GW's habit of changing things every new edition or keeping shit consistent between writers. With that in mind, let's get into the details of what the "FUCK WIZARDS" thing means.

The hate of psykers/wizards/etc is pretty much the exact same and works by the same logic for both Khornates and the Adepta Sororitas/Black Templars/etc: it's a [[Conan the Barbarian|Conan-esque]] swords and sorcery thing. Khornates hate wizards for [[3e|trivializing encounters with a single spell and overshadowing fighters]] and turning what should be a clash of might or a military endeavor into a weird wizard show where people turn into frogs and beguile their opponents into killing one another. They hate Slaaneshi for the same reason, due to how they often take what should be a wholesome murderfest and make it into something creepy and weird, what with them "discomporting themselves with the dead" and all that. In Realms of Chaos, its entirely possible for a librarian or wizard to go to Khorne; they just refrain from using their psi/magic powers for anything else but resisting spells in combat from that point onward.

Khorne and his followers are okay with laser beams. They are okay with sniper rifles ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHaGY85e-U| as long both you and your opponent have them]). They are okay with flaming swords. They are okay with running people over with tanks. They are okay with blitzkriegs. They are okay with chemical gas. <s>They are okay with holocausts</s> we do '''not''' target civilians, or discriminate...that often. They are okay with exterminatus. They are okay with good tactics. They are okay with berserker charges. They are okay with honorable duels at dawn.

They are ''not'' okay with turning people to frogs, mind control, raining glitterdust from the skies to blind everyone, raising armies of zombies to do the killing for you, and so forth. They are not okay with someone pointing a finger and their opponent dropping dead (but if you point a finger and they explode in a messy cloud tho then that's cool). And they are most definitely not okay with someone who got their power solely by bargaining with daemons instead of earning it themselves. (While it's quite possible to get power via daemonic bargains and not earn Khorne's ire, that requires you to have already become a powerful fighter or be willing to risk death and inflict grievous bodily harm on others, i.e. ''earning'' it.)

They are okay with daemonic summoning rituals because Khorne's daemons are all about the hack-and-slash ultraviolence. They are okay with using psychic abilities or daemonic aid to navigate the warp because that means they don't end up crashing into suns or getting whisked to some distant corner of the universe where there's nothing worthwhile to kill. They are okay with sending and receiving astropathic messages because they recognize the value of relatively fast interstellar communication. They are okay with chaining wizards up and forcing them to eternally forge magic items on pain of death because that lets the fighters kill things more easily.

One may consider it hypocritical that Khornates are okay with blatantly unfair TECHNOLOGICAL murder, but not okay with blatantly unfair MIND/MAGICAL murder. The point, or at least one interpretation, is that wizards/psykers fucking cheat. They do. They steal the power of the Warp for their own ends. As long as they stay in line, and do nothing but permit the warrior to enact his craft as he so wills, fine, let them live (albeit in terror and likely enslaved by chains of brass) until the day they are no longer useful, at which point their skulls can join Khorne's throne.

But stealing the Gods' own fire and using it to do what mortals should do through their own skill and strength is unacceptable. Remember that technology is completely valid to Khorne. Stealth is completely valid to Khorne. Skill is completely valid to Khorne. Cleverness is completely valid to Khorne. The nuclear bomb and other innovations that come after it could be seen to be unfair. But it is a mortal invention. Mortals should give honor to Khorne by murdering each other through the sweat of their brow. Granted the lines got pretty blurry when AoS introduced the Slaughterpriest.

The scientist who devises new ways to kill is a saint. His work can be put to any other use -- [[Slaanesh|enriching human life]], [[Nurgle|ending hunger, fighting diseases]], [[Tzeentch|answering great questions]]. But the scientist who devises new bombs and weapons is, in his own way, a champion of Khorne. He takes his limitless human potential and nobly limits himself to new ways to kill. Whether you kill with a sword or a bomb, you are killing using good old fashioned mortal strength and genius. You aren't stealing warp energy from the gods in the form of a fireball and cravenly calling it your own.

The forger of enchanted weapons,is an exception and an ideal symbol. It is fitting that spell energy is subjugated to and entombed within cold steel, just as cowards deserve to be subjugated to warriors until they lie cold and headless in the ground or else burnt to ash. The magic weapon is a symbol of might's superiority to magic, or in the case of actual daemon princes the unity of both.

The jury is still out on how okay Khorne is with magically imbued people who didn't get their power from him, but [[Tzeentch|given]] [[Nurgle|the]] [[Slaanesh|other]] [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|possible]] [[Sigmar|benefactors]], he's probably not the biggest fan.

Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! When the Galaxy burns, we will define righteousness!

tl;dr Magic is unmanly, grab a sword (or a 16-inch battleship cannon, if that's your thing) and go kill like a real man already.

===Khorne and other Chaos gods===
As a rule, Khorne despises [[Slaanesh]] because they're an effeminate milk-sop who can't grow a beard or swing an axe like they've got a pair (even though Slaanesh probably has the biggest pair, but less on that), and also because he personifies acting outwardly (ie: seeking the deaths of others), while Slaanesh acts inwardly (ie: seeking their own pleasure). Khorne also finds Slaanesh's obsession with luxury and torture wasteful and dishonorable. Slaanesh is about living it up while Khorne is about tearing it the fuck down. Not to mention its apparent belief that those who wrong you are meant to suffer for it, which Khorne surprisingly doesn't agree with. One of the few Slaaneshi things Khorne ''doesn't'' have a problem with is the desire for perfection in battle; spending year after year training to master an aspect of combat, constantly pushing your limits and never being satisfied until you get it ''just right'' is a perfectly acceptable way to live, so long as you remember to shed blood and take skulls.

Khorne also hates [[Tzeentch]] - though they are not fundamental rivals - because his reliance on magic is seen as a sign of weakness and his desire not to face his foes in person is decried by Khorne as cowardly. Khorne sees his penchant for deceit and trickery as dishonorable. Also, Khorne prefers muscles over books (plus Tzeentch is a huge NEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD). Tactics and stratagems are all well and good because that's how armies win and seemingly-doomed warriors eke out a victory against seemingly-impossible odds.

Khorne thinks he hates [[Nurgle]] also, because while the ability to endure immense pain is good - great, even! - and calmly acknowledging defeat is just as acceptable as trying to kill your opponent with the last dregs of strength your dying body has left, the fat fuck doesn't even try to get shit done. Thus, his embodiment as sloth runs contrary to the active, vital aspect of Khorne, but he's all for death if its by homicide or genocide.

There's also [[Solkan]], the not-Chaos Chaos God of Law and a rival of Khorne, being the only Chaos god that can match him in sheer RAAAAEG. Khorne likes to sit back and have a chuckle at Solkan's outbursts, if only because the last time he actually tried to move in on Solkan's turf he lost that fight. Not even the Blood God can top the sexually frustrated wrath of a guy looking for his [[Arianka|sisterwife]].

Of all the Chaos gods, Khorne actually hates [[Malal]] the least. For one thing, he respects the lost god for sticking to his guns: he hates the other gods, wants them dead and is actively working towards that goal. Since Nurgle just sits there being a scabby procrastinator, Tzeentch just has to have his fingers in everyone's business and Slaanesh is fucking Slaanesh (really, they are), this is something Khorne can sympathize with. Also, Malal is one of the only chaos gods to put up a halfway decent fight when Khorne manages to find him, which would mean that they would be best buds if Malal wasn't a self-destructive, omnicidal lunatic.

In short, he has problems with almost everyone and pissed at almost everyone, including you even if you worship him (usually it's a matter of how pissed he is at you). And they hate him too, except for Nurgle, who's too nice to hate anyone. If you earn his respect however, he will give you it (he has high standards though, meeting them is quite hard.)

===Khorne and non-Chaotic Gods===
Well, [[Ulric]] is his little brother and they tend to get along rather well. Ulric's still ridiculing Khorne over the fact that one of his greatest champions, Haargroth, got his head smashed in by Ulric's Ar-Ulric, Khorne usually replies by pointing out that ''Storm of Chaos'' isn't canon anymore. Not that that stops Ulric. Khorne and Ulric often get into arguments over which one of them is moar Viking; with Khorne usually winning by pointing out that his top worshipers actually are Vikings and that he has a Valkyrie. They also settle this with arm wrestling and drinking contests. There's a lot of belligerence, but you can sense the brotherly love underneath. Indeed, it's kind of a [[Fist of the North Star|Raoh/Ken relationship]].

Despite both being war-gods, Khorne has a poor relationship with [[Myrmidia]]. Khorne, despite being a master of tactics and sieges and the finer points of warfare, vastly prefers a manly head-on charge, and Myrmidia's sissy "planning" approach to warfare therefore offends Khorne. Most meetings between the Blood God and the Maiden of Strategy end with the Blood God fuming impotently because his strict code of martial honour does not permit him to hit girls (or pull their hair) and retreating to his tree house.

Khorne is the only Chaos God who tolerates Sigmar because he thinks he's pretty bad-ass AND respects the idea of a mortal man becoming a god. That and Sigmar's comic book series, Sigmar the Emprahrian, has great splashpages of fights and no SWORDSWORDSWORDS. However, this tolerance is only one-sided, and while Khorne respects him, it doesn't mean he won't try to put an axe in his head for being an sworn enemy of Chaos.

When asked about the [[Emperor]], Khorne usually responds with a streaming torrent of bloody curses and oaths which causes a bloody froth to start leaking from his helmet. In short, he is remarkably indifferent to the old man. Ironically, they share many of the same beliefs: They both disliked psykers, they both have a kick ass thrones, and they both have units dedicated to close combat. Hell, even the Emprah's head is a skull. What's not to like...oh maybe the fact that he's a COMPLETE FUCKING HYPOCRITE!

Khorne is utterly sick and tired of anyone who dares associate him with [[Khaine|40Khaine]]. Before eviscerating anyone who makes that connection, he will often give a short PowerPoint presentation, explaining how Khaine is an honourless god of murder and sadism while he himself is a god of honourable and forthright battle and courage, and how sadism is contrary to his code (Khorne indeed used to be about honorable combat, but now he's just about mindless violence and hating everyone for either piss-poor reasons or for no reason at all. Goddammit, GW). Khorne then reiterates that Khaine's elfishness and love for scantily clad women is sickening and makes him more like Slaanesh and trashes the elf god in a brutal punching bag sorta way like the prince of pleasure... Of course, this is just a front on Khorne's part. Khaine's love of war combined with his elfness and that his most ardent worshippers are scantily-clad women proves Khaine to be the secret love-child of Khorne and Slaanesh (tsundere confir- *sounds of violent, painful evisceration* '''{{Blam|WHO DARES? IN MY OWN PAGE, OF ALL THINGS? FUCK YOUUUUUUUU}}''' '''''[[Slaanesh|Search your feelings you know it to be true]]. Actually, if you consider Ka'Bandha is tsundere for the Blood Angels and Angron was for Horus to the point during the Siege of Terra he made him feel ashamed for implying he didn't trust him AND the natural state of tsunderes is raging, insulting and violent, well...

That being said, Khaine does have a dual nature in Fantasy thanks to being worshiped by [[Dark Elves]] and paid respect to by [[High Elves]], where one side is indeed honorable and just wants to keep fighting and being badass which means Khorne can tolerate him approximately half the time. The fact that both are patrons of [[Blood Bowl]] teams is usually the common ground, with Khaine and Khorne crashing/trashing some other God's house to watch on game nights while downing can after can of Bloodweisers and shoveling Dwarf Rinds in their faces. Khaine periodically tries to invade the realm of Khorne whenever the Khornate team beats the Dark Elf team, with such meetings ending with Kaine being khorne punching bag and letting his servants brutally take their anger on the incapacitated god and his elven servants. When Khaine's team beats Khorne's, Khorne takes out his aggression by beating the fuck out of Slaanesh (no homo) while Dark Elves go on safari hunting [[Warriors of Chaos|Khorne's worshipers]].

Khorne has absolutely no patience for the [[Horned Rat]], who is a favorite of Nurgle and Tzeentch respectively. It's a weak vermin whose very existence pisses him off. As a result, Khorne is much more fond of [[Sotek]] who encourages killing the fuck out of [[Skaven]] whenever they appear, and is also a fan of blood sacrifice (the fact that Sotek wants hearts and cares nothing for skulls is reassuring since they don't intrude on each other's fetish); this fondness is entirely one-sided.

Like the other Chaos Gods, Khorne has no fucking clue what the Great Maw is. However, it doesn't seem to complain when [[Ogre Kingdoms|Ogres]] worship Khorne, so he's got nothing against him...her...it...schclim...whatever, the big god-thing that wants to eat.

The pantheon of the [[Tomb Kings]] mostly stick to themselves, so Khorne only knows they exist..

Khorne is impressed with the [[Bretonnia|Bretonnian]] race by the fact they're the epitome of honor and glorious valor. On the other hand, their entire race has been tricked by a single fucking Elf Goddess into doing their every command which fills Khorne with incomprehensible fury. As it stands, the first being that's going to get the axe when Khorne manages to get an avatar to manifest in the material plane is Lileath.

[[Mork]] and [[Gork]]/Gork and Mork are Khorne's old drinking buddies. They piss him off more than any other beings in existence, but after a good 3-way beatdown and a few billion cases of squig beer he realizes they're alright company.

Khorne has a feeling that he'd get along with the gods of the [[Dwarfs]], but even their introductions (being long ass winded descriptions of their primary worshipers and their lineages) irritate him so much he can't even get into a conversation with them. One of them is STILL giving his own introduction, and has been for about 20,000 years or so now (and he hasn't even reached the changes that have happened since he started). Unable to make him aware of what's going on around him, Khorne simply moved him into the guest room and bricked it off with a wall of skulls.

As for the [[Tyranid|Bugs?]], Khorne hates them '''''Especially''''' due to them not having real blood, just vile alien ichor.

==His portrayal in Warhammer Fantasy==
He's a half-way mythologically accurate version of [[Viking|Odin]], whose very name means Fury (and one translation means 'frenzy'). You could also make the case that Khorne is Thor minus any protective instincts towards humanity, as both are whirling vortices of blood and spit who are associated with the colour red and its connotation of anger.

No, that's it. Get the fuck out; he's an axe-crazy, psychopathic, evil-as-balls daemonic version of Odin - so basically the Norse god of wisdom, with wisdom actually treated the way Vikings would have recognized. Currently there's a bit of a debate about how much of Odin he represents (see discussion page) so this bit will list the similarities and some of the differences.

Well, for one thing, Chaos worshipers in Warhammer Fantasy actually are Vikings. Read about them [[Warriors of Chaos|here]]. Secondly, Khorne is closely associated with wolves in that setting (one of Odin's names literally translates to 'Battle Wolf'), and even has a wolf-like pet in Karanak, thus, fulfilling a role similar to Freki and Geri, or more closely, Garmr (having three heads, Karnak also parallels Cerberus from Greek Mythology). Also, it's revealed in Knight of the Realm that Khorne owns two hunting wolves/giant fleshhounds called Garmr and Gormr, with whom he partakes in a wild hunt across the heavens.

Another point of similarity is that both Odin and Khorne are war gods explicitly connected with berserker rage. They have their own warrior-cults associated with them who fight with said rage and Odin's Olfhednar are practically the same as Khorne's Chosen in both form and function.

Additionally, thanks to Valkia, Khorne also has a Valkyrie to further the similarity between him and Odin. This was inevitable, of course, given that the Warriors of Chaos are indeed an evil version of the Vikings as has already been stated. It should also be noted that Valkia's similarity to the Valkyries is not a superficial one. She is actually referred to as 'the Sword-Maiden of the Blood God' in the WoC codex, and is Khorne's Chooser of the Slain who carries those worthy champions and warriors of his to fight on in the Blood God's halls after death.

Finally, we got a glimpse of his neck of the Realm of Chaos in the Valkia novel written by Sarah Cock-well. It was basically Chaos Valhalla, and here's some of his quotes:

"A cleaved head no longer plots." "A head stuck on a pike no longer conspires." "Put to the sword they who disagree."

Now for the differences, aside from the obvious physical ones Odin also scries, it's woman's magic taught to him by Frigg and Freya. He's got the rage, yeah, but he's also all about fate and averting ragnarok, (directly opposed to Khorne's goals) even if he knows he can't stop it since fate works that way; in that regard Khorne is more like Surtr from Norse Mythology (the fiery giant who wages war and brings flames that would consume the Earth - the instigator of Ragnarok). We see this in the Havamal, Grimnismal, the Voluspa, and the Lokasenna. Hell, in Lokasenna, we learn he cross dresses, ie was tied into shamanic practices (Indo-Europeans have a thing for seers in drag). He can also get to Tzeentch levels with his planning and Odin's perfectly fine with Runic magic, whereas Khorne hates that shit.

==Champions Of Khorne==
===In 40K===

* [[Kharn the Betrayer]]: Embodiment of Crazy Awesome and Patron Saint of fun guys everywhere. Kharn is Khorne's greatest mortal champion in 40K and has a wholly deserved reputation as a team-killing nutso. Once upon a time, Kharn was a straight-laced, meticulous Assault Captain of the World Eaters 8th company. [[Horus Heresy|After a certain chain of events]] he dedicated himself wholly to Khorne, thus becoming one of the most fucking lethal warriors in the galaxy as well as probably the most religiously devoted of Khorne's servants. Also notable for shattering two entire Space Marine legions by himself with a flamethrower in a single night. Despite this, since his first appearance (where he was no different from other Berzerkers) he became more and more coolheaded when not in combat (and even then there are moments when he is coolheaded in combat). He's become a swell guy because of this.

* [[Angron]]: '''HE! GETS! SHIT! DONE!!!''''. Khorne's foremost Daemon Prince alongside Doombreed. PERIOD.

* [[Doombreed]]: Khorne's greatest Daemon Prince ever and possibly either Genghis Khan or Turgeis the Devil IRL (probably Genghis Khan, Turgeis the Devil's infamy mostly came from cowardly tactics - he attacked churches because non-combatants like clergymen and monks didn't put up the best fights and to steal all the holy relics and decoration made from precious metals). Notable for launching an actually successful Dark Crusade that wiped out two Space Marine chapters. Which is more than a [[Abaddon|certain armless failure has pulled off]].

* [[Svane Vulfbad]]: EVEN IN 40K KHORNE'S CHOSEN ARE VIKINGS. Svane Vulfbad was a motherfucking badass [[Awesome|Chaos Terminator Space Wolf Chaos Lord]] who grew tired of the Imperium's sickening effeminate inability to GET SHIT DONE and the Space Wolves' sickening fur-fetishes and instead decided to dedicated himself to a god worthy of his kickassery. He thus became a badass Chaos Lord dedicated to Khorne (because a berserker god of war who likes axes meshes well with Vikings) and was killed, anticlimactically, by a thunderbolt while fighting Harald Deathwolf.

* [[Crull]]: A Chaos Lord from Winter Assault notable only for making idiotic statements, and utilizing Sorcerers in his warband when there's some possessing to be done. Also has a weird way of saying "drown".

* [[Azariah Kyras]]: A Librarian who somehow became a Champion of Khorne and who ascended to daemonhood. Presumably, his [[Awesome|speaking skills were great enough that the Blood God was able to give him slight leeway in regards to the 'no Psyker rule']], likely because he was a philosopher of carrion and slaughter, showing Khorne's way as freedom, freedom in meaningless, in mindlessness, which he accuses the functionings of the universe of. Khorne loves that stuff, existentialism for skulls, especially when it's an arch-traitor responsible for the deaths of billions, then declaring openly his allegience of Chaos to his fellow Mehreens as he is about to ascend as one of the most powerful daemon princes ever. A psyker who uses psykic powers to bring about good old kinetic Exterminatus, their reputation to raise covert cults of slaughter, discover their lust for combat and seek to encompass it, and ultimatedly be the poster child of Khornist Existentialism is too good of a chance for Khorne to pass up, who either wins against the galaxy or gets to devour Kyras' soul in a good long bloodbashing and probably still make a good Greater Daemon of Khorne out of him, probably the one and only Chaos tactical genius who could actually lead a Black Crusade properly. That's another reason Khorne likes him. Kyras' no funny business style of simply tearing a sector apart however possible tends to draw other Chaos God devotees under the wing of a Khornate champion. Here is the speech of doom that he gives the player's army (before the last level of the game ) or per canon, the Blood Ravens following Captain Diomedes before the climax:

"Faithful... enlightened... ambitious... brethren.

In but a single decade, a few mere swipes of the pendulum, we have gathered a sacrifice to Khorne that will be made legend.Though it was a simpler, weaker voice that illuminated me during my centuries upon the Judgement of Carrion... it was Khorne's messenger that showed me the true path of freedom from our pathetic corpse-Emperor.

And what is this path? This meaning, this purpose to which we gather the skulls of our foes? It is nothing. There is no meaning, no purpose. We murder. We kill. It is mindless savagery, this UNIVERSE IS MINDLESS!

In mere hours, billions will die. Innocent! Guilty! Strong and weak! Honest and deceitful! ALL of them! They will scream, they will burn, and for no purpose but that mighty Khorne may revel in their bloodshed! And united in this void of purpose, fear, or duty... we shall at long last be free!

BLOOD! FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!! SKULLS! FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!! LET... THE GALAXY... BUUUURRRRNNN!!!"

Also notable as the single longest-to-fucking-kill-boss in the history of the Dawn of War series other than [[Ulkair]]. (Not that we haven't found ways to cheese him in under five minutes, namely Tyranids spamming warriors with venom upgrades alongside Hive Lord with his anti-daemon gun) Still, pure undiluted awesome.

===In Fantasy===
'''VIKINGS!!!''' '''VIIIIIIIIIIIIKIIIIIIIIIIIIINNGSSSSSSSS!!!'''

* [[Valkia the Bloody]]: A pissed off badass Valkyrie who chooses who will fight on in the Halls of the Blood God after they die in glorious battle. She managed to kill a motherfucking DAEMON PRINCE as a lowly, un-Marked, un-augmented human in SINGLE COMBAT to earn Khorne's favour, CUT ITS FUCKING HEAD OFF, AND THEN CARRIED IT BACK TO THE NORTH TO PLACE AT THE FOOT OF THE SKULL THRONE. And then she died on the way. But Khorne was so impressed by this badassery/pissed off by her death, he resurrected her as a fucking Daemon Princess. Now she flies around the battlefields of the world slaughtering anything that looks at her funny and bearing Norsemen to the Khorne's place for a glorious afterlife of fighting and drinking. She is also far more attractive than anything of Slaanesh's menagerie, much to the Prince of Pleasure's eternal rage and the Bloodfather's great amusement, primarily due to having hair.

* Garmr Hrodvitnir aka Billy Squigins: A Chaos Lord of Khorne who managed to almost kill Gotrek Fucking Gurnisson in a fight. 'Nuff said.

* Hrothgar Daemonaxe: A Chaos Lord who only had his rules and miniatures released at a Games Day. He had the statline of a Bloodthirster. His miniature also depicts him throttling an elf, which makes him a good person.

* Arbaal the Undefeated: Nicknamed 'Arbaal the Easily Defeatable' due to his rules from Champions of Chaos having been shockingly awful. Arbaal's been effectively retcon'd out of existence under the excuse that he's journeyed into the Realm of Chaos to challenge Khorne himself to a fight. <s>Good luck with that.</s> It went about as well as you expected.

* [[Scyla Anfingrimm]]: The greatest [[Chaos Spawn|You-Know-What]] ever to walk the earth. Scyla was a Chaos Lord of Khorne who got one too many mutations before his time and devolved into a YKW. But he's the most badass YKW ever, and is a leadership 10 general. Which is impressive considering the only thing he can say is "'''KILL FOR KHORNE! KILL FOR KHORNE! KILL FOR KHORNE!'''".

* Chaos Lord Varmisgal: A Chaos Lord whose blood has turned to liquid bronze. He is responsible for the stalking brass bull of Nuln and the great raid into the Misty Mountains... it is also alleged he ate his own penis.

* Valmir Aesling: A Norscan king and Champion of Khorne who destroyed the Norse Dwarf Hold of Kraka Drak. Managed to get a fucking Daemon Prince to work for him, slaughtered a metric fuck-ton of Norse Dwarfs (roughly 8 times the manliness of a regular Dwarf and thus worth 24 Space Wolves). [[Awesome|Also rode a motherfucking chariot pulled by skinless bears]].

* Egil Styrbjorn: A Norscan High Yarl of the Skaeligs and probably the greatest epitome of manliness a Chaos Warrior devoted to Khorne can achieve. He slew a lot and took names, kicked Bretonnian arses, sexed many women(all which said was impotent and didnt really find pleasure in, poor guy) yet never got a proper heir (only daughters). It was so bad for him that he adopted a boy that became later his personal shamanistic seer and advisor...that is until he banged a Kurgan Sorceress that was prophesied by said shaman to bear Egil's son, yet the damned cheese eating surrender monkeys took her and his unborn son away, which he answered them with apocalyptic RAAAAAGE and titanic slaughter (then again, said Sorceress wanted to sacrifice the unborn child for immortality, and she was actually possessing a Bretonnian noblewoman when doing deed with Egil so Egil's son was in that Bretonnian's womb and the Bretonnian Knights were rescuing her). And thus there was an epic campaign to retrieve the boy. Wields two badass flaming axes called Garmr and Gormr. Really dislikes the Lady of the Lake and other Southerner gods. So manly he is that he let a Grail Knight stab him only to throw back his sword to him. Also known for embodying Khorne's tactical take on war, which he mercilessly used against the Bretonnian Knights that stubbornly charged his warriors head on (until said knights realized that they were duped and slaughtered in seconds).

* [[Skarr Bloodwrath]]: Deranged respawning berserker with axes that double as flails. Joined [[Archaon]]'s posse during [[The End Times]] as one of the many Khornate forces that helped hasten the end of the world.

==Fun Khorne Facts==
* Interestingly the word "Khorne" in Ancient Cypriot Greek literally means to "Shit Blood". Kh' - "To force outward", ORN - "Back passage", Ee - "Blood".
*Doombreed, Khorne's second daemon prince servant, might actually be Genghis Khan himself.
*Khorne's looking for ways to incorporate dinosaurs into his armies, due to the sheer amount of [[RIP AND TEAR]] they can unleash on their enemies. He's unbelievably pissed that he hasn't managed to get any yet- '''{{Blam|YOU GAVE IT AWAY?!?!? FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU}}'''
*Khorne <strike>secretly</strike> ''{{Blam|BLATANTLY}}''' hates everyone who kills the defenseless in his name. He'd plot ways to kill them, but he's too mad to do that. (So what else is new?)
*Khorne was just able to stand watching Jurassic World once it got going due to the Indominus Rex and how it made everything else look like bitches. He raged when it died. He's looking for its skull 'cause he wishes he could have it as one of his servants- *sounds of swords and blood* '''{{Blam|FAGGOT!}}''' (Why couldn't Khorne just seek the skull of the Mosasaurus that killed it? Or Rexie, T-rex is classic, I hear you say.) To that, I answer that coz without the Mosasaurus then Rex would'a DIED.
*Khorne is unsure whether or not he hates [[Cultist-chan]], due to a) the fact that she can't do anything except scream about 'kap-tooring eet for kay-oss' and get purged and b) the fact that she's so good at spreading [[RAEG]] amongst various unlucky meatsacks and fa/tg/uys. And that indecisiveness makes him foam at the mouth in an unending rage.
*Khorne practically invented flipping the table when you lose at card games, or it goes too slowly. He does this whenever the major Warp entities play cards in the Formless Wastes.
*Followers of Khorne actually have the ability to pull off [[LIIVI]]/[[Eldrad]] level dick-style moves in battle. They just choose not to do this.
*Khorne wanted [[Settra the Imperishable]] as one of his servants once. However, Settra won't ever serve Khorne, even going so far as to give ALL OF CHAOS the '''motherfucking middle finger''' before going off to hunt down [[Nagash]]. That said, Settra may well be one of the few mortal beings besides his own servants Khorne has any respect for. He still hates Settra though.
*Slaanesh once created some Kayos Spess Mehreens with his/her colour scheme, but with armour nicked off fallen Khornate warriors. And when Khorne saw this, '''his wrath was legendary'''.
*Slaanesh and Khorne also have regular 'plans' on Friday night- *sounds of something even bigger than a [[Bloodthirster]] coming through and much ripping and tearing* '''{{Blam|NO! YOU'RE LYING!}}'''
* [[Emperor|That Twat With The Chair]] and Khorne haven't '''SMACKED DOWN''' yet, but Khorne is secretly looking forward to it when it happens- he wants to test Spess Jaysis's might against his own. Tickets are now on sale!
*If an internet hyperlink comes up red, it's not because the page doesn't exist, it's because Khorne looked at what was once on the other end, and '''he didn't like what he saw''', so much so that the hyperlink is stained with the blood of what once was.
* Khorne's favorite form of grouping is in ogdoads, for reasons that should be obvious once you know what that word means.
* Khorne's favorite [[video game|vidja]] was [[Doom]]. he abandoned it in a strange combination of terror and appreciation once he learned it was Biographical/Autobiographical.
* If Khorne is acting calm towards you, don't relax. He doesn't like anything, he just hates some things less than others. There is such a thing as cold-hatred.
* Khorne was '''ALMOST''' pleased when [[Iskandar Khayon]] smashed his ship, the ''Tlaloc'', into the Slaaneshi world of Harmony, killing a whole shitload of Slaaneshi fucks and breaking the planet in half. Then he remembered Khayon was a damn Thousand Son Sorcerer. Fuck.
*[[TTS|Khorne will not stab you in the back. He will simply stab you in the face until your face stops resembling a face.]]
*Very few beings have ever earned Khorne's respect. but the most notable is the '''MOTHERFUCKING DOOMGUY!!!''' (another is Valen the ancestor of [[Kharn]]).
*DOOM 2016 <s>tells of a "Wretch" who made the Doom Slayer an adamantine Amour from the deepest parts of the forges of Hell. And since Khorne CAN craft absolute destructive Weapons and impenetrable Armour...</s> (he did not make the armor for him but he approves of him using it.)
*Khorne is mixed on snipers. Partly because they sneak and hide like pussies and don't get into a proper fight, and partly because headshots ruin perfectly good skulls. However, sniping is the most skillfull form of shooting. It’s also Slaaneshi.
*Khorne's favorite author is Sun Tzu. Three guesses why if you know what he's written.
*Khorne is the patron god of Chimpanzees (no seriously, look them up; those bastards are the fucking marauding barbarians of the jungle, especially since their cousins the Bonobos seem like milktoast Slaanesh followers).
*Thanks to his relationship with Valkia the Bloody, Khorne may or may not be married to the devoted blood and gore addicted maiden of war.
*Despite his association with canines, Khorne also has a pet rabbit, which he [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmu5sRIizdw loaned out to appear in a certain comedy film].
*Khorne is also the god of tsunderes, no, seriously, as stated in a previous section, which is even further added by many tsunderes being red themed, this makes Khorne RAAAAEEEG! even more as his followers are supposed to be manly armored guys and not teen girls in school uniform, but hey, that's the internet for you!

==Gallery==
{{promotions}}
<gallery>
Klaher-baklaher-khorn.jpg|The [[Doom|Throne Guy]] himself, likely an inaccurate portrayal but still badass.
Image:Khornate.JPG|Khorne's followers off the battlefield. REVERSE ARMWRESTLE!!!
Image:khornewaffel.JPG|Waffles for the Blood God!
Image:Khornetrainer.JPG|Khorne's trainers prefer violent Pokémon.
Image:Khorne_tattoo.jpg|Mark of Khorne.
Image:Free like a riding demon by Ragathol.jpg|Khornette.
Image:Backwardsthrone.jpg|Just as Planned. Always. As. Planned.
File:Khornette.jpg|Khorne wants to know why the drawfags never give them noses.
File:Tea Time.jpg|In the grim darkness of the far future, there is still time for tea...
File:Khorne-Art.jpg|Warriors of Chaos: making everything in 40K look like bitches since 2002.
Image:You're_madder_than_Khorne.png|There '''is''' such a thing as being too mad for Khorne!
Image:Khorneholiover2.png |The [[Cornholio the Cultist|Great Khorneholio]]. He needs blood and skulls for his bunghole.
Image:Anon_pleases_Khorne.png|Who knew Berzerkers came in ''Shrimp'' size?
Image:Khorne Flakes.jpg|The tastiest of all! Add blood for more flavor.
Image:Khorne_flakes.jpg|Literal <s>corn</s> Khorne Flake Cake! Some absolute madlad/madlass actually did it!
Image:Khorny Meme.jpg|Whoever made this has too much time on their hands. And access to imgflip.
</gallery>

==See also==

*[[Brass]]
*[[Berserker]] - Chaos Space Marines with Axes and a bad attitude.
*[[Angron]] - Daemon prince of Khorne and the Primarch of World Eaters.
*[[World Eaters]]
*[[Khârn|Khârn the Betrayer]] - A pretty fun guy to be around.
*[[Valkia the Bloody]] - Scarousal in it's purest form.
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Khorne_Daemonkin(7E)|Tactics/Khorne Daemonkin]] - That's right, meatsacks! The servants of Khorne have their own codex!
*[[Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Chaos/Blades of Khorne|Tactics/Blades of Khorne]] - Khorne's servants in AoS.
*[[Rage]]
*[[Sorcerers of Khorne]] - Double heresy!
*[[Doombreed]] - One angry son of a bitch.
*[[Doom|the one guy Khorne respects]]
* This pretty much sums up his forces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gSJW3sHXE&feature=channel_video_title
*[[Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20#Khorne_is_underpowered_in_40k|Khorne is underpowered in 40k]]
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vljHBXA3UKE - death metal song devoted to Khorne.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml3sjEiViXc - better death metal song.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8mEOiI4pjs - thrash metal song summing up Khorne pretty well.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edNUp4GkukI - can't forget the blackened thrash.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUB9QGKCNmI - a bunch of anime Khorne worshippers. Better than it sounds.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8mEOiI4pjs - another metal song devoted to Khorne. GW actually commissioned this one. Yes, they really were that awesome back in the day.

{{Template:ChaosGods}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Age of Sigmar]][[Category:Blades of Khorne]]

Khorne

2021-12-07T12:37:18Z

195.194.119.220: /* Gallery */

[[File:Khorne mark.png|center]]
{{heresy}}
{{awesome}}
[[File:khorne_by_baklaher-d7335e6.jpg|500px|thumb|right|Special K in all his glory, Sitting comfortably on his Skull Throne, being pissed off at everyone and everything, because to him it's all bullshit]]<div style="font-size:1.10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em"> BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! - The creed of Khorne being Overused to Death'''</div>

{{Topquote|Anger, which, far sweeter than trickling drops of honey, rises in the bosom of a man like smoke.|Homer}}

{{Topquote|The important thing in life is not victory but combat: it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.|Pierre de Coubertin}}

{{Topquote|[[Chaos Gods|They]]'re none of them good, but Khorne's the worst. Battle without honour and oath shouldn't be encouraged.|[[vermintide 2|Bardin Goreksson]]}}

==Introduction==
[[RAGE|'''Khorne''']], also known as Kharnath, Arkhar, Khorgar, [[Viking|Kjorn]], Khar, the Great Brass Bull, the Bloody Handed, the Axefather, the Bloodwolf, The Great Khorneholio, Special K, the [[Ulric|Wolf-Father]], Frowny Face McMurderaxe, Sergeant Slaughter, the Lord of Fighters, the Messiah of Mayhem, Call of Duty: Demon DLC, [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|The Paraplegic Sociopath]], [[If_the_Emperor_had_a_Text-to-Speech_Device|MegaSatan]], Definitely not fucking Khaine, [[Dwarf Fortress|Armok]], Stone Cold Steve Austin, Khornelias Fudge, Kellogg's Khorneflakes, Big Red, Chile Con Khornage, Daddy’s little princess (HEY, FUCK YOU!) and 8860 other names is the [[Chaos God]] of war, murder, savagery, hatred (though he is starting to question that one at times thinking it belongs more to [[Slaanesh|his arch enemy]] than it does him), murder, destruction, rage, wrath, murder, battle, barbarism and [[Vance Motherfucking Stubbs|manliness]]...oh and did we mention murder. He is also the mofo that the Klingons worship. As well as this he symbolises courage, athleticism, determination, daring, discipline, sportsmanship, honor, impulsiveness, struggling onward in the face of any odds, and survival of the fittest. But mostly he's simply about being angry.

He is commonly held to be the strongest [[Chaos]] God by default (though this is technically incorrect) and is associated with wolves and powerful hunting dogs, as well as lions and bulls. For another reason that is likely inspired by occultism, Khorne's sacred numbers Four and eight - and thus, his followers tend to organize themselves into groups of fours, eights and their multiples. Fun fact, this also means that the names of Khornate daemons are usually comprised of eight letters...Though exceptions exist. (The Chinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans value the number 8 due to its similarity with the Chinese character for prosperity does that make them Khornate worshippers?)
[[File:SkullThrone.jpg|400px|right|thumb|The Big K in all his glory contemplating on whose rectum he is going to shove his chainaxe into with extreme prejudice.(Spoiler: its everyone)]]
Khorne, by virtue of being the most prominent Chaos God, is also the second most powerful general "deity" in both iterations of Warhammer (Nurgle has him beat but only because of the fact that everything eventually comes to him) In both versions of Warhammer, his followers are characterized by an overbearing need to spill blood and engage in honest battle, as well as a violent code of martial honour and a "survival of the fittest" approach to morality. They tend to be dutiful, as well, but said duties involve whacking their axes into their enemy and painting their blood all over villages gargling their blood as mouthwash (if only because Khorne's only real command is to spill worthy blood in his name).

This is where Khorne and Slaanesh generally clash directly and openly as enemy gods, aside from the fact that everyone in the warp hates Slaanesh. While Khorne instills discipline, honor and a sense of selfless duty in his followers to obey a single purpose (usually spill blood in his name), Slaanesh is the polar opposite. Slaanesh instead tells his/her followers to do <strike>whoever</strike> whatever they want in their own selfish pursuit of pleasure, caring not for the consequences of their actions (e.g; using your authority to hoard food from your starving citizens, so you can indulge in bottomless gluttony every day).

This is also why Khorne is at odds with Tzeentch: Tzeentch sees things like honor and discipline as unnecessary hamstrings towards one's advancement and opts that everything is on the table when one wishes to further their position (why duel your Lord for his position when you could arrange for an "accident" to befall him, instead? Sure its a low-blow, but if your lord was too stupid to see that car bomb coming, was he really deserving of loyalty?). The same can be said of his disdain for sorcery. Tzeentch thinks that mortals using the power of the gods themselves is fair game in their pursuit of progress (so long as you can control it), while Khorne thinks that using anything else but your own strength alone means you are weak and his "survival of the fittest" ideal has no place for you.
That being said they have some points they agree on. for example using the power of the gods to augment your abilities (i.e. Cloaking your weapons in Warp-fire or Warp-Lightning), can be interpreted as simply using your power to control the power of the gods for your benefit. They also think it looks awesome, And Khorne is perfectly fine with using underhanded methods to deal with someone who is not worth your time (i.e. A “governor” of Jopall), which Tzeentch finds interesting.

Khorne also has the distinction of being the only Chaos God (or any god for that matter) whose word you can take at face value. The other gods don't realize that disdain for scheming and backstabbing isn't the same as being stupid. Nor do they realize that over-complicating things is actually the worst thing a planner can do. The more unnecessary variables to a plan, the easier it is for something to break. ([[Just as Planned|that said Tzeentchian plans have divination included into them, eliminating most tactical miscalculations]], [[Not as Planned|unless Tzeentch wanted it to happen.]]). So - you actually want results? Be practical. Involve only as many steps as you need. Beat someone until they're reduced to a bloody smear on the ground - no step 2 required.

Basically, Khorne isn't a stupid brute, he's actually pretty smart. The god of battles knows a thing or two about tactics and warfare. That said, Khorne's doctrine is inflexible. One, straightforward approach to anything. Simply put: Break everything in half. Which means that it all rides on an "all-or-nothing" deal. If his battering ram approach doesn't work there's little to be done to salvage the situation beyond everyone dying a glorious death. Usually this isn't the case for most battles, the Khornates' overwhelming need to quench their bloodlust gets in the way of reorganization. Of course, if things go according to plan, there are only few things that can stop the demonically-possessed no brakes hate train.

If Khorne had a voice actor it would have been BRIAN BLESSED but BRIAN chose Gotrek instead, the rejection sending Khorne's rage to new heights (unsubstantiated rumors say Khorne's considered sending Skulltaker and Karnak after BRIAN BLESSED, but Khorne realized all he'll get from that is two dead daemons with burst eardrums).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ZqFlw6hYg Here is his theme song.]
===Appearance===
Khorne is described as resembling a giant, iron-hewed warrior clad in red armour, with a massive sword and a winged helm that conceals a snarling face like that of a wolf. This humanoid form could be seen as something darkly meaningful, were it not for the fact that more or less everyone in both settings is conveniently human-shaped.
[[File:Khorne First.jpg|thumb|right|400px|The first depiction of Khorne in Warhammer art.]]
Of course, most artists at GW forget that he's supposed to look a giant Chaos Warrior and instead make him look like an overgrown Bloodthirster on a chair.

===Khorne and His Worship===
Khorne is the easiest god ever to worship. Where [[Tzeentch|other]], [[Slaanesh|more]] [[Nurgle|pussified]] gods may demand you to memorize overly long prayers and hymns, or to build huge houses of worship and other such unmanly bullshit, Khorne is venerated with one thing and one thing only: the time-honoured tradition of [[rip and tear|hack'n'slash]].

Khorne is worshipped on the battlefield. His hymns are the sound of steel on steel, his sacraments are the blows of hammer and axe, his only prayer the bellowing of the warcry "Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" and his libation is the blood spilled in his name.

In essence, you worship Khorne by being a good warrior. And as a warrior, you'll find your interests and his tend to generally align; he wants death but isn't picky on who, and you want to live to fight another day. Thus, the mere act of preserving your life will earn the pleasure of the god of battle. In a setting where there is no peace, only war, Khorne is always going to be massively powerful. Further, most of the armies embody one of his aspects - [[Space Marine|Powerful]] and [[Necron|fearless]] warriors are the [[Chaos|chosen]] of Khorne, but he favors those who use [[Ork|brute force assaults]] carried out with [[Tyranid|singular purpose and no remorse]] just as well. [[Just As Planned|Khorne wins in fights his forces weren't even involved in]].

However, Khorne is one of those honourable war-gods. So don't think that beating your enemies by anything other than sheer strength, skill and aggression will make him happy. And for the love of Sigmar/Emprah, don't try to cheat by picking fights with the weak or helpless or by giving him baby skulls. Khorne expects a form of savage, viking-esque dignity from his followers and for them to be generally [[Fist of the North Star|manly]], this means you have to fight worthy opponents and those generally able to at least hold up a sword. ''Only after'' the worthwhile enemies are out of the way; then you can gorge yourself on the blood of women and children all you want (or make them fight amongst themselves and recruit the survivors, or enslave them, or whatever). Most of the writers forget this, thinking that Khorne really gives no fucks about what you kill, and it makes Khorne [[Rage|snarl in anger]]. Though he continues to send his flesh-hounds to hunt down those who flee and abandon their brothers on the battlefield, be they Chaos or non-Chaos.

Aside from that and (obviously) never backing down from a fight, Khorne has no commandments whatsoever. But deviating from the aforementioned in the slightest is begging for the flesh-hounds to tear your ass apart.

Such as it is, it would be incorrect to think Khorne doesn't have priests dedicated to him. Though, being a warrior god, these priests tend to be warriors themselves and are often marked by their god. In essence, the only difference between them and a Chaos marauder/Space Marine is several pounds of armour. In Warhammer Fantasy, these priests are called 'Bloodfathers', and in lieu of magic that is gifted to their priests by other gods, Khorne just gives [[AWESOME|HOLYSHITAWESOME]] fighting skills and visions of bloodshed. In [[Age of Sigmar]], they're called Slaughterpriests and they basically lead by example, killing while screaming out Khorne's name. If the killing is good enough, Khorne will empower the priest and/or his allies; but if the killing is unworthy, the priest himself will feel Khorne's wrath.

Khorne is also venerated by working brass into your armour and weapons and donning fashionable high collars. Occasionally, a warrior so pleases Khorne that he gifts him with specially made ones that in addition to looking fabulous can also grant total fucking immunity to magic. After all, who needs spellcasting when you can make a motherfucker's spine disappear - with your bare hands no less?

Anyway, Khorne is worshiped by warriors, generals and basically anyone who likes battle. His chosen Space Marines legion is of course the World Eaters, in Warhammer Fantasy, the Norscans tend to venerate him with the greatest piety, especially the Aesling tribe, who are Khorne's most devoted servants in Fantasy.

===Khorne's take on magic===
As posted some time ago by an Anon who managed to perfectly sum up what Khorne's opinion on magic is: FUCK WIZARDS!!!!

While that's a pretty accurate summation, there's also some nuance to it that is not at all helped by GW's habit of changing things every new edition or keeping shit consistent between writers. With that in mind, let's get into the details of what the "FUCK WIZARDS" thing means.

The hate of psykers/wizards/etc is pretty much the exact same and works by the same logic for both Khornates and the Adepta Sororitas/Black Templars/etc: it's a [[Conan the Barbarian|Conan-esque]] swords and sorcery thing. Khornates hate wizards for [[3e|trivializing encounters with a single spell and overshadowing fighters]] and turning what should be a clash of might or a military endeavor into a weird wizard show where people turn into frogs and beguile their opponents into killing one another. They hate Slaaneshi for the same reason, due to how they often take what should be a wholesome murderfest and make it into something creepy and weird, what with them "discomporting themselves with the dead" and all that. In Realms of Chaos, its entirely possible for a librarian or wizard to go to Khorne; they just refrain from using their psi/magic powers for anything else but resisting spells in combat from that point onward.

Khorne and his followers are okay with laser beams. They are okay with sniper rifles ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHaGY85e-U| as long both you and your opponent have them]). They are okay with flaming swords. They are okay with running people over with tanks. They are okay with blitzkriegs. They are okay with chemical gas. <s>They are okay with holocausts</s> we do '''not''' target civilians, or discriminate...that often. They are okay with exterminatus. They are okay with good tactics. They are okay with berserker charges. They are okay with honorable duels at dawn.

They are ''not'' okay with turning people to frogs, mind control, raining glitterdust from the skies to blind everyone, raising armies of zombies to do the killing for you, and so forth. They are not okay with someone pointing a finger and their opponent dropping dead (but if you point a finger and they explode in a messy cloud tho then that's cool). And they are most definitely not okay with someone who got their power solely by bargaining with daemons instead of earning it themselves. (While it's quite possible to get power via daemonic bargains and not earn Khorne's ire, that requires you to have already become a powerful fighter or be willing to risk death and inflict grievous bodily harm on others, i.e. ''earning'' it.)

They are okay with daemonic summoning rituals because Khorne's daemons are all about the hack-and-slash ultraviolence. They are okay with using psychic abilities or daemonic aid to navigate the warp because that means they don't end up crashing into suns or getting whisked to some distant corner of the universe where there's nothing worthwhile to kill. They are okay with sending and receiving astropathic messages because they recognize the value of relatively fast interstellar communication. They are okay with chaining wizards up and forcing them to eternally forge magic items on pain of death because that lets the fighters kill things more easily.

One may consider it hypocritical that Khornates are okay with blatantly unfair TECHNOLOGICAL murder, but not okay with blatantly unfair MIND/MAGICAL murder. The point, or at least one interpretation, is that wizards/psykers fucking cheat. They do. They steal the power of the Warp for their own ends. As long as they stay in line, and do nothing but permit the warrior to enact his craft as he so wills, fine, let them live (albeit in terror and likely enslaved by chains of brass) until the day they are no longer useful, at which point their skulls can join Khorne's throne.

But stealing the Gods' own fire and using it to do what mortals should do through their own skill and strength is unacceptable. Remember that technology is completely valid to Khorne. Stealth is completely valid to Khorne. Skill is completely valid to Khorne. Cleverness is completely valid to Khorne. The nuclear bomb and other innovations that come after it could be seen to be unfair. But it is a mortal invention. Mortals should give honor to Khorne by murdering each other through the sweat of their brow. Granted the lines got pretty blurry when AoS introduced the Slaughterpriest.

The scientist who devises new ways to kill is a saint. His work can be put to any other use -- [[Slaanesh|enriching human life]], [[Nurgle|ending hunger, fighting diseases]], [[Tzeentch|answering great questions]]. But the scientist who devises new bombs and weapons is, in his own way, a champion of Khorne. He takes his limitless human potential and nobly limits himself to new ways to kill. Whether you kill with a sword or a bomb, you are killing using good old fashioned mortal strength and genius. You aren't stealing warp energy from the gods in the form of a fireball and cravenly calling it your own.

The forger of enchanted weapons,is an exception and an ideal symbol. It is fitting that spell energy is subjugated to and entombed within cold steel, just as cowards deserve to be subjugated to warriors until they lie cold and headless in the ground or else burnt to ash. The magic weapon is a symbol of might's superiority to magic, or in the case of actual daemon princes the unity of both.

The jury is still out on how okay Khorne is with magically imbued people who didn't get their power from him, but [[Tzeentch|given]] [[Nurgle|the]] [[Slaanesh|other]] [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|possible]] [[Sigmar|benefactors]], he's probably not the biggest fan.

Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! When the Galaxy burns, we will define righteousness!

tl;dr Magic is unmanly, grab a sword (or a 16-inch battleship cannon, if that's your thing) and go kill like a real man already.

===Khorne and other Chaos gods===
As a rule, Khorne despises [[Slaanesh]] because they're an effeminate milk-sop who can't grow a beard or swing an axe like they've got a pair (even though Slaanesh probably has the biggest pair, but less on that), and also because he personifies acting outwardly (ie: seeking the deaths of others), while Slaanesh acts inwardly (ie: seeking their own pleasure). Khorne also finds Slaanesh's obsession with luxury and torture wasteful and dishonorable. Slaanesh is about living it up while Khorne is about tearing it the fuck down. Not to mention its apparent belief that those who wrong you are meant to suffer for it, which Khorne surprisingly doesn't agree with. One of the few Slaaneshi things Khorne ''doesn't'' have a problem with is the desire for perfection in battle; spending year after year training to master an aspect of combat, constantly pushing your limits and never being satisfied until you get it ''just right'' is a perfectly acceptable way to live, so long as you remember to shed blood and take skulls.

Khorne also hates [[Tzeentch]] - though they are not fundamental rivals - because his reliance on magic is seen as a sign of weakness and his desire not to face his foes in person is decried by Khorne as cowardly. Khorne sees his penchant for deceit and trickery as dishonorable. Also, Khorne prefers muscles over books (plus Tzeentch is a huge NEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD). Tactics and stratagems are all well and good because that's how armies win and seemingly-doomed warriors eke out a victory against seemingly-impossible odds.

Khorne thinks he hates [[Nurgle]] also, because while the ability to endure immense pain is good - great, even! - and calmly acknowledging defeat is just as acceptable as trying to kill your opponent with the last dregs of strength your dying body has left, the fat fuck doesn't even try to get shit done. Thus, his embodiment as sloth runs contrary to the active, vital aspect of Khorne, but he's all for death if its by homicide or genocide.

There's also [[Solkan]], the not-Chaos Chaos God of Law and a rival of Khorne, being the only Chaos god that can match him in sheer RAAAAEG. Khorne likes to sit back and have a chuckle at Solkan's outbursts, if only because the last time he actually tried to move in on Solkan's turf he lost that fight. Not even the Blood God can top the sexually frustrated wrath of a guy looking for his [[Arianka|sisterwife]].

Of all the Chaos gods, Khorne actually hates [[Malal]] the least. For one thing, he respects the lost god for sticking to his guns: he hates the other gods, wants them dead and is actively working towards that goal. Since Nurgle just sits there being a scabby procrastinator, Tzeentch just has to have his fingers in everyone's business and Slaanesh is fucking Slaanesh (really, they are), this is something Khorne can sympathize with. Also, Malal is one of the only chaos gods to put up a halfway decent fight when Khorne manages to find him, which would mean that they would be best buds if Malal wasn't a self-destructive, omnicidal lunatic.

In short, he has problems with almost everyone and pissed at almost everyone, including you even if you worship him (usually it's a matter of how pissed he is at you). And they hate him too, except for Nurgle, who's too nice to hate anyone. If you earn his respect however, he will give you it (he has high standards though, meeting them is quite hard.)

===Khorne and non-Chaotic Gods===
Well, [[Ulric]] is his little brother and they tend to get along rather well. Ulric's still ridiculing Khorne over the fact that one of his greatest champions, Haargroth, got his head smashed in by Ulric's Ar-Ulric, Khorne usually replies by pointing out that ''Storm of Chaos'' isn't canon anymore. Not that that stops Ulric. Khorne and Ulric often get into arguments over which one of them is moar Viking; with Khorne usually winning by pointing out that his top worshipers actually are Vikings and that he has a Valkyrie. They also settle this with arm wrestling and drinking contests. There's a lot of belligerence, but you can sense the brotherly love underneath. Indeed, it's kind of a [[Fist of the North Star|Raoh/Ken relationship]].

Despite both being war-gods, Khorne has a poor relationship with [[Myrmidia]]. Khorne, despite being a master of tactics and sieges and the finer points of warfare, vastly prefers a manly head-on charge, and Myrmidia's sissy "planning" approach to warfare therefore offends Khorne. Most meetings between the Blood God and the Maiden of Strategy end with the Blood God fuming impotently because his strict code of martial honour does not permit him to hit girls (or pull their hair) and retreating to his tree house.

Khorne is the only Chaos God who tolerates Sigmar because he thinks he's pretty bad-ass AND respects the idea of a mortal man becoming a god. That and Sigmar's comic book series, Sigmar the Emprahrian, has great splashpages of fights and no SWORDSWORDSWORDS. However, this tolerance is only one-sided, and while Khorne respects him, it doesn't mean he won't try to put an axe in his head for being an sworn enemy of Chaos.

When asked about the [[Emperor]], Khorne usually responds with a streaming torrent of bloody curses and oaths which causes a bloody froth to start leaking from his helmet. In short, he is remarkably indifferent to the old man. Ironically, they share many of the same beliefs: They both disliked psykers, they both have a kick ass thrones, and they both have units dedicated to close combat. Hell, even the Emprah's head is a skull. What's not to like...oh maybe the fact that he's a COMPLETE FUCKING HYPOCRITE!

Khorne is utterly sick and tired of anyone who dares associate him with [[Khaine|40Khaine]]. Before eviscerating anyone who makes that connection, he will often give a short PowerPoint presentation, explaining how Khaine is an honourless god of murder and sadism while he himself is a god of honourable and forthright battle and courage, and how sadism is contrary to his code (Khorne indeed used to be about honorable combat, but now he's just about mindless violence and hating everyone for either piss-poor reasons or for no reason at all. Goddammit, GW). Khorne then reiterates that Khaine's elfishness and love for scantily clad women is sickening and makes him more like Slaanesh and trashes the elf god in a brutal punching bag sorta way like the prince of pleasure... Of course, this is just a front on Khorne's part. Khaine's love of war combined with his elfness and that his most ardent worshippers are scantily-clad women proves Khaine to be the secret love-child of Khorne and Slaanesh (tsundere confir- *sounds of violent, painful evisceration* '''{{Blam|WHO DARES? IN MY OWN PAGE, OF ALL THINGS? FUCK YOUUUUUUUU}}''' '''''[[Slaanesh|Search your feelings you know it to be true]]. Actually, if you consider Ka'Bandha is tsundere for the Blood Angels and Angron was for Horus to the point during the Siege of Terra he made him feel ashamed for implying he didn't trust him AND the natural state of tsunderes is raging, insulting and violent, well...

That being said, Khaine does have a dual nature in Fantasy thanks to being worshiped by [[Dark Elves]] and paid respect to by [[High Elves]], where one side is indeed honorable and just wants to keep fighting and being badass which means Khorne can tolerate him approximately half the time. The fact that both are patrons of [[Blood Bowl]] teams is usually the common ground, with Khaine and Khorne crashing/trashing some other God's house to watch on game nights while downing can after can of Bloodweisers and shoveling Dwarf Rinds in their faces. Khaine periodically tries to invade the realm of Khorne whenever the Khornate team beats the Dark Elf team, with such meetings ending with Kaine being khorne punching bag and letting his servants brutally take their anger on the incapacitated god and his elven servants. When Khaine's team beats Khorne's, Khorne takes out his aggression by beating the fuck out of Slaanesh (no homo) while Dark Elves go on safari hunting [[Warriors of Chaos|Khorne's worshipers]].

Khorne has absolutely no patience for the [[Horned Rat]], who is a favorite of Nurgle and Tzeentch respectively. It's a weak vermin whose very existence pisses him off. As a result, Khorne is much more fond of [[Sotek]] who encourages killing the fuck out of [[Skaven]] whenever they appear, and is also a fan of blood sacrifice (the fact that Sotek wants hearts and cares nothing for skulls is reassuring since they don't intrude on each other's fetish); this fondness is entirely one-sided.

Like the other Chaos Gods, Khorne has no fucking clue what the Great Maw is. However, it doesn't seem to complain when [[Ogre Kingdoms|Ogres]] worship Khorne, so he's got nothing against him...her...it...schclim...whatever, the big god-thing that wants to eat.

The pantheon of the [[Tomb Kings]] mostly stick to themselves, so Khorne only knows they exist..

Khorne is impressed with the [[Bretonnia|Bretonnian]] race by the fact they're the epitome of honor and glorious valor. On the other hand, their entire race has been tricked by a single fucking Elf Goddess into doing their every command which fills Khorne with incomprehensible fury. As it stands, the first being that's going to get the axe when Khorne manages to get an avatar to manifest in the material plane is Lileath.

[[Mork]] and [[Gork]]/Gork and Mork are Khorne's old drinking buddies. They piss him off more than any other beings in existence, but after a good 3-way beatdown and a few billion cases of squig beer he realizes they're alright company.

Khorne has a feeling that he'd get along with the gods of the [[Dwarfs]], but even their introductions (being long ass winded descriptions of their primary worshipers and their lineages) irritate him so much he can't even get into a conversation with them. One of them is STILL giving his own introduction, and has been for about 20,000 years or so now (and he hasn't even reached the changes that have happened since he started). Unable to make him aware of what's going on around him, Khorne simply moved him into the guest room and bricked it off with a wall of skulls.

As for the [[Tyranid|Bugs?]], Khorne hates them '''''Especially''''' due to them not having real blood, just vile alien ichor.

==His portrayal in Warhammer Fantasy==
He's a half-way mythologically accurate version of [[Viking|Odin]], whose very name means Fury (and one translation means 'frenzy'). You could also make the case that Khorne is Thor minus any protective instincts towards humanity, as both are whirling vortices of blood and spit who are associated with the colour red and its connotation of anger.

No, that's it. Get the fuck out; he's an axe-crazy, psychopathic, evil-as-balls daemonic version of Odin - so basically the Norse god of wisdom, with wisdom actually treated the way Vikings would have recognized. Currently there's a bit of a debate about how much of Odin he represents (see discussion page) so this bit will list the similarities and some of the differences.

Well, for one thing, Chaos worshipers in Warhammer Fantasy actually are Vikings. Read about them [[Warriors of Chaos|here]]. Secondly, Khorne is closely associated with wolves in that setting (one of Odin's names literally translates to 'Battle Wolf'), and even has a wolf-like pet in Karanak, thus, fulfilling a role similar to Freki and Geri, or more closely, Garmr (having three heads, Karnak also parallels Cerberus from Greek Mythology). Also, it's revealed in Knight of the Realm that Khorne owns two hunting wolves/giant fleshhounds called Garmr and Gormr, with whom he partakes in a wild hunt across the heavens.

Another point of similarity is that both Odin and Khorne are war gods explicitly connected with berserker rage. They have their own warrior-cults associated with them who fight with said rage and Odin's Olfhednar are practically the same as Khorne's Chosen in both form and function.

Additionally, thanks to Valkia, Khorne also has a Valkyrie to further the similarity between him and Odin. This was inevitable, of course, given that the Warriors of Chaos are indeed an evil version of the Vikings as has already been stated. It should also be noted that Valkia's similarity to the Valkyries is not a superficial one. She is actually referred to as 'the Sword-Maiden of the Blood God' in the WoC codex, and is Khorne's Chooser of the Slain who carries those worthy champions and warriors of his to fight on in the Blood God's halls after death.

Finally, we got a glimpse of his neck of the Realm of Chaos in the Valkia novel written by Sarah Cock-well. It was basically Chaos Valhalla, and here's some of his quotes:

"A cleaved head no longer plots." "A head stuck on a pike no longer conspires." "Put to the sword they who disagree."

Now for the differences, aside from the obvious physical ones Odin also scries, it's woman's magic taught to him by Frigg and Freya. He's got the rage, yeah, but he's also all about fate and averting ragnarok, (directly opposed to Khorne's goals) even if he knows he can't stop it since fate works that way; in that regard Khorne is more like Surtr from Norse Mythology (the fiery giant who wages war and brings flames that would consume the Earth - the instigator of Ragnarok). We see this in the Havamal, Grimnismal, the Voluspa, and the Lokasenna. Hell, in Lokasenna, we learn he cross dresses, ie was tied into shamanic practices (Indo-Europeans have a thing for seers in drag). He can also get to Tzeentch levels with his planning and Odin's perfectly fine with Runic magic, whereas Khorne hates that shit.

==Champions Of Khorne==
===In 40K===

* [[Kharn the Betrayer]]: Embodiment of Crazy Awesome and Patron Saint of fun guys everywhere. Kharn is Khorne's greatest mortal champion in 40K and has a wholly deserved reputation as a team-killing nutso. Once upon a time, Kharn was a straight-laced, meticulous Assault Captain of the World Eaters 8th company. [[Horus Heresy|After a certain chain of events]] he dedicated himself wholly to Khorne, thus becoming one of the most fucking lethal warriors in the galaxy as well as probably the most religiously devoted of Khorne's servants. Also notable for shattering two entire Space Marine legions by himself with a flamethrower in a single night. Despite this, since his first appearance (where he was no different from other Berzerkers) he became more and more coolheaded when not in combat (and even then there are moments when he is coolheaded in combat). He's become a swell guy because of this.

* [[Angron]]: '''HE! GETS! SHIT! DONE!!!''''. Khorne's foremost Daemon Prince alongside Doombreed. PERIOD.

* [[Doombreed]]: Khorne's greatest Daemon Prince ever and possibly either Genghis Khan or Turgeis the Devil IRL (probably Genghis Khan, Turgeis the Devil's infamy mostly came from cowardly tactics - he attacked churches because non-combatants like clergymen and monks didn't put up the best fights and to steal all the holy relics and decoration made from precious metals). Notable for launching an actually successful Dark Crusade that wiped out two Space Marine chapters. Which is more than a [[Abaddon|certain armless failure has pulled off]].

* [[Svane Vulfbad]]: EVEN IN 40K KHORNE'S CHOSEN ARE VIKINGS. Svane Vulfbad was a motherfucking badass [[Awesome|Chaos Terminator Space Wolf Chaos Lord]] who grew tired of the Imperium's sickening effeminate inability to GET SHIT DONE and the Space Wolves' sickening fur-fetishes and instead decided to dedicated himself to a god worthy of his kickassery. He thus became a badass Chaos Lord dedicated to Khorne (because a berserker god of war who likes axes meshes well with Vikings) and was killed, anticlimactically, by a thunderbolt while fighting Harald Deathwolf.

* [[Crull]]: A Chaos Lord from Winter Assault notable only for making idiotic statements, and utilizing Sorcerers in his warband when there's some possessing to be done. Also has a weird way of saying "drown".

* [[Azariah Kyras]]: A Librarian who somehow became a Champion of Khorne and who ascended to daemonhood. Presumably, his [[Awesome|speaking skills were great enough that the Blood God was able to give him slight leeway in regards to the 'no Psyker rule']], likely because he was a philosopher of carrion and slaughter, showing Khorne's way as freedom, freedom in meaningless, in mindlessness, which he accuses the functionings of the universe of. Khorne loves that stuff, existentialism for skulls, especially when it's an arch-traitor responsible for the deaths of billions, then declaring openly his allegience of Chaos to his fellow Mehreens as he is about to ascend as one of the most powerful daemon princes ever. A psyker who uses psykic powers to bring about good old kinetic Exterminatus, their reputation to raise covert cults of slaughter, discover their lust for combat and seek to encompass it, and ultimatedly be the poster child of Khornist Existentialism is too good of a chance for Khorne to pass up, who either wins against the galaxy or gets to devour Kyras' soul in a good long bloodbashing and probably still make a good Greater Daemon of Khorne out of him, probably the one and only Chaos tactical genius who could actually lead a Black Crusade properly. That's another reason Khorne likes him. Kyras' no funny business style of simply tearing a sector apart however possible tends to draw other Chaos God devotees under the wing of a Khornate champion. Here is the speech of doom that he gives the player's army (before the last level of the game ) or per canon, the Blood Ravens following Captain Diomedes before the climax:

"Faithful... enlightened... ambitious... brethren.

In but a single decade, a few mere swipes of the pendulum, we have gathered a sacrifice to Khorne that will be made legend.Though it was a simpler, weaker voice that illuminated me during my centuries upon the Judgement of Carrion... it was Khorne's messenger that showed me the true path of freedom from our pathetic corpse-Emperor.

And what is this path? This meaning, this purpose to which we gather the skulls of our foes? It is nothing. There is no meaning, no purpose. We murder. We kill. It is mindless savagery, this UNIVERSE IS MINDLESS!

In mere hours, billions will die. Innocent! Guilty! Strong and weak! Honest and deceitful! ALL of them! They will scream, they will burn, and for no purpose but that mighty Khorne may revel in their bloodshed! And united in this void of purpose, fear, or duty... we shall at long last be free!

BLOOD! FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!! SKULLS! FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!! LET... THE GALAXY... BUUUURRRRNNN!!!"

Also notable as the single longest-to-fucking-kill-boss in the history of the Dawn of War series other than [[Ulkair]]. (Not that we haven't found ways to cheese him in under five minutes, namely Tyranids spamming warriors with venom upgrades alongside Hive Lord with his anti-daemon gun) Still, pure undiluted awesome.

===In Fantasy===
'''VIKINGS!!!''' '''VIIIIIIIIIIIIKIIIIIIIIIIIIINNGSSSSSSSS!!!'''

* [[Valkia the Bloody]]: A pissed off badass Valkyrie who chooses who will fight on in the Halls of the Blood God after they die in glorious battle. She managed to kill a motherfucking DAEMON PRINCE as a lowly, un-Marked, un-augmented human in SINGLE COMBAT to earn Khorne's favour, CUT ITS FUCKING HEAD OFF, AND THEN CARRIED IT BACK TO THE NORTH TO PLACE AT THE FOOT OF THE SKULL THRONE. And then she died on the way. But Khorne was so impressed by this badassery/pissed off by her death, he resurrected her as a fucking Daemon Princess. Now she flies around the battlefields of the world slaughtering anything that looks at her funny and bearing Norsemen to the Khorne's place for a glorious afterlife of fighting and drinking. She is also far more attractive than anything of Slaanesh's menagerie, much to the Prince of Pleasure's eternal rage and the Bloodfather's great amusement, primarily due to having hair.

* Garmr Hrodvitnir aka Billy Squigins: A Chaos Lord of Khorne who managed to almost kill Gotrek Fucking Gurnisson in a fight. 'Nuff said.

* Hrothgar Daemonaxe: A Chaos Lord who only had his rules and miniatures released at a Games Day. He had the statline of a Bloodthirster. His miniature also depicts him throttling an elf, which makes him a good person.

* Arbaal the Undefeated: Nicknamed 'Arbaal the Easily Defeatable' due to his rules from Champions of Chaos having been shockingly awful. Arbaal's been effectively retcon'd out of existence under the excuse that he's journeyed into the Realm of Chaos to challenge Khorne himself to a fight. <s>Good luck with that.</s> It went about as well as you expected.

* [[Scyla Anfingrimm]]: The greatest [[Chaos Spawn|You-Know-What]] ever to walk the earth. Scyla was a Chaos Lord of Khorne who got one too many mutations before his time and devolved into a YKW. But he's the most badass YKW ever, and is a leadership 10 general. Which is impressive considering the only thing he can say is "'''KILL FOR KHORNE! KILL FOR KHORNE! KILL FOR KHORNE!'''".

* Chaos Lord Varmisgal: A Chaos Lord whose blood has turned to liquid bronze. He is responsible for the stalking brass bull of Nuln and the great raid into the Misty Mountains... it is also alleged he ate his own penis.

* Valmir Aesling: A Norscan king and Champion of Khorne who destroyed the Norse Dwarf Hold of Kraka Drak. Managed to get a fucking Daemon Prince to work for him, slaughtered a metric fuck-ton of Norse Dwarfs (roughly 8 times the manliness of a regular Dwarf and thus worth 24 Space Wolves). [[Awesome|Also rode a motherfucking chariot pulled by skinless bears]].

* Egil Styrbjorn: A Norscan High Yarl of the Skaeligs and probably the greatest epitome of manliness a Chaos Warrior devoted to Khorne can achieve. He slew a lot and took names, kicked Bretonnian arses, sexed many women(all which said was impotent and didnt really find pleasure in, poor guy) yet never got a proper heir (only daughters). It was so bad for him that he adopted a boy that became later his personal shamanistic seer and advisor...that is until he banged a Kurgan Sorceress that was prophesied by said shaman to bear Egil's son, yet the damned cheese eating surrender monkeys took her and his unborn son away, which he answered them with apocalyptic RAAAAAGE and titanic slaughter (then again, said Sorceress wanted to sacrifice the unborn child for immortality, and she was actually possessing a Bretonnian noblewoman when doing deed with Egil so Egil's son was in that Bretonnian's womb and the Bretonnian Knights were rescuing her). And thus there was an epic campaign to retrieve the boy. Wields two badass flaming axes called Garmr and Gormr. Really dislikes the Lady of the Lake and other Southerner gods. So manly he is that he let a Grail Knight stab him only to throw back his sword to him. Also known for embodying Khorne's tactical take on war, which he mercilessly used against the Bretonnian Knights that stubbornly charged his warriors head on (until said knights realized that they were duped and slaughtered in seconds).

* [[Skarr Bloodwrath]]: Deranged respawning berserker with axes that double as flails. Joined [[Archaon]]'s posse during [[The End Times]] as one of the many Khornate forces that helped hasten the end of the world.

==Fun Khorne Facts==
* Interestingly the word "Khorne" in Ancient Cypriot Greek literally means to "Shit Blood". Kh' - "To force outward", ORN - "Back passage", Ee - "Blood".
*Doombreed, Khorne's second daemon prince servant, might actually be Genghis Khan himself.
*Khorne's looking for ways to incorporate dinosaurs into his armies, due to the sheer amount of [[RIP AND TEAR]] they can unleash on their enemies. He's unbelievably pissed that he hasn't managed to get any yet- '''{{Blam|YOU GAVE IT AWAY?!?!? FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU}}'''
*Khorne <strike>secretly</strike> ''{{Blam|BLATANTLY}}''' hates everyone who kills the defenseless in his name. He'd plot ways to kill them, but he's too mad to do that. (So what else is new?)
*Khorne was just able to stand watching Jurassic World once it got going due to the Indominus Rex and how it made everything else look like bitches. He raged when it died. He's looking for its skull 'cause he wishes he could have it as one of his servants- *sounds of swords and blood* '''{{Blam|FAGGOT!}}''' (Why couldn't Khorne just seek the skull of the Mosasaurus that killed it? Or Rexie, T-rex is classic, I hear you say.) To that, I answer that coz without the Mosasaurus then Rex would'a DIED.
*Khorne is unsure whether or not he hates [[Cultist-chan]], due to a) the fact that she can't do anything except scream about 'kap-tooring eet for kay-oss' and get purged and b) the fact that she's so good at spreading [[RAEG]] amongst various unlucky meatsacks and fa/tg/uys. And that indecisiveness makes him foam at the mouth in an unending rage.
*Khorne practically invented flipping the table when you lose at card games, or it goes too slowly. He does this whenever the major Warp entities play cards in the Formless Wastes.
*Followers of Khorne actually have the ability to pull off [[LIIVI]]/[[Eldrad]] level dick-style moves in battle. They just choose not to do this.
*Khorne wanted [[Settra the Imperishable]] as one of his servants once. However, Settra won't ever serve Khorne, even going so far as to give ALL OF CHAOS the '''motherfucking middle finger''' before going off to hunt down [[Nagash]]. That said, Settra may well be one of the few mortal beings besides his own servants Khorne has any respect for. He still hates Settra though.
*Slaanesh once created some Kayos Spess Mehreens with his/her colour scheme, but with armour nicked off fallen Khornate warriors. And when Khorne saw this, '''his wrath was legendary'''.
*Slaanesh and Khorne also have regular 'plans' on Friday night- *sounds of something even bigger than a [[Bloodthirster]] coming through and much ripping and tearing* '''{{Blam|NO! YOU'RE LYING!}}'''
* [[Emperor|That Twat With The Chair]] and Khorne haven't '''SMACKED DOWN''' yet, but Khorne is secretly looking forward to it when it happens- he wants to test Spess Jaysis's might against his own. Tickets are now on sale!
*If an internet hyperlink comes up red, it's not because the page doesn't exist, it's because Khorne looked at what was once on the other end, and '''he didn't like what he saw''', so much so that the hyperlink is stained with the blood of what once was.
* Khorne's favorite form of grouping is in ogdoads, for reasons that should be obvious once you know what that word means.
* Khorne's favorite [[video game|vidja]] was [[Doom]]. he abandoned it in a strange combination of terror and appreciation once he learned it was Biographical/Autobiographical.
* If Khorne is acting calm towards you, don't relax. He doesn't like anything, he just hates some things less than others. There is such a thing as cold-hatred.
* Khorne was '''ALMOST''' pleased when [[Iskandar Khayon]] smashed his ship, the ''Tlaloc'', into the Slaaneshi world of Harmony, killing a whole shitload of Slaaneshi fucks and breaking the planet in half. Then he remembered Khayon was a damn Thousand Son Sorcerer. Fuck.
*[[TTS|Khorne will not stab you in the back. He will simply stab you in the face until your face stops resembling a face.]]
*Very few beings have ever earned Khorne's respect. but the most notable is the '''MOTHERFUCKING DOOMGUY!!!''' (another is Valen the ancestor of [[Kharn]]).
*DOOM 2016 <s>tells of a "Wretch" who made the Doom Slayer an adamantine Amour from the deepest parts of the forges of Hell. And since Khorne CAN craft absolute destructive Weapons and impenetrable Armour...</s> (he did not make the armor for him but he approves of him using it.)
*Khorne is mixed on snipers. Partly because they sneak and hide like pussies and don't get into a proper fight, and partly because headshots ruin perfectly good skulls. However, sniping is the most skillfull form of shooting. It’s also Slaaneshi.
*Khorne's favorite author is Sun Tzu. Three guesses why if you know what he's written.
*Khorne is the patron god of Chimpanzees (no seriously, look them up; those bastards are the fucking marauding barbarians of the jungle, especially since their cousins the Bonobos seem like milktoast Slaanesh followers).
*Thanks to his relationship with Valkia the Bloody, Khorne may or may not be married to the devoted blood and gore addicted maiden of war.
*Despite his association with canines, Khorne also has a pet rabbit, which he [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmu5sRIizdw loaned out to appear in a certain comedy film].
*Khorne is also the god of tsunderes, no, seriously, as stated in a previous section, which is even further added by many tsunderes being red themed, this makes Khorne RAAAAEEEG! even more as his followers are supposed to be manly armored guys and not teen girls in school uniform, but hey, that's the internet for you!

==Gallery==
{{promotions}}
<gallery>
Klaher-baklaher-khorn.jpg|The [[Doom|Throne Guy]] himself. Likely an inaccurate portrayal but still badass.
Image:Khornate.JPG|Khorne's followers off the battlefield. REVERSE ARMWRESTLE!!!
Image:khornewaffel.JPG|Waffles for the Blood God!
Image:Khornetrainer.JPG|Khorne's trainers prefer violent Pokémon.
Image:Khorne_tattoo.jpg|Mark of Khorne.
Image:Free like a riding demon by Ragathol.jpg|Khornette.
Image:Backwardsthrone.jpg|Just as Planned. Always. As. Planned.
File:Khornette.jpg|Khorne wants to know why the drawfags never give them noses.
File:Tea Time.jpg|In the grim darkness of the far future, there is still time for tea...
File:Khorne-Art.jpg|Warriors of Chaos: making everything in 40K look like bitches since 2002.
Image:You're_madder_than_Khorne.png|There '''is''' such a thing as being too mad for Khorne!
Image:Khorneholiover2.png |The [[Cornholio the Cultist|Great Khorneholio]]. He needs blood and skulls for his bunghole.
Image:Anon_pleases_Khorne.png|Who knew Berzerkers came in ''Shrimp'' size?
Image:Khorne Flakes.jpg|The tastiest of all! Add blood for more flavor.
Image:Khorne_flakes.jpg|Literal <s>corn</s> Khorne Flake Cake! Some absolute madlad/madlass actually did it!
Image:Khorny Meme.jpg|Whoever made this has too much time on their hands. And access to imgflip.
</gallery>

==See also==

*[[Brass]]
*[[Berserker]] - Chaos Space Marines with Axes and a bad attitude.
*[[Angron]] - Daemon prince of Khorne and the Primarch of World Eaters.
*[[World Eaters]]
*[[Khârn|Khârn the Betrayer]] - A pretty fun guy to be around.
*[[Valkia the Bloody]] - Scarousal in it's purest form.
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Khorne_Daemonkin(7E)|Tactics/Khorne Daemonkin]] - That's right, meatsacks! The servants of Khorne have their own codex!
*[[Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Chaos/Blades of Khorne|Tactics/Blades of Khorne]] - Khorne's servants in AoS.
*[[Rage]]
*[[Sorcerers of Khorne]] - Double heresy!
*[[Doombreed]] - One angry son of a bitch.
*[[Doom|the one guy Khorne respects]]
* This pretty much sums up his forces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gSJW3sHXE&feature=channel_video_title
*[[Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20#Khorne_is_underpowered_in_40k|Khorne is underpowered in 40k]]
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vljHBXA3UKE - death metal song devoted to Khorne.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml3sjEiViXc - better death metal song.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8mEOiI4pjs - thrash metal song summing up Khorne pretty well.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edNUp4GkukI - can't forget the blackened thrash.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUB9QGKCNmI - a bunch of anime Khorne worshippers. Better than it sounds.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8mEOiI4pjs - another metal song devoted to Khorne. GW actually commissioned this one. Yes, they really were that awesome back in the day.

{{Template:ChaosGods}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Age of Sigmar]][[Category:Blades of Khorne]]

Khorne

2021-12-07T12:29:05Z

195.194.119.220: /* Gallery */

[[File:Khorne mark.png|center]]
{{heresy}}
{{awesome}}
[[File:khorne_by_baklaher-d7335e6.jpg|500px|thumb|right|Special K in all his glory, Sitting comfortably on his Skull Throne, being pissed off at everyone and everything, because to him it's all bullshit]]<div style="font-size:1.10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em"> BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE! - The creed of Khorne being Overused to Death'''</div>

{{Topquote|Anger, which, far sweeter than trickling drops of honey, rises in the bosom of a man like smoke.|Homer}}

{{Topquote|The important thing in life is not victory but combat: it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.|Pierre de Coubertin}}

{{Topquote|[[Chaos Gods|They]]'re none of them good, but Khorne's the worst. Battle without honour and oath shouldn't be encouraged.|[[vermintide 2|Bardin Goreksson]]}}

==Introduction==
[[RAGE|'''Khorne''']], also known as Kharnath, Arkhar, Khorgar, [[Viking|Kjorn]], Khar, the Great Brass Bull, the Bloody Handed, the Axefather, the Bloodwolf, The Great Khorneholio, Special K, the [[Ulric|Wolf-Father]], Frowny Face McMurderaxe, Sergeant Slaughter, the Lord of Fighters, the Messiah of Mayhem, Call of Duty: Demon DLC, [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|The Paraplegic Sociopath]], [[If_the_Emperor_had_a_Text-to-Speech_Device|MegaSatan]], Definitely not fucking Khaine, [[Dwarf Fortress|Armok]], Stone Cold Steve Austin, Khornelias Fudge, Kellogg's Khorneflakes, Big Red, Chile Con Khornage, Daddy’s little princess (HEY, FUCK YOU!) and 8860 other names is the [[Chaos God]] of war, murder, savagery, hatred (though he is starting to question that one at times thinking it belongs more to [[Slaanesh|his arch enemy]] than it does him), murder, destruction, rage, wrath, murder, battle, barbarism and [[Vance Motherfucking Stubbs|manliness]]...oh and did we mention murder. He is also the mofo that the Klingons worship. As well as this he symbolises courage, athleticism, determination, daring, discipline, sportsmanship, honor, impulsiveness, struggling onward in the face of any odds, and survival of the fittest. But mostly he's simply about being angry.

He is commonly held to be the strongest [[Chaos]] God by default (though this is technically incorrect) and is associated with wolves and powerful hunting dogs, as well as lions and bulls. For another reason that is likely inspired by occultism, Khorne's sacred numbers Four and eight - and thus, his followers tend to organize themselves into groups of fours, eights and their multiples. Fun fact, this also means that the names of Khornate daemons are usually comprised of eight letters...Though exceptions exist. (The Chinese, Vietnamese, and Koreans value the number 8 due to its similarity with the Chinese character for prosperity does that make them Khornate worshippers?)
[[File:SkullThrone.jpg|400px|right|thumb|The Big K in all his glory contemplating on whose rectum he is going to shove his chainaxe into with extreme prejudice.(Spoiler: its everyone)]]
Khorne, by virtue of being the most prominent Chaos God, is also the second most powerful general "deity" in both iterations of Warhammer (Nurgle has him beat but only because of the fact that everything eventually comes to him) In both versions of Warhammer, his followers are characterized by an overbearing need to spill blood and engage in honest battle, as well as a violent code of martial honour and a "survival of the fittest" approach to morality. They tend to be dutiful, as well, but said duties involve whacking their axes into their enemy and painting their blood all over villages gargling their blood as mouthwash (if only because Khorne's only real command is to spill worthy blood in his name).

This is where Khorne and Slaanesh generally clash directly and openly as enemy gods, aside from the fact that everyone in the warp hates Slaanesh. While Khorne instills discipline, honor and a sense of selfless duty in his followers to obey a single purpose (usually spill blood in his name), Slaanesh is the polar opposite. Slaanesh instead tells his/her followers to do <strike>whoever</strike> whatever they want in their own selfish pursuit of pleasure, caring not for the consequences of their actions (e.g; using your authority to hoard food from your starving citizens, so you can indulge in bottomless gluttony every day).

This is also why Khorne is at odds with Tzeentch: Tzeentch sees things like honor and discipline as unnecessary hamstrings towards one's advancement and opts that everything is on the table when one wishes to further their position (why duel your Lord for his position when you could arrange for an "accident" to befall him, instead? Sure its a low-blow, but if your lord was too stupid to see that car bomb coming, was he really deserving of loyalty?). The same can be said of his disdain for sorcery. Tzeentch thinks that mortals using the power of the gods themselves is fair game in their pursuit of progress (so long as you can control it), while Khorne thinks that using anything else but your own strength alone means you are weak and his "survival of the fittest" ideal has no place for you.
That being said they have some points they agree on. for example using the power of the gods to augment your abilities (i.e. Cloaking your weapons in Warp-fire or Warp-Lightning), can be interpreted as simply using your power to control the power of the gods for your benefit. They also think it looks awesome, And Khorne is perfectly fine with using underhanded methods to deal with someone who is not worth your time (i.e. A “governor” of Jopall), which Tzeentch finds interesting.

Khorne also has the distinction of being the only Chaos God (or any god for that matter) whose word you can take at face value. The other gods don't realize that disdain for scheming and backstabbing isn't the same as being stupid. Nor do they realize that over-complicating things is actually the worst thing a planner can do. The more unnecessary variables to a plan, the easier it is for something to break. ([[Just as Planned|that said Tzeentchian plans have divination included into them, eliminating most tactical miscalculations]], [[Not as Planned|unless Tzeentch wanted it to happen.]]). So - you actually want results? Be practical. Involve only as many steps as you need. Beat someone until they're reduced to a bloody smear on the ground - no step 2 required.

Basically, Khorne isn't a stupid brute, he's actually pretty smart. The god of battles knows a thing or two about tactics and warfare. That said, Khorne's doctrine is inflexible. One, straightforward approach to anything. Simply put: Break everything in half. Which means that it all rides on an "all-or-nothing" deal. If his battering ram approach doesn't work there's little to be done to salvage the situation beyond everyone dying a glorious death. Usually this isn't the case for most battles, the Khornates' overwhelming need to quench their bloodlust gets in the way of reorganization. Of course, if things go according to plan, there are only few things that can stop the demonically-possessed no brakes hate train.

If Khorne had a voice actor it would have been BRIAN BLESSED but BRIAN chose Gotrek instead, the rejection sending Khorne's rage to new heights (unsubstantiated rumors say Khorne's considered sending Skulltaker and Karnak after BRIAN BLESSED, but Khorne realized all he'll get from that is two dead daemons with burst eardrums).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8ZqFlw6hYg Here is his theme song.]
===Appearance===
Khorne is described as resembling a giant, iron-hewed warrior clad in red armour, with a massive sword and a winged helm that conceals a snarling face like that of a wolf. This humanoid form could be seen as something darkly meaningful, were it not for the fact that more or less everyone in both settings is conveniently human-shaped.
[[File:Khorne First.jpg|thumb|right|400px|The first depiction of Khorne in Warhammer art.]]
Of course, most artists at GW forget that he's supposed to look a giant Chaos Warrior and instead make him look like an overgrown Bloodthirster on a chair.

===Khorne and His Worship===
Khorne is the easiest god ever to worship. Where [[Tzeentch|other]], [[Slaanesh|more]] [[Nurgle|pussified]] gods may demand you to memorize overly long prayers and hymns, or to build huge houses of worship and other such unmanly bullshit, Khorne is venerated with one thing and one thing only: the time-honoured tradition of [[rip and tear|hack'n'slash]].

Khorne is worshipped on the battlefield. His hymns are the sound of steel on steel, his sacraments are the blows of hammer and axe, his only prayer the bellowing of the warcry "Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!" and his libation is the blood spilled in his name.

In essence, you worship Khorne by being a good warrior. And as a warrior, you'll find your interests and his tend to generally align; he wants death but isn't picky on who, and you want to live to fight another day. Thus, the mere act of preserving your life will earn the pleasure of the god of battle. In a setting where there is no peace, only war, Khorne is always going to be massively powerful. Further, most of the armies embody one of his aspects - [[Space Marine|Powerful]] and [[Necron|fearless]] warriors are the [[Chaos|chosen]] of Khorne, but he favors those who use [[Ork|brute force assaults]] carried out with [[Tyranid|singular purpose and no remorse]] just as well. [[Just As Planned|Khorne wins in fights his forces weren't even involved in]].

However, Khorne is one of those honourable war-gods. So don't think that beating your enemies by anything other than sheer strength, skill and aggression will make him happy. And for the love of Sigmar/Emprah, don't try to cheat by picking fights with the weak or helpless or by giving him baby skulls. Khorne expects a form of savage, viking-esque dignity from his followers and for them to be generally [[Fist of the North Star|manly]], this means you have to fight worthy opponents and those generally able to at least hold up a sword. ''Only after'' the worthwhile enemies are out of the way; then you can gorge yourself on the blood of women and children all you want (or make them fight amongst themselves and recruit the survivors, or enslave them, or whatever). Most of the writers forget this, thinking that Khorne really gives no fucks about what you kill, and it makes Khorne [[Rage|snarl in anger]]. Though he continues to send his flesh-hounds to hunt down those who flee and abandon their brothers on the battlefield, be they Chaos or non-Chaos.

Aside from that and (obviously) never backing down from a fight, Khorne has no commandments whatsoever. But deviating from the aforementioned in the slightest is begging for the flesh-hounds to tear your ass apart.

Such as it is, it would be incorrect to think Khorne doesn't have priests dedicated to him. Though, being a warrior god, these priests tend to be warriors themselves and are often marked by their god. In essence, the only difference between them and a Chaos marauder/Space Marine is several pounds of armour. In Warhammer Fantasy, these priests are called 'Bloodfathers', and in lieu of magic that is gifted to their priests by other gods, Khorne just gives [[AWESOME|HOLYSHITAWESOME]] fighting skills and visions of bloodshed. In [[Age of Sigmar]], they're called Slaughterpriests and they basically lead by example, killing while screaming out Khorne's name. If the killing is good enough, Khorne will empower the priest and/or his allies; but if the killing is unworthy, the priest himself will feel Khorne's wrath.

Khorne is also venerated by working brass into your armour and weapons and donning fashionable high collars. Occasionally, a warrior so pleases Khorne that he gifts him with specially made ones that in addition to looking fabulous can also grant total fucking immunity to magic. After all, who needs spellcasting when you can make a motherfucker's spine disappear - with your bare hands no less?

Anyway, Khorne is worshiped by warriors, generals and basically anyone who likes battle. His chosen Space Marines legion is of course the World Eaters, in Warhammer Fantasy, the Norscans tend to venerate him with the greatest piety, especially the Aesling tribe, who are Khorne's most devoted servants in Fantasy.

===Khorne's take on magic===
As posted some time ago by an Anon who managed to perfectly sum up what Khorne's opinion on magic is: FUCK WIZARDS!!!!

While that's a pretty accurate summation, there's also some nuance to it that is not at all helped by GW's habit of changing things every new edition or keeping shit consistent between writers. With that in mind, let's get into the details of what the "FUCK WIZARDS" thing means.

The hate of psykers/wizards/etc is pretty much the exact same and works by the same logic for both Khornates and the Adepta Sororitas/Black Templars/etc: it's a [[Conan the Barbarian|Conan-esque]] swords and sorcery thing. Khornates hate wizards for [[3e|trivializing encounters with a single spell and overshadowing fighters]] and turning what should be a clash of might or a military endeavor into a weird wizard show where people turn into frogs and beguile their opponents into killing one another. They hate Slaaneshi for the same reason, due to how they often take what should be a wholesome murderfest and make it into something creepy and weird, what with them "discomporting themselves with the dead" and all that. In Realms of Chaos, its entirely possible for a librarian or wizard to go to Khorne; they just refrain from using their psi/magic powers for anything else but resisting spells in combat from that point onward.

Khorne and his followers are okay with laser beams. They are okay with sniper rifles ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHaGY85e-U| as long both you and your opponent have them]). They are okay with flaming swords. They are okay with running people over with tanks. They are okay with blitzkriegs. They are okay with chemical gas. <s>They are okay with holocausts</s> we do '''not''' target civilians, or discriminate...that often. They are okay with exterminatus. They are okay with good tactics. They are okay with berserker charges. They are okay with honorable duels at dawn.

They are ''not'' okay with turning people to frogs, mind control, raining glitterdust from the skies to blind everyone, raising armies of zombies to do the killing for you, and so forth. They are not okay with someone pointing a finger and their opponent dropping dead (but if you point a finger and they explode in a messy cloud tho then that's cool). And they are most definitely not okay with someone who got their power solely by bargaining with daemons instead of earning it themselves. (While it's quite possible to get power via daemonic bargains and not earn Khorne's ire, that requires you to have already become a powerful fighter or be willing to risk death and inflict grievous bodily harm on others, i.e. ''earning'' it.)

They are okay with daemonic summoning rituals because Khorne's daemons are all about the hack-and-slash ultraviolence. They are okay with using psychic abilities or daemonic aid to navigate the warp because that means they don't end up crashing into suns or getting whisked to some distant corner of the universe where there's nothing worthwhile to kill. They are okay with sending and receiving astropathic messages because they recognize the value of relatively fast interstellar communication. They are okay with chaining wizards up and forcing them to eternally forge magic items on pain of death because that lets the fighters kill things more easily.

One may consider it hypocritical that Khornates are okay with blatantly unfair TECHNOLOGICAL murder, but not okay with blatantly unfair MIND/MAGICAL murder. The point, or at least one interpretation, is that wizards/psykers fucking cheat. They do. They steal the power of the Warp for their own ends. As long as they stay in line, and do nothing but permit the warrior to enact his craft as he so wills, fine, let them live (albeit in terror and likely enslaved by chains of brass) until the day they are no longer useful, at which point their skulls can join Khorne's throne.

But stealing the Gods' own fire and using it to do what mortals should do through their own skill and strength is unacceptable. Remember that technology is completely valid to Khorne. Stealth is completely valid to Khorne. Skill is completely valid to Khorne. Cleverness is completely valid to Khorne. The nuclear bomb and other innovations that come after it could be seen to be unfair. But it is a mortal invention. Mortals should give honor to Khorne by murdering each other through the sweat of their brow. Granted the lines got pretty blurry when AoS introduced the Slaughterpriest.

The scientist who devises new ways to kill is a saint. His work can be put to any other use -- [[Slaanesh|enriching human life]], [[Nurgle|ending hunger, fighting diseases]], [[Tzeentch|answering great questions]]. But the scientist who devises new bombs and weapons is, in his own way, a champion of Khorne. He takes his limitless human potential and nobly limits himself to new ways to kill. Whether you kill with a sword or a bomb, you are killing using good old fashioned mortal strength and genius. You aren't stealing warp energy from the gods in the form of a fireball and cravenly calling it your own.

The forger of enchanted weapons,is an exception and an ideal symbol. It is fitting that spell energy is subjugated to and entombed within cold steel, just as cowards deserve to be subjugated to warriors until they lie cold and headless in the ground or else burnt to ash. The magic weapon is a symbol of might's superiority to magic, or in the case of actual daemon princes the unity of both.

The jury is still out on how okay Khorne is with magically imbued people who didn't get their power from him, but [[Tzeentch|given]] [[Nurgle|the]] [[Slaanesh|other]] [[God-Emperor_of_Mankind|possible]] [[Sigmar|benefactors]], he's probably not the biggest fan.

Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! When the Galaxy burns, we will define righteousness!

tl;dr Magic is unmanly, grab a sword (or a 16-inch battleship cannon, if that's your thing) and go kill like a real man already.

===Khorne and other Chaos gods===
As a rule, Khorne despises [[Slaanesh]] because they're an effeminate milk-sop who can't grow a beard or swing an axe like they've got a pair (even though Slaanesh probably has the biggest pair, but less on that), and also because he personifies acting outwardly (ie: seeking the deaths of others), while Slaanesh acts inwardly (ie: seeking their own pleasure). Khorne also finds Slaanesh's obsession with luxury and torture wasteful and dishonorable. Slaanesh is about living it up while Khorne is about tearing it the fuck down. Not to mention its apparent belief that those who wrong you are meant to suffer for it, which Khorne surprisingly doesn't agree with. One of the few Slaaneshi things Khorne ''doesn't'' have a problem with is the desire for perfection in battle; spending year after year training to master an aspect of combat, constantly pushing your limits and never being satisfied until you get it ''just right'' is a perfectly acceptable way to live, so long as you remember to shed blood and take skulls.

Khorne also hates [[Tzeentch]] - though they are not fundamental rivals - because his reliance on magic is seen as a sign of weakness and his desire not to face his foes in person is decried by Khorne as cowardly. Khorne sees his penchant for deceit and trickery as dishonorable. Also, Khorne prefers muscles over books (plus Tzeentch is a huge NEEEEEEEEEEEEEERD). Tactics and stratagems are all well and good because that's how armies win and seemingly-doomed warriors eke out a victory against seemingly-impossible odds.

Khorne thinks he hates [[Nurgle]] also, because while the ability to endure immense pain is good - great, even! - and calmly acknowledging defeat is just as acceptable as trying to kill your opponent with the last dregs of strength your dying body has left, the fat fuck doesn't even try to get shit done. Thus, his embodiment as sloth runs contrary to the active, vital aspect of Khorne, but he's all for death if its by homicide or genocide.

There's also [[Solkan]], the not-Chaos Chaos God of Law and a rival of Khorne, being the only Chaos god that can match him in sheer RAAAAEG. Khorne likes to sit back and have a chuckle at Solkan's outbursts, if only because the last time he actually tried to move in on Solkan's turf he lost that fight. Not even the Blood God can top the sexually frustrated wrath of a guy looking for his [[Arianka|sisterwife]].

Of all the Chaos gods, Khorne actually hates [[Malal]] the least. For one thing, he respects the lost god for sticking to his guns: he hates the other gods, wants them dead and is actively working towards that goal. Since Nurgle just sits there being a scabby procrastinator, Tzeentch just has to have his fingers in everyone's business and Slaanesh is fucking Slaanesh (really, they are), this is something Khorne can sympathize with. Also, Malal is one of the only chaos gods to put up a halfway decent fight when Khorne manages to find him, which would mean that they would be best buds if Malal wasn't a self-destructive, omnicidal lunatic.

In short, he has problems with almost everyone and pissed at almost everyone, including you even if you worship him (usually it's a matter of how pissed he is at you). And they hate him too, except for Nurgle, who's too nice to hate anyone. If you earn his respect however, he will give you it (he has high standards though, meeting them is quite hard.)

===Khorne and non-Chaotic Gods===
Well, [[Ulric]] is his little brother and they tend to get along rather well. Ulric's still ridiculing Khorne over the fact that one of his greatest champions, Haargroth, got his head smashed in by Ulric's Ar-Ulric, Khorne usually replies by pointing out that ''Storm of Chaos'' isn't canon anymore. Not that that stops Ulric. Khorne and Ulric often get into arguments over which one of them is moar Viking; with Khorne usually winning by pointing out that his top worshipers actually are Vikings and that he has a Valkyrie. They also settle this with arm wrestling and drinking contests. There's a lot of belligerence, but you can sense the brotherly love underneath. Indeed, it's kind of a [[Fist of the North Star|Raoh/Ken relationship]].

Despite both being war-gods, Khorne has a poor relationship with [[Myrmidia]]. Khorne, despite being a master of tactics and sieges and the finer points of warfare, vastly prefers a manly head-on charge, and Myrmidia's sissy "planning" approach to warfare therefore offends Khorne. Most meetings between the Blood God and the Maiden of Strategy end with the Blood God fuming impotently because his strict code of martial honour does not permit him to hit girls (or pull their hair) and retreating to his tree house.

Khorne is the only Chaos God who tolerates Sigmar because he thinks he's pretty bad-ass AND respects the idea of a mortal man becoming a god. That and Sigmar's comic book series, Sigmar the Emprahrian, has great splashpages of fights and no SWORDSWORDSWORDS. However, this tolerance is only one-sided, and while Khorne respects him, it doesn't mean he won't try to put an axe in his head for being an sworn enemy of Chaos.

When asked about the [[Emperor]], Khorne usually responds with a streaming torrent of bloody curses and oaths which causes a bloody froth to start leaking from his helmet. In short, he is remarkably indifferent to the old man. Ironically, they share many of the same beliefs: They both disliked psykers, they both have a kick ass thrones, and they both have units dedicated to close combat. Hell, even the Emprah's head is a skull. What's not to like...oh maybe the fact that he's a COMPLETE FUCKING HYPOCRITE!

Khorne is utterly sick and tired of anyone who dares associate him with [[Khaine|40Khaine]]. Before eviscerating anyone who makes that connection, he will often give a short PowerPoint presentation, explaining how Khaine is an honourless god of murder and sadism while he himself is a god of honourable and forthright battle and courage, and how sadism is contrary to his code (Khorne indeed used to be about honorable combat, but now he's just about mindless violence and hating everyone for either piss-poor reasons or for no reason at all. Goddammit, GW). Khorne then reiterates that Khaine's elfishness and love for scantily clad women is sickening and makes him more like Slaanesh and trashes the elf god in a brutal punching bag sorta way like the prince of pleasure... Of course, this is just a front on Khorne's part. Khaine's love of war combined with his elfness and that his most ardent worshippers are scantily-clad women proves Khaine to be the secret love-child of Khorne and Slaanesh (tsundere confir- *sounds of violent, painful evisceration* '''{{Blam|WHO DARES? IN MY OWN PAGE, OF ALL THINGS? FUCK YOUUUUUUUU}}''' '''''[[Slaanesh|Search your feelings you know it to be true]]. Actually, if you consider Ka'Bandha is tsundere for the Blood Angels and Angron was for Horus to the point during the Siege of Terra he made him feel ashamed for implying he didn't trust him AND the natural state of tsunderes is raging, insulting and violent, well...

That being said, Khaine does have a dual nature in Fantasy thanks to being worshiped by [[Dark Elves]] and paid respect to by [[High Elves]], where one side is indeed honorable and just wants to keep fighting and being badass which means Khorne can tolerate him approximately half the time. The fact that both are patrons of [[Blood Bowl]] teams is usually the common ground, with Khaine and Khorne crashing/trashing some other God's house to watch on game nights while downing can after can of Bloodweisers and shoveling Dwarf Rinds in their faces. Khaine periodically tries to invade the realm of Khorne whenever the Khornate team beats the Dark Elf team, with such meetings ending with Kaine being khorne punching bag and letting his servants brutally take their anger on the incapacitated god and his elven servants. When Khaine's team beats Khorne's, Khorne takes out his aggression by beating the fuck out of Slaanesh (no homo) while Dark Elves go on safari hunting [[Warriors of Chaos|Khorne's worshipers]].

Khorne has absolutely no patience for the [[Horned Rat]], who is a favorite of Nurgle and Tzeentch respectively. It's a weak vermin whose very existence pisses him off. As a result, Khorne is much more fond of [[Sotek]] who encourages killing the fuck out of [[Skaven]] whenever they appear, and is also a fan of blood sacrifice (the fact that Sotek wants hearts and cares nothing for skulls is reassuring since they don't intrude on each other's fetish); this fondness is entirely one-sided.

Like the other Chaos Gods, Khorne has no fucking clue what the Great Maw is. However, it doesn't seem to complain when [[Ogre Kingdoms|Ogres]] worship Khorne, so he's got nothing against him...her...it...schclim...whatever, the big god-thing that wants to eat.

The pantheon of the [[Tomb Kings]] mostly stick to themselves, so Khorne only knows they exist..

Khorne is impressed with the [[Bretonnia|Bretonnian]] race by the fact they're the epitome of honor and glorious valor. On the other hand, their entire race has been tricked by a single fucking Elf Goddess into doing their every command which fills Khorne with incomprehensible fury. As it stands, the first being that's going to get the axe when Khorne manages to get an avatar to manifest in the material plane is Lileath.

[[Mork]] and [[Gork]]/Gork and Mork are Khorne's old drinking buddies. They piss him off more than any other beings in existence, but after a good 3-way beatdown and a few billion cases of squig beer he realizes they're alright company.

Khorne has a feeling that he'd get along with the gods of the [[Dwarfs]], but even their introductions (being long ass winded descriptions of their primary worshipers and their lineages) irritate him so much he can't even get into a conversation with them. One of them is STILL giving his own introduction, and has been for about 20,000 years or so now (and he hasn't even reached the changes that have happened since he started). Unable to make him aware of what's going on around him, Khorne simply moved him into the guest room and bricked it off with a wall of skulls.

As for the [[Tyranid|Bugs?]], Khorne hates them '''''Especially''''' due to them not having real blood, just vile alien ichor.

==His portrayal in Warhammer Fantasy==
He's a half-way mythologically accurate version of [[Viking|Odin]], whose very name means Fury (and one translation means 'frenzy'). You could also make the case that Khorne is Thor minus any protective instincts towards humanity, as both are whirling vortices of blood and spit who are associated with the colour red and its connotation of anger.

No, that's it. Get the fuck out; he's an axe-crazy, psychopathic, evil-as-balls daemonic version of Odin - so basically the Norse god of wisdom, with wisdom actually treated the way Vikings would have recognized. Currently there's a bit of a debate about how much of Odin he represents (see discussion page) so this bit will list the similarities and some of the differences.

Well, for one thing, Chaos worshipers in Warhammer Fantasy actually are Vikings. Read about them [[Warriors of Chaos|here]]. Secondly, Khorne is closely associated with wolves in that setting (one of Odin's names literally translates to 'Battle Wolf'), and even has a wolf-like pet in Karanak, thus, fulfilling a role similar to Freki and Geri, or more closely, Garmr (having three heads, Karnak also parallels Cerberus from Greek Mythology). Also, it's revealed in Knight of the Realm that Khorne owns two hunting wolves/giant fleshhounds called Garmr and Gormr, with whom he partakes in a wild hunt across the heavens.

Another point of similarity is that both Odin and Khorne are war gods explicitly connected with berserker rage. They have their own warrior-cults associated with them who fight with said rage and Odin's Olfhednar are practically the same as Khorne's Chosen in both form and function.

Additionally, thanks to Valkia, Khorne also has a Valkyrie to further the similarity between him and Odin. This was inevitable, of course, given that the Warriors of Chaos are indeed an evil version of the Vikings as has already been stated. It should also be noted that Valkia's similarity to the Valkyries is not a superficial one. She is actually referred to as 'the Sword-Maiden of the Blood God' in the WoC codex, and is Khorne's Chooser of the Slain who carries those worthy champions and warriors of his to fight on in the Blood God's halls after death.

Finally, we got a glimpse of his neck of the Realm of Chaos in the Valkia novel written by Sarah Cock-well. It was basically Chaos Valhalla, and here's some of his quotes:

"A cleaved head no longer plots." "A head stuck on a pike no longer conspires." "Put to the sword they who disagree."

Now for the differences, aside from the obvious physical ones Odin also scries, it's woman's magic taught to him by Frigg and Freya. He's got the rage, yeah, but he's also all about fate and averting ragnarok, (directly opposed to Khorne's goals) even if he knows he can't stop it since fate works that way; in that regard Khorne is more like Surtr from Norse Mythology (the fiery giant who wages war and brings flames that would consume the Earth - the instigator of Ragnarok). We see this in the Havamal, Grimnismal, the Voluspa, and the Lokasenna. Hell, in Lokasenna, we learn he cross dresses, ie was tied into shamanic practices (Indo-Europeans have a thing for seers in drag). He can also get to Tzeentch levels with his planning and Odin's perfectly fine with Runic magic, whereas Khorne hates that shit.

==Champions Of Khorne==
===In 40K===

* [[Kharn the Betrayer]]: Embodiment of Crazy Awesome and Patron Saint of fun guys everywhere. Kharn is Khorne's greatest mortal champion in 40K and has a wholly deserved reputation as a team-killing nutso. Once upon a time, Kharn was a straight-laced, meticulous Assault Captain of the World Eaters 8th company. [[Horus Heresy|After a certain chain of events]] he dedicated himself wholly to Khorne, thus becoming one of the most fucking lethal warriors in the galaxy as well as probably the most religiously devoted of Khorne's servants. Also notable for shattering two entire Space Marine legions by himself with a flamethrower in a single night. Despite this, since his first appearance (where he was no different from other Berzerkers) he became more and more coolheaded when not in combat (and even then there are moments when he is coolheaded in combat). He's become a swell guy because of this.

* [[Angron]]: '''HE! GETS! SHIT! DONE!!!''''. Khorne's foremost Daemon Prince alongside Doombreed. PERIOD.

* [[Doombreed]]: Khorne's greatest Daemon Prince ever and possibly either Genghis Khan or Turgeis the Devil IRL (probably Genghis Khan, Turgeis the Devil's infamy mostly came from cowardly tactics - he attacked churches because non-combatants like clergymen and monks didn't put up the best fights and to steal all the holy relics and decoration made from precious metals). Notable for launching an actually successful Dark Crusade that wiped out two Space Marine chapters. Which is more than a [[Abaddon|certain armless failure has pulled off]].

* [[Svane Vulfbad]]: EVEN IN 40K KHORNE'S CHOSEN ARE VIKINGS. Svane Vulfbad was a motherfucking badass [[Awesome|Chaos Terminator Space Wolf Chaos Lord]] who grew tired of the Imperium's sickening effeminate inability to GET SHIT DONE and the Space Wolves' sickening fur-fetishes and instead decided to dedicated himself to a god worthy of his kickassery. He thus became a badass Chaos Lord dedicated to Khorne (because a berserker god of war who likes axes meshes well with Vikings) and was killed, anticlimactically, by a thunderbolt while fighting Harald Deathwolf.

* [[Crull]]: A Chaos Lord from Winter Assault notable only for making idiotic statements, and utilizing Sorcerers in his warband when there's some possessing to be done. Also has a weird way of saying "drown".

* [[Azariah Kyras]]: A Librarian who somehow became a Champion of Khorne and who ascended to daemonhood. Presumably, his [[Awesome|speaking skills were great enough that the Blood God was able to give him slight leeway in regards to the 'no Psyker rule']], likely because he was a philosopher of carrion and slaughter, showing Khorne's way as freedom, freedom in meaningless, in mindlessness, which he accuses the functionings of the universe of. Khorne loves that stuff, existentialism for skulls, especially when it's an arch-traitor responsible for the deaths of billions, then declaring openly his allegience of Chaos to his fellow Mehreens as he is about to ascend as one of the most powerful daemon princes ever. A psyker who uses psykic powers to bring about good old kinetic Exterminatus, their reputation to raise covert cults of slaughter, discover their lust for combat and seek to encompass it, and ultimatedly be the poster child of Khornist Existentialism is too good of a chance for Khorne to pass up, who either wins against the galaxy or gets to devour Kyras' soul in a good long bloodbashing and probably still make a good Greater Daemon of Khorne out of him, probably the one and only Chaos tactical genius who could actually lead a Black Crusade properly. That's another reason Khorne likes him. Kyras' no funny business style of simply tearing a sector apart however possible tends to draw other Chaos God devotees under the wing of a Khornate champion. Here is the speech of doom that he gives the player's army (before the last level of the game ) or per canon, the Blood Ravens following Captain Diomedes before the climax:

"Faithful... enlightened... ambitious... brethren.

In but a single decade, a few mere swipes of the pendulum, we have gathered a sacrifice to Khorne that will be made legend.Though it was a simpler, weaker voice that illuminated me during my centuries upon the Judgement of Carrion... it was Khorne's messenger that showed me the true path of freedom from our pathetic corpse-Emperor.

And what is this path? This meaning, this purpose to which we gather the skulls of our foes? It is nothing. There is no meaning, no purpose. We murder. We kill. It is mindless savagery, this UNIVERSE IS MINDLESS!

In mere hours, billions will die. Innocent! Guilty! Strong and weak! Honest and deceitful! ALL of them! They will scream, they will burn, and for no purpose but that mighty Khorne may revel in their bloodshed! And united in this void of purpose, fear, or duty... we shall at long last be free!

BLOOD! FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!! SKULLS! FOR THE SKULL THRONE!!! LET... THE GALAXY... BUUUURRRRNNN!!!"

Also notable as the single longest-to-fucking-kill-boss in the history of the Dawn of War series other than [[Ulkair]]. (Not that we haven't found ways to cheese him in under five minutes, namely Tyranids spamming warriors with venom upgrades alongside Hive Lord with his anti-daemon gun) Still, pure undiluted awesome.

===In Fantasy===
'''VIKINGS!!!''' '''VIIIIIIIIIIIIKIIIIIIIIIIIIINNGSSSSSSSS!!!'''

* [[Valkia the Bloody]]: A pissed off badass Valkyrie who chooses who will fight on in the Halls of the Blood God after they die in glorious battle. She managed to kill a motherfucking DAEMON PRINCE as a lowly, un-Marked, un-augmented human in SINGLE COMBAT to earn Khorne's favour, CUT ITS FUCKING HEAD OFF, AND THEN CARRIED IT BACK TO THE NORTH TO PLACE AT THE FOOT OF THE SKULL THRONE. And then she died on the way. But Khorne was so impressed by this badassery/pissed off by her death, he resurrected her as a fucking Daemon Princess. Now she flies around the battlefields of the world slaughtering anything that looks at her funny and bearing Norsemen to the Khorne's place for a glorious afterlife of fighting and drinking. She is also far more attractive than anything of Slaanesh's menagerie, much to the Prince of Pleasure's eternal rage and the Bloodfather's great amusement, primarily due to having hair.

* Garmr Hrodvitnir aka Billy Squigins: A Chaos Lord of Khorne who managed to almost kill Gotrek Fucking Gurnisson in a fight. 'Nuff said.

* Hrothgar Daemonaxe: A Chaos Lord who only had his rules and miniatures released at a Games Day. He had the statline of a Bloodthirster. His miniature also depicts him throttling an elf, which makes him a good person.

* Arbaal the Undefeated: Nicknamed 'Arbaal the Easily Defeatable' due to his rules from Champions of Chaos having been shockingly awful. Arbaal's been effectively retcon'd out of existence under the excuse that he's journeyed into the Realm of Chaos to challenge Khorne himself to a fight. <s>Good luck with that.</s> It went about as well as you expected.

* [[Scyla Anfingrimm]]: The greatest [[Chaos Spawn|You-Know-What]] ever to walk the earth. Scyla was a Chaos Lord of Khorne who got one too many mutations before his time and devolved into a YKW. But he's the most badass YKW ever, and is a leadership 10 general. Which is impressive considering the only thing he can say is "'''KILL FOR KHORNE! KILL FOR KHORNE! KILL FOR KHORNE!'''".

* Chaos Lord Varmisgal: A Chaos Lord whose blood has turned to liquid bronze. He is responsible for the stalking brass bull of Nuln and the great raid into the Misty Mountains... it is also alleged he ate his own penis.

* Valmir Aesling: A Norscan king and Champion of Khorne who destroyed the Norse Dwarf Hold of Kraka Drak. Managed to get a fucking Daemon Prince to work for him, slaughtered a metric fuck-ton of Norse Dwarfs (roughly 8 times the manliness of a regular Dwarf and thus worth 24 Space Wolves). [[Awesome|Also rode a motherfucking chariot pulled by skinless bears]].

* Egil Styrbjorn: A Norscan High Yarl of the Skaeligs and probably the greatest epitome of manliness a Chaos Warrior devoted to Khorne can achieve. He slew a lot and took names, kicked Bretonnian arses, sexed many women(all which said was impotent and didnt really find pleasure in, poor guy) yet never got a proper heir (only daughters). It was so bad for him that he adopted a boy that became later his personal shamanistic seer and advisor...that is until he banged a Kurgan Sorceress that was prophesied by said shaman to bear Egil's son, yet the damned cheese eating surrender monkeys took her and his unborn son away, which he answered them with apocalyptic RAAAAAGE and titanic slaughter (then again, said Sorceress wanted to sacrifice the unborn child for immortality, and she was actually possessing a Bretonnian noblewoman when doing deed with Egil so Egil's son was in that Bretonnian's womb and the Bretonnian Knights were rescuing her). And thus there was an epic campaign to retrieve the boy. Wields two badass flaming axes called Garmr and Gormr. Really dislikes the Lady of the Lake and other Southerner gods. So manly he is that he let a Grail Knight stab him only to throw back his sword to him. Also known for embodying Khorne's tactical take on war, which he mercilessly used against the Bretonnian Knights that stubbornly charged his warriors head on (until said knights realized that they were duped and slaughtered in seconds).

* [[Skarr Bloodwrath]]: Deranged respawning berserker with axes that double as flails. Joined [[Archaon]]'s posse during [[The End Times]] as one of the many Khornate forces that helped hasten the end of the world.

==Fun Khorne Facts==
* Interestingly the word "Khorne" in Ancient Cypriot Greek literally means to "Shit Blood". Kh' - "To force outward", ORN - "Back passage", Ee - "Blood".
*Doombreed, Khorne's second daemon prince servant, might actually be Genghis Khan himself.
*Khorne's looking for ways to incorporate dinosaurs into his armies, due to the sheer amount of [[RIP AND TEAR]] they can unleash on their enemies. He's unbelievably pissed that he hasn't managed to get any yet- '''{{Blam|YOU GAVE IT AWAY?!?!? FFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUU}}'''
*Khorne <strike>secretly</strike> ''{{Blam|BLATANTLY}}''' hates everyone who kills the defenseless in his name. He'd plot ways to kill them, but he's too mad to do that. (So what else is new?)
*Khorne was just able to stand watching Jurassic World once it got going due to the Indominus Rex and how it made everything else look like bitches. He raged when it died. He's looking for its skull 'cause he wishes he could have it as one of his servants- *sounds of swords and blood* '''{{Blam|FAGGOT!}}''' (Why couldn't Khorne just seek the skull of the Mosasaurus that killed it? Or Rexie, T-rex is classic, I hear you say.) To that, I answer that coz without the Mosasaurus then Rex would'a DIED.
*Khorne is unsure whether or not he hates [[Cultist-chan]], due to a) the fact that she can't do anything except scream about 'kap-tooring eet for kay-oss' and get purged and b) the fact that she's so good at spreading [[RAEG]] amongst various unlucky meatsacks and fa/tg/uys. And that indecisiveness makes him foam at the mouth in an unending rage.
*Khorne practically invented flipping the table when you lose at card games, or it goes too slowly. He does this whenever the major Warp entities play cards in the Formless Wastes.
*Followers of Khorne actually have the ability to pull off [[LIIVI]]/[[Eldrad]] level dick-style moves in battle. They just choose not to do this.
*Khorne wanted [[Settra the Imperishable]] as one of his servants once. However, Settra won't ever serve Khorne, even going so far as to give ALL OF CHAOS the '''motherfucking middle finger''' before going off to hunt down [[Nagash]]. That said, Settra may well be one of the few mortal beings besides his own servants Khorne has any respect for. He still hates Settra though.
*Slaanesh once created some Kayos Spess Mehreens with his/her colour scheme, but with armour nicked off fallen Khornate warriors. And when Khorne saw this, '''his wrath was legendary'''.
*Slaanesh and Khorne also have regular 'plans' on Friday night- *sounds of something even bigger than a [[Bloodthirster]] coming through and much ripping and tearing* '''{{Blam|NO! YOU'RE LYING!}}'''
* [[Emperor|That Twat With The Chair]] and Khorne haven't '''SMACKED DOWN''' yet, but Khorne is secretly looking forward to it when it happens- he wants to test Spess Jaysis's might against his own. Tickets are now on sale!
*If an internet hyperlink comes up red, it's not because the page doesn't exist, it's because Khorne looked at what was once on the other end, and '''he didn't like what he saw''', so much so that the hyperlink is stained with the blood of what once was.
* Khorne's favorite form of grouping is in ogdoads, for reasons that should be obvious once you know what that word means.
* Khorne's favorite [[video game|vidja]] was [[Doom]]. he abandoned it in a strange combination of terror and appreciation once he learned it was Biographical/Autobiographical.
* If Khorne is acting calm towards you, don't relax. He doesn't like anything, he just hates some things less than others. There is such a thing as cold-hatred.
* Khorne was '''ALMOST''' pleased when [[Iskandar Khayon]] smashed his ship, the ''Tlaloc'', into the Slaaneshi world of Harmony, killing a whole shitload of Slaaneshi fucks and breaking the planet in half. Then he remembered Khayon was a damn Thousand Son Sorcerer. Fuck.
*[[TTS|Khorne will not stab you in the back. He will simply stab you in the face until your face stops resembling a face.]]
*Very few beings have ever earned Khorne's respect. but the most notable is the '''MOTHERFUCKING DOOMGUY!!!''' (another is Valen the ancestor of [[Kharn]]).
*DOOM 2016 <s>tells of a "Wretch" who made the Doom Slayer an adamantine Amour from the deepest parts of the forges of Hell. And since Khorne CAN craft absolute destructive Weapons and impenetrable Armour...</s> (he did not make the armor for him but he approves of him using it.)
*Khorne is mixed on snipers. Partly because they sneak and hide like pussies and don't get into a proper fight, and partly because headshots ruin perfectly good skulls. However, sniping is the most skillfull form of shooting. It’s also Slaaneshi.
*Khorne's favorite author is Sun Tzu. Three guesses why if you know what he's written.
*Khorne is the patron god of Chimpanzees (no seriously, look them up; those bastards are the fucking marauding barbarians of the jungle, especially since their cousins the Bonobos seem like milktoast Slaanesh followers).
*Thanks to his relationship with Valkia the Bloody, Khorne may or may not be married to the devoted blood and gore addicted maiden of war.
*Despite his association with canines, Khorne also has a pet rabbit, which he [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmu5sRIizdw loaned out to appear in a certain comedy film].
*Khorne is also the god of tsunderes, no, seriously, as stated in a previous section, which is even further added by many tsunderes being red themed, this makes Khorne RAAAAEEEG! even more as his followers are supposed to be manly armored guys and not teen girls in school uniform, but hey, that's the internet for you!

==Gallery==
{{promotions}}
<gallery>
Klaher-baklaher-khorn.jpg|The [[Doom|Throne Guy]] himself. Likely a inaccurate portrayal but still badass.
Image:Khornate.JPG|Khorne's followers off the battlefield. REVERSE ARMWRESTLE!!!
Image:khornewaffel.JPG|Waffles for the Blood God!
Image:Khornetrainer.JPG|Khorne's trainers prefer violent Pokémon.
Image:Khorne_tattoo.jpg|Mark of Khorne.
Image:Free like a riding demon by Ragathol.jpg|Khornette.
Image:Backwardsthrone.jpg|Just as Planned. Always. As. Planned.
File:Khornette.jpg|Khorne wants to know why the drawfags never give them noses.
File:Tea Time.jpg|In the grim darkness of the far future, there is still time for tea...
File:Khorne-Art.jpg|Warriors of Chaos: making everything in 40K look like bitches since 2002.
Image:You're_madder_than_Khorne.png|There '''is''' such a thing as being too mad for Khorne!
Image:Khorneholiover2.png |The [[Cornholio the Cultist|Great Khorneholio]]. He needs blood and skulls for his bunghole.
Image:Anon_pleases_Khorne.png|Who knew Berzerkers came in ''Shrimp'' size?
Image:Khorne Flakes.jpg|The tastiest of all! Add blood for more flavor.
Image:Khorne_flakes.jpg|Literal <s>corn</s> Khorne Flake Cake! Some absolute madlad/madlass actually did it!
Image:Khorny Meme.jpg|Whoever made this has too much time on their hands. And access to imgflip.
</gallery>

==See also==

*[[Brass]]
*[[Berserker]] - Chaos Space Marines with Axes and a bad attitude.
*[[Angron]] - Daemon prince of Khorne and the Primarch of World Eaters.
*[[World Eaters]]
*[[Khârn|Khârn the Betrayer]] - A pretty fun guy to be around.
*[[Valkia the Bloody]] - Scarousal in it's purest form.
*[[Warhammer_40,000/Tactics/Khorne_Daemonkin(7E)|Tactics/Khorne Daemonkin]] - That's right, meatsacks! The servants of Khorne have their own codex!
*[[Age of Sigmar/Tactics/Chaos/Blades of Khorne|Tactics/Blades of Khorne]] - Khorne's servants in AoS.
*[[Rage]]
*[[Sorcerers of Khorne]] - Double heresy!
*[[Doombreed]] - One angry son of a bitch.
*[[Doom|the one guy Khorne respects]]
* This pretty much sums up his forces: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-gSJW3sHXE&feature=channel_video_title
*[[Katanas_are_Underpowered_in_d20#Khorne_is_underpowered_in_40k|Khorne is underpowered in 40k]]
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vljHBXA3UKE - death metal song devoted to Khorne.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml3sjEiViXc - better death metal song.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8mEOiI4pjs - thrash metal song summing up Khorne pretty well.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edNUp4GkukI - can't forget the blackened thrash.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUB9QGKCNmI - a bunch of anime Khorne worshippers. Better than it sounds.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8mEOiI4pjs - another metal song devoted to Khorne. GW actually commissioned this one. Yes, they really were that awesome back in the day.

{{Template:ChaosGods}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Age of Sigmar]][[Category:Blades of Khorne]]

Firestorm Armada

2017-02-17T13:32:27Z

195.194.119.220: correction. 800pts games typically only last 90 mins.

[[File:Firestorm Armada Logo.jpeg|center]]

<blockquote>
''Prepare to enter a galaxy gripped by a war of cataclysmic proportions. Where fleets of colossal warships clash in brutal conflict among the stars. Systems are besieged, alliances crumble and whole worlds burn as the bitter struggle for control rages on. Yet amidst this fire and fury there is hope. Heroic commanders and admirals of renown stand firm against their foes, rallying their fleets and inspiring their crews to acts of great valour in the name of victory. The fate of a galaxy hangs in the balance.

'''''Enter the Firestorm!

-[[Spartan Games]] Promotional Tagline

'''''The game [[Battlefleet Gothic]] wanted to be!

-Every [[Battlefleet Gothic|BFG]] player who starts playing it.
</blockquote>

{{Game Infobox
|name = Firestorm Armada
|type = [[Wargame]]
|publisher = [[Spartan Games]]
|playno = 2 or more
|time = points dependant (1000 pts) 2-3 hours
|year = 2009
|books = Main rulebook & Race books - All available for free as living documents([http://www.spartangames.co.uk/resources/downloads Here])
|system = D6's with exploding dice
|authors = [[Spartan Games]]
}}

==Some Background==
'''Firestorm Armada''', or more collquially, simply "Firestorm", is a sci-fi naval battle game dreamed up by Spartan Games. It was released as their second game, after Uncharted Seas, a fantasy naval game. Firestorm, much like other naval fleet games, eschews complex gameplay, such as systems management and 3d newtonian movement, in favour of a simple yet deep game mechanic. Like all Spartan games, Firestorm has a nearly complete library of models for every unit in the game (and with 11+ factions, each with at least a DN, BB, CA, DD and FF, that's a lot of ships). Made from resin, the models are fairly priced, and investment in a fleet doesn't burn up your funds like some other games.

Did I mention the rules are at the low low price of [http://www.spartangames.co.uk/resources/downloads FREE]?

===Models===
The models, especially dreadnoughts, are quite large (10~15 cm is not uncommon), and this can lead to games feeling quite claustrophobic. On the other hand, the detailing is nice and the large models allow for creative paint schemes. Resin is a bitch to cut the flash and stuff, but generally they're durable and good looking. You will have about 12-25 models in your fleet. No one really cares if you proxy models, either, unless you're at major tournament.

The older models (version 1.0) have a different name and are not as detailed, but still legal in-game. Whether you have a 1.0 or 2.0 version of a cruiser, for instance, it's got the same stats just looks different.

===Ship Classes===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:800px">
'''Tier 3''' - The myriad of smaller vessels used in squadrons
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

'''Corvettes''' - Corvettes generally perform the same tactical roles that frigates do. Most of have inferior DR/CR compared to frigates but are instead given often given Elusive Target and larger squadron sizes. The are also generally much faster than their racial frigate counterparts, though are individually less powerful.

These changes even harder to kill for weapons that aren't anti tier 3, but in turn the lower DR/CR makes them more vulnerable to these weapons. (mines, assault, scatter, nukes)

Corvettes are generally effective starting on the table on in reserves. When reserved they can arrive some distance away from their target (in case of mines for instance) and still end up in a annoying spot, and when starting on the table they can dart from cover to cover avoiding unfavorable engagements.

'''Light Frigates''' - A new class of ships introduced as reinforcements for all of the major races and a few of the smaller ones. They fit in between corvettes and proper frigates in terms of speed, armor and firepower. The only models in the game to have smaller than standard bases, which adjusts their lines of fire, but overall makes them very maneuverable as a ship class.

'''Frigates''' - Like corvettes, frigates tend to be lightly armored, but benefit by being harder to hit due to their smaller size compared to capital ships. Many have decent weaponry that can be linked together to allow them to fight above their weight class.

'''Escorts''' - Sort of like heavily specialized corvettes, escorts are exclusively found alongside tier 1 vessels, like battleships. Their main job is to prevent your big expensive centerpiece models from being raped by torpedoes.

'''Light Cruisers''' - An uncommon class of ships that sits somewhere between a cruiser and a frigate in speed, firepower and durability. Usually taken to get a bit of extra strength in a fleet without swelling up on tier 2 options.

</div></div>

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:800px">
'''Tier 2''' - The main-line collection of cruisers etc
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

'''Cruisers''' - Your workhorse ships. Each race and faction has cruisers specifically tailored to their own playstyle, varying wildly in speed, armor, firepower and squadron size between them.

'''Heavy Cruisers''' - More specialized variants of the standard cruiser, generally featuring heavier armor, bigger/different guns and slightly slower speed as a result. Tend to be much more expensive than your standard cruiser, with different abilities and special rules to help set them apart.

'''Assault Cruisers''' - Highly specialized cruisers that trade their long-range weaponry to make room for more space marines. As they are purpose-built for boarding assaults, most sport heavier armor or bigger engines in order to get to where they need to be.

'''Destroyers''' - Your snipers. Generally all focused on a single long-range weapon and sporting built-in stealth systems and better point defenses to protect them from retaliation. While most are content to sit in the backfield and plink away from afar, other destroyers specialize in setting up traps and ambushes. They all have a special rule that lets them turn up to 90 degrees if they remain stationary, giving them all excellent angles of fire.

'''Escort Cruisers''' - Halfway between a carrier and a cruiser and doing neither role quite properly, they are nonetheless useful for bringing additional SRS to the table.

'''Shield Cruisers''' - Terran only. Very tough bastards that make other ships around them even tougher and more bastardy.

'''Shunt Cruisers''' - Relthoza only. These ships have a special ability that lets them pop up where is least convenient for their enemy, allowing for the spider player to set up ideal ambushes or quick retreats with them.

'''Torpedo Cruisers''' - Cruisers that trade their main guns for more/better torpedoes. These are meant to be played safely from behind an asteroid screen, as their weapons won't be impeded or degraded due to damage. However, their attacks can be shut down squarely by a point-defense conscious opponent.

'''R&D Cruisers''' - Found most commonly amongst the Directorate, R&D cruisers carry unique and often powerful weaponry, but tend to have smaller squadron sizes due to being rare and uncommon.

'''Gunships''' - Sitting on the higher end of tier-2 in terms of power, with some even being able to fill in as tier 1s in smaller games. Gunships are a step below Battlecruisers in that they can be generally considered massively upgunned cruisers.

'''Defense Platforms''' - Although pinned in tier 2, they tend to underperfom compared to other members of this class, as they are intended to supplement battle stations as defensive assets. As a result, they share the same weaknesses. They are highly specialized to their owning faction, each proving defense in their own thematic way.
</div></div>

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:800px">
'''Tier 1''' - Hunks of resin large enough to kill a man
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

'''Battlecruisers''' - A class of ship that tries to take the best aspects of a cruiser and a battleship and combine them into one. They make solid flagships in small games, but fall behind quickly once real tier-1 ships start showing up. Tend to come in pairs, but when taken single can take frigates as accompaniments.

'''Carriers''' - Generally not much tougher or better armed than your average heavy cruiser, carriers bring the fight in the form of their short-range spacecraft (SRS). True to their real-life counterparts, however, they can't fight well on their own and require support from other parts of the fleet to operate at their best.

'''Assault Carriers''' - Specialized carriers that focus less on attack craft and more on close-range boarding assaults.

'''Battle Carriers''' - A combination of a battelship and a carrier. Despite ultimately being a compromise between the two classes, most are quite good and strike a fine balance between brawling power and SRS flexibility. Most commonly found in the smaller secondary factions.

'''Battleships''' - Your big beating sticks. Featuring heavy armor and impressive firepower, and generally some of the slowest ships on your fleet as a result. Battleships tend to exemplify the characteristics of the faction they represent, and have the widest variety of upgrades available to them.

'''Battle Stations''' - Huge constructs built to defend important areas. Essentially a battleship or carrier sans the engines. All quite powerful, save for the fact that they can't really move. While they can be taken in normal games, they are only useful as defensive assets, as the enemy will generally be aware and capable of staying outside their limited threat radius.

'''Dreadnoughts''' - To date the largest class of ship in play. All monsters exceeding battleships in durability and firepower, their high cost generally means that the rest of the fleet needs to be built around their presence, while their intimidating power means that the game can and often will revolve around how they are played.

'''Leviathans''' - Existing only as a class, as dreadnoughts already push the limit of durability and firepower without breaking the game.
</div></div>

==The Factions==
Like their other main title [[Dystopian Wars]], the Firestorm setting has two main alliances comprised of several factions and an ostensibly neutral set of factions that have individual alignment matrices.

===[[Kurak Alliance|The Kurak Alliance]]===
Ostensibly the good guys, but in reality only a lighter shade of grey than the Zenian League. Formed by the Terran Alliance and the two most powerful alien races to combat the threat of the Zenian League. They eventually brought six smaller factions into the fold who had suffered at the hands of Zenian League aggression during it's push into the Fathoms Reach and Storm Zone.

*'''Major Races'''
**'''Aquan Prime''' - A collective of aquatic species, basically space dolphins and lobster men. Very Eldar-ish in that they are graceful, maneuverable, and deadly when used right, but <s>die horribly when they make a mistake</s> are just as tough as everyone else. Make heavy use of omni-directional lasers and a crapton of mines. They have been a long-standing ally of Terra, having been strong supporters of the Terquai for centuries before formal contact with the main human forces.
**'''The Sorylian Collective''' - Ancient race of logical, pragmatic space lizards. Generally they are a very up-close force, using powerful broadside guns and lethal boarding parties. They are slow to act and very thoughtful, as a species, presumably developing out of their relatively long lifespans which makes zero sense based on how they play in game. Their territory extends into the Storm Zone, which was the catalyst for joining the Kurak Alliance, but have since become one of their staunchest defenders yet galactic record holders as the [http://community.spartangames.co.uk/index.php?/topic/12481-war-log-3725 worst performing major faction].
**'''The Terran Alliance''' - Used to be the dominant human power until the Directorate turned traitor and the Dindrenzi rebelled. Now they're fighting to hold onto what they have left. Their ships look bad on paper, then you realize they're shielded out the ass and can absorb retarded amounts of punishment. Makes heavy use of nuclear weapons, as the Dindrenzi eventually found out when their homeworld of Dramos was reduced to a smoldering, lifeless rock in space.

*'''Minor Races'''
**'''Hawker Industries''' - Old-school, honorable corporation that helps design and build Terran ships and weapons. Have badass-looking ships known for durability and nuclear armament. Basically Elite Terrans. With the defection of the Directorate and Works Raptor, they've become the primary developer of new weaponry for the Terran Alliance.
**'''Ryushi''' - Nomads who wander the stars after the loss of their homeworld to the Dindrenzi and Illosians. They are obsessed with SRS and lots of drones to preserve their own lives, as they are not very numerous. They are bitter enemies of the Kedorians, being the only race outside of the Zenian League to know their secret origins.
**'''Tarakians''' - Mysterious, advanced aliens that use big lumbering ships with troll-tastic gravitic weaponry. Their primary source of amusement is throwing your ships into asteroid fields or planets, while ignoring shields, crew loss and intervening terrain in the process, until you whine and want to quit and play 40k again. They inhabit an area of space along the edge of the galaxy called the Harrison Belt. They seem to be keeping watch for some force outside the Milky Way and much of their society seems structured around keeping watch at the galaxy's edge, watching videos of throwing your ships into planets.
**'''Terquai''' - Human citizens of the Aquans. Their ships are a mixture of Aquan and Terran tech and design sensibilities. Their ancestors were among the first human space colonists, having settled far from Terra before being cut off from humanity during the Wars of First Contact. They soon found their colony worlds were already occupied by the Aquans. This worked out for both, however, as the Aquans lived in the oceans and they on the land. Centuries later when they reestablished ties with the Terran Alliance, it was discovered they had become a client state of the Aquans. These ties helped form the Kurak Alliance when the Zenian League launched their invasion into the Storm Zone.
**'''Veydreth''' - Savage, spacefaring raider tribes with fast, assault-y ships. They are described as "star dragons" by Terrans due to their physical appearance. They used to raid Terran Alliance colonies, but with the push into the Storm Zone by the Zenian League they have been hired by the Hawker Consortium to raid Zenian races instead, cause why not, right? (insert star dragon roar!!!)
**'''Xelocians''' - The other nomadic race living in giant worldships. They were drifting through the area just firing forward lasers aimlessly when war broke out and they joined the Kurak Alliance out of need for protection and general boredom. They have a strong business acumen, but also seek enlightenment as a race among the stars. They currently believe their race has begun its final journey as war breaks out across the galaxy, so pew pew their way to destiny.

===[[Zenian League|The Zenian League]]===
Technically the bad guys, but only because they tend to be more self-serving than the Kurak races. Most of their races are motivated by revenge for wrongs committed against them in the past at the hands of the races now comprising the Kurak Alliance.

*'''Major Races'''
**'''The Dindrenzi Federation''' - Tough, don't-tread-on-me type star colonists who rebelled against the Terrans after being politically marginalized and taxed into oblivion... what Libertarians wish they could be, basically. The initial rebellion ended with their homeworld obliterated in Terran nuclear fire, but this only pissed them off more. Distrustful of aliens and most other humans, for good reason, they are an alliance of various frontier systems. Most of their ships are built around gigantic railguns and look like cock-n-balls, but they pay for it by being relatively slow and unmaneuverable, kind of like riding a bike with a boner. They basically play like Tau, preferring to sit back and snipe with their superior forward guns.
**'''The Directorate''' - The true villains of the setting. Basically a bunch of greedy, amoral corporations who broke away and created their own empire where Profit Is Everything. They're fond of playing both sides off against each other in order to keep the wars going as long as possible so they can profit from weapons sales. Their homeworld is like the BDSM playroom of Ayn Rand and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Lumbergh Bill Lumbergh] where the wealthy live in excess, but if their net worth drops too low they are forced to leave their homes and move off world. Their ships are mostly giant flying saucer types with omni-directional turrets in the center. They make heavy use of nuclear, biological, and chemical warheads on their torpedoes, dirty tricks, as well as cyberwarfare weaponry.
**'''The Relthoza Empire''' - Giant spider people with a raging hard-on for nanotech. Surprisingly they are not a monolithic hive mind, and are actually a caste-based society of fully sentient individuals. Currently undergoing a swarming urge in which they attempt to conquer more territory. Generally they rely on stealth technology to get into optimal firing range, and back it up with nasty boarding parties made up of giant power armored spider marines. In the Wars of First Contact they were humiliated at the hands of the Terran Alliance, losing territory and suffering their first major defeat at the hands of an alien race.

*'''Minor Races'''
**'''Ba'Kash''' - Bootstrapper space pirates who love war and plunder. Joined the Zenian League after being promised the chance to have both of those things in large amounts. They prefer simple, direct weapons and technology, as well as boarding actions. They seem to be roughly analogous to the Klingon of '''Star Trek'''.
**'''Kedorians''' - Highly intelligent aliens with many client races who supported the Dindrenzi rebellion, thus earning political favors from the new Dindrenzi state. Make use of giant circular floating fortress-ships that double as space-based cities with tons of omnidirectional weaponry, and are hard as hell to assemble. Disdain getting their hands dirty and thus use their more aggressive servitor races as assault troops. Most races think they're a race composed of several sub species, but in reality they are parasites who implant themselves in other sentient races and seize control of their bodies like the Gou'ald of '''Stargate'''. Strangely in contrast to their generally cowardly attitude of using their client races to do their dirty work, they believe fighter to fighter combat to be honourable and only pure/noble members of their race may use their interceptor craft.
**'''Rense Systems Navy''' - The Dindrenzi state security and intelligence force based out of their most powerful star system; basically the KGB meets the [https://1d4chan.org/wiki/BattleTech Word of Blake]. Created to police the various Dindrenzi worlds and keep their allies of convenience in line. Use very well designed, advanced ships with elite crews. They have the trademark Dindrenzi railguns, but with none of the trademark Dindrenzi weakness to close-range combat, but they ain't cheap points-wise. Are shown to be fanatical in their devotion to the Dindrenzi race and the Church of Dramos, a cult that has sprung up following the radiation shower given to Dramos by the Terrans. The RSN are employed in a number of different scouting and deep reconnaissance missions, while also acting as the enforcers for the leagues best interest (read as killing/punishing lesser members of the league who act out of line).
**'''Works Raptor''' - Basically what you would get if the Dark Eldar were businessmen. Expelled from the Terran Alliance, they have become the most infamous member corporation of the Directorate, so mean that even EvilCorp would be like "whoa dude". They use monstrous bio-engineered assault troops, nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry, and stealth technology. Don't let them take you alive or you'll end your days as a test subject for some new horrific weapon.

===Marauders and Mercenaries===
Unaligned factions who can be added to Zenian or Kurak fleets as mercenaries, or even played on their own. They too now have a free living rulebook of their own available on Spartan's website breaking down who they can and cannot ally with, along with complete fleet rosters for each faction.

*'''Mercenary Forces'''
**'''OmniDyne Special Operations''' - A Terran Alliance company with ties to the Directorate, known for their distinctive ships with a big circle out the backside. Bitter enemies of Works Raptor, to the point where they will not fight alongside one another in the same fleet outside the System Wars supplement. Currently the most fleshed out mercenary faction with a great selection of figures.
**'''Oroshan Imperium''' - Yet another nomadic race. The Oroshan usually work as mercenaries for the Directorate and OmniDyne, but being true capitalists at heart they will fight for anyone who pays them enough, including the Kurak Alliance. They focus on utilizing the Pack Hunter rule to gain extra attacks by combining multiple ship's attacks together.
**'''Syndicated Traders League - Syndicate''' - The personal illegal raiding fleet of Tauris Vylia’sal. He must have a huge crush on Flash Gordon cause they all look like a 1950s moon-rocket crossed with a Corvette. Their ships sport solid defenses, SRS and flexible weapons.
**'''Syndicated Traders League - Traders''' - The legitimate front organization for the Vylia’sal Syndicate and as close to true civilian ships as you can get in a wargame, Traders ships are all dirt cheap, shitty mining vessels and convoy escorts that can be taken in large numbers to offset their individual weaknesses. Currently the only faction without even a single figure to their name, so if you're the kind of <s>dork</s> artist that likes to build, mod, mold or customize your own shit this (or Pathogen) is the faction for you.
**'''Corsairs''' - Quintessential space pirates. Most get their ships and weapons supplied in secret by OmniDyne, and can be employed by all factions for the right price. Their crude-looking ships are all extremely customizable, and some are dirt cheap, but rarely match up one on one with a true warship. Thankfully, pirates don't play fair like that and get some funny TAC cards.

*'''Standalone Forces'''
**'''Overseers''' - An ancient race from outside the Milky Way that nothing of note is known about except that they are very likely the "ancient evil" that the Tarakians are on the lookout for. They currently only have a single probe model that comes with the Return of the Overseers two player set. This probe is not playable in regular games, but is an incredibly powerful model that will "attack" both players in the final scenario of the campaign book included in the set.
**'''Pathogen X-9V''' - Nightmare fuel. Ships that have been infected by a bizarre techo-organic plague that is implied to have been accidentally created by OmniDyne weapon-testing. It has <s>terrible</s> decent shooting limited to short range, but once it gets in close it can launch boarding assaults that can corrupt other ships and actually bring them under its control, adding them to the fleet. Their SRS are double trouble and scary as shit. Like Tyranids, it's best not to think about the horrific fate suffered by the crew of a ship assaulted by Pathogen. Curiously, the only figures currently produced for it by Spartan Games are based off Relthozan vessels, who make heavy use of nanomachines themselves. You can mod, build and green-stuff your heart's desire with this faction, but you ''cannot ally'' with other factions.

==The Gameplay==

===Exploding Dice===
A die roll of 4+ is generally a "success". The ‘Exploding Dice’ mechanic is the Core Dice Mechanic used in Firestorm Armada, and other games by [[Spartan Games]]. Whenever a Dice is rolled using the Exploding Dice mechanic, the roll of a natural ‘6’ on a dice ‘Explodes’, resulting in two successes '''and''' the chance to roll the dice again and score further successes! If you rolled a 6 again, keep on rolling!

This can result in ships being slapped with a double or triple crit, usually resulting in a lovely explosion as the ship in question suffers [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CriticalExistenceFailure critical existence failure]. It goes the other way too, with a shield maybe stopping a deadly shot in extraordinary fashion. While some people get cranky when this happens, others love it. Statistically speaking there is "no more random" with exploding 6s than without [http://ops-center.weebly.com/uploads/4/6/2/4/46246671/exploding_6_explained.pdf per this article] it's just that there is a chance for an occasional extraordinary result. Thus the mechanic does mean that even a lowly frigate has ''some chance'' of blasting a battleship and hurting it, unlike 40k where plain ol' Guardsmen can't never do shit to big things never, basically.

===Ships===
Ships come on a sometimes wobbly clear plastic base; magnets or Hawk Widgets help a great deal with this problem. The bases have four firing arcs: fore, aft, port and starboard. Stats include: hull, crew, point defense, wing capacity, shields, assault, damage rating and critical damage rating. You compare the various stats when you roll dice in different situations, blah blah blah.

Ships fly in squadrons of one to six models. Most bigger models stand alone. Little birds flock together. When you move your ships, they go between 6"-12" generally, and you use a wonky tool to help you turn that even a Master's Degree won't help you figure out. Bases can touch, and you can shoot something you're touching, unlike X-wing.

Almost every single ship has more than one weapon system pointing in different directions, so a player who gives a shit will generally try maneuver in such a way as to fire more than one weapon in the same turn. This sounds easy enough, but there are mines, asteroid fields, not to mention other ships all clogging up the game board so good luck with that.

Frigates, corvettes and other tiny Tier 3 ships have two hull points and can be wiped out in a single good hit. Cruisers and other Tier 2 ships have three to five hull, so it takes a couple good shots (or a mitful of 6s) to wipe them. Battleships and the like have eight or more hull and are generally a bitch to take down.

===Alternating Activation===
I choose one of my squadrons, move it, then fire its weapons. Now it's your turn to choose one squadron, move and fire. Back and forth until all squadrons are done, then send out the damage control teams to get shields back online, and a new round starts. Who goes first each round is sorta a big deal, but Firestorm is no way near as alpha-strikey as other games and nobody gets tabled round 1.

===MARs===
All the various special abilities are called Model Assigned Rules and there's over 50 - way too many of them to mention here, ranging from "why does anyone want that?" to "mwhahahaha". Different ships have different MARs but with only a couple of exceptions there aren't many combos between ships, unlike Warmachine where this dude buffs that dude who fucks your world apart.

Mercifully the MARs are standardized, same name, and all in the main rulebook, so Spartan doesn't just make shit up like GW. You can buy MARs and other upgrades for your ships. Almost all ships have at least one upgrade available. Some bigger ships you can mix and match half a dozen MARs.

===TAC Cards===
Nobody remembers what this acronym means, but you get to choose 3 (maybe 4) cards to play that allow you to do cool shit you normally couldn't, cause strategery! Some TAC are available to everyone, others are specific to your race or faction.

===Duration===
This game takes a while, ok? Like 2-3 hours. If you're new, add another hour. More ships? More hours. They're working on making it more streamlined with a new version without dumb-downing and breaking everything in the process.

===SRS===
[[Meme|SRS please leave]] cause the rules be wonky and a tad broken, but whatever, eat 18 bomber dice, bitch!

SRS refers to Short Range Spacecraft, which are the fighter screens or bomber wings that are represented on the tabletop by either large or small SRS tokens, with a dice in it representing 'wings'.

They divide into the following groups:
*'''Interceptors''' - These little bastards can proactively make a mess of other SRS tokens, can re-actively make intercept moves against enemy bombers, and can shoot down torpedoes like Battlestar Galactica. Even a few of them can make your torpedoes useless. The only downside, they cannot directly attack ships.
*'''Fighters''' - These jack-of-all trades can fight other SRS tokens or attack ships, and have a 18" range, but that still doesn't convince most people to field them. Even the game designers wonder what the hell they were thinking.
*'''Bombers''' - Can hold their own against fighters with the added bonus of having a '''fucktonne''' of attack dice (18 dice on a full 6-die wing) against ships, the backhander for this being they only have 12" movement, but so what? If your enemy doesn't have interceptors on the defense, you ''will'' wreck his shit.
*'''Assault Craft''' - the shortest move range of all SRS (8") with the same dogfighting ability as fighters, but laden with a tonne of pissed off dudes to deliver into an enemy ship. If you don't feel like your ships have enough Marines already, that is.
*'''Support Shuttles''' - Shares the Assault crafts tiny move distance, but who needs it when these guys will be hugging a ship in order to repair it or provide replacement crew.

==External Links==
*[http://www.spartangames.co.uk/products/firestorm-galaxy/firestorm-armada Firestorm Armada main site]
*[http://www.spartangames.co.uk/resources/downloads Spartan's page for living rulebooks]