Editing Scale Inconsistency (section)

==[[Warhammer 40000]]==
In general, a lot of things in 40K can be difficult to figure out how "big" something is, since the 28mm scale means you can only fit in so much detail on a miniature. As such, it's not uncommon to see a dissonance between "official" artwork vs the miniature in question. One example is the [[Leman Russ Battle Tank]], where the Demolisher cannon can look oversized on the miniature but look more proper in artworks, while the supposedly 120mm battle cannon is excessively wide both on minis and in art. 

There is also the problem of 40k books and sources using a combination of 'unreliable narrator' and 'the Imperium can't standardize for shit', so even people who say in a book they know how big something is may be wrong.

===Titans===
We'll start with the big boys first. As mentioned on the main page for Warhammer 40K Titans, the basic sizes for some of the titans are given different stats by different authors, and even the "official" stats from sources such as Adeptus Titanitus can be suspect. Way back when in things like Epic, numbers like "100ft" were thrown around willy-nilly in an attempt to make the Titans sound as cool and imposing as possible, which you will note is also the only non-metric unit on the page to add to the confusion.

For instance: [[Graham McNeill]] says an Imperator (specifically Dies Irae) is 43 metres tall, [[Dan Abnett]] says an Imperator ([[Derp|also specifically Dies Irae]]) is over 140 metres tall, and the cover of the graphic novel ''Titan II: Vivaporius'' shows a smaller Warlord with access ladders on its guns suggesting each barrel is the size of a house - meaning the Titan itself would be over half a kilometre tall, and the Imperator would be even larger. A lot of artwork can also have heavily skewed depictions of Titans, often shown to be far larger than "official" sizes. Most recently is the case of the Emperor Titan in SM2 being [[Wat|over a kilometer tall]].

===Space Marines===
How big Space Marines are is mostly consistent in "larger than the average Imperial citizen" and "bigger than an Imperial Guard grunt". For instance, [[Deathwatch (RPG)]]'s 1st edition claims they're about 2.1 meters tall, while the ''Eisenhorn'' series puts them at "well over two meters" for a Firstborn Marine and a few Horus Heresy novels (''Horus Rising'', ''First Heretic'', ''Pharos'', etc.) paint them as being around seven feet tall, albeit with exceptions. Similarly, Primaris per [[Wrath and Glory]] are "at least" 8 foot tall - the specific stats being 7 feet + 1d6 inches for a Firstborn, 8 feet + 1d6 inches for a Primaris compared to about 4 feet + 6d6 inches for a human.

However, some artwork and the miniatures (especially older stuff) can show the two about the same size. This is particularly notable when comparing a Primaris mini to a 'regular' Marine, as despite their supposed extra foot or so in height and stronger build, the Primaris has barely a head or so's advantage over the Firstborn and is about the same broadness. This can be excused by limitations of model making of being a balance between trying to be in-scale and having details to make a mini stand out.

[[File:Marine Comparisons.webp|thumb|center||Were you lot always this big? (L-R: Primaris, [[Fafnir Rann]], Generic Marines but from two different editions of the tactical marine kit]]


===Lore Numbers===
In a more abstract sense, it's often been noticed by people that GW does not have a clue about how big armies are supposed to be. To explain what we mean, lore tells us that there were roughly 4,000,000 or 4 million Orks at the third war for Armageddon, a supposedly 'gigantic number' that the imperials barely managed to stop putting all the effort and energy they could to stem the green tide: over 4.5 million Allied soldiers died in WW1. 4,833,404 to be wiki exact. An apocalyptic win at all cost war for the fate of an entire planet, involved fewer Orks then the number of soldiers who died on one side of an early 20th century war. 

Space Marines are another example of this misunderstanding of scale. There's (supposedly) 1,000 space marine chapters which average about 1,000 astartes each meaning there's 1 million Space Marines meant to defend a galaxy with threats at every corner across roughly 1 million worlds. Context: there were 16 million US soldiers in WW2 alone not counting anyone else. With the introduction of [[Primaris Space Marines]], it makes this unlikely due to the sheer amount of specialist units that would need more than 10 dudes in a chapter along with the firstborn who still have old weapons they revere as relics. Not only does one company typically make a scout company (meaning 100 of that 1000 are all backups) but specialist formations and first company terminators and veterans. Even excluding the various specialist roles like Apothecaries, Dreadnoughts, Chaplins, Librarians, Techmarines, etc., that's not leaving a lot of room for people who drive the Rhino or operate its turrets, let alone the Primaris units like Infernus squads, Desolation squads, the elite Vanguard forces, Inceptors, Aggressors, Eradicators, Hellblasters, and the various flavours of Intercessors which all assuredly carry more than a handful of men each at any given time. The Great Crusade is actually worse with us expected that a single legion could take a planet, when it took eight million men, 5 years to fight over one sub-continent of old Earth? Perhaps Geedubs will fix this by having old Bobby G write a Codex 2.0 that multiplies everything by 10 like the old fan rule of thumb says, but only time will tell - especially because this is GW we're talking about.

A particularly funny one is the Imperium is said to consist of 1 million worlds over 100,000 lightyears of space, making it the largest empire in the galaxy. Except, the Milky Way Galaxy consists of 100 billion stars across that same 100,000 lightyears with an estimated 300 million-5 billion estimated habitable worlds with current technology. So not only has imperium and humanity during the Dark Age of technology failed to colonize most of the habitable worlds, they outright chose to colonize the hellholes like the tidally-locked [[Mordia]] where life is much more uncomfortable. Given the Imperium also still has some terraforming technology, this seems a little bit silly given the entire state of the galaxy. Even considering the quarter of the galaxy consumed by warp storms and other factions, the comedy from the Imperium being constantly restated to be so massive yet in canon is comically small compared to our own real-world makes 40k being very conservative with its numbers really, really funny.

It's often advised to just treat the numbers given as unreliable narrators and to add a zero to every number given to us. It was not 4 million Orks but 40 million, a much more respectable number, albeit one that less than half the total number of soldiers in WW1 but getting closer.

===The God-Emperor of Mankind===
While He's definitely called Big E, ''how'' big He is can be contentious based upon the artist, artwork, and era you're going on. While it's generally agreed upon that He's huge, the fact that His appearance can vary based upon who's looking at Him and is implied to be a shapeshifter of shorts makes figuring out His size difficult. Post-Heresy, how big His body/bones are upon the [[Golden Throne]] don't really help since the Golden Throne is isolated from others most of the time, as well as expanding to an absolutely ''ridiculous'' size. As in, 'A Custodes at the entrance to the throne room could ''barely'' see a scrap of Emps' body', entire kilometres of the Imperial Palace are technically part of the Throne levels of ridiculous size. And, on top of that, the Golden Throne is actually a fake and subject to psychic projection. The actual body of the Emperor is hooked to life support in a hidden chamber where a Custodian was able to at the very least see it in full.

At the very least it has been made clear that Big E can shape shift.

[[File:Tim Remin's height-scale chart.jpg|thumb|center|In the grimdarkness of Warhammer 40K, everyone is a body builder.]]