South Park character Tolkien Black is a Warhammer 40k Ravenguard fan, or at least, likes them well enough to have a poster with the faction logo stuck to the inside of his bedroom door. Fans of 40k and the satirical cartoon shared screenshots from the South Park season 26 premiere after it aired on Comedy Central on Wednesday, highlighting the background detail.
This isn’t the first time South Park has referenced miniature wargames. Back in season 23 episode seven ‘Board Girls’ – an episode criticised for reductive stereotypes about trans people – the boys start a tabletop games club in an effort to exclude the girls, only to be roundly beaten by them.
This is the first explicit acknowledgment of Warhammer 40k that we know of in the show, and the first time we’ve seen which Warhammer 40k faction any of the kids collect. Tolkien comes from a nerdy household – his father named him after the author of Lord of the Rings, after all – so it seems fitting that he should be the first to be associated with a Space Marine chapter.
We don’t yet have a faction guide to the Ravenguard, but we’ve been filling out a library of introductions to other Space Marine chapters if you fancy your own army of black-clad marines. Check out our guides to the Iron Hands, Deathwatch, Black Templars, or Blood Angels (who are mostly red… except for the Death Company).