Everything Is Canon

Submission 12,119

Part of a series on Warhammer Female Custodes Controversy / Femstodes. [View Related Entries]

About

Everything Is Canon refers to a catchphrase accidentally created by the official @Sonic_Hedgehog Twitter team in early 2021 to describe how fluid the canon of the game world is. Throughout the years, this phrase began to be used whenever a company started to retcon its own lore, with it being used disparagingly against Games Workshop (the creators of Warhammer 40,000) as part of the Female Custodes Controversy in April 2024 when people began using a doctored tweet from the Warhammer Official Twitter as an exploitable meme format above images of absurd or humorous imagery, often fan art, and claiming it as canon.

Origin

On January 14th, 2021, the official Sonic the Hedgehog X / Twitter account^[1] posted a QRT to a collaboration post between the Sonic brand and Puyo Puyo, stating that "Everything is canon" and anything made as part of collaborations or fan-made art is part of official Sonic lore (shown below).

Following the tweet, the "everything is canon" phrase was used as a tongue-in-cheek remark towards Sonic the Hedgehog, with people referencing other fan-made works of art or absurd fan creations and claiming that they were part of the established canon of sonic.

In the context of Warhammer 40K, numerous claims purport that Games Workshop has long held the belief that "everything is canon, not everything is true" in regards to the lore surrounding the universe.^[4]^[5] This statement was supposedly intended to justify the randomness of the tabletop game and allow players freedom to create their own unique armies and lore.^[6]

Statements made by Games Workshops Lead Creator Gav Thorpe about the canon of the story back in 2010 on his personal blog^[2] (shown below), as well as stated by other game designers at the company, are often referenced in justifications to this viewpoint.

Spread

In April 2024, the catchphrase hit a new stride as a result of the Warhammer 40,000 controversy involving the brand's established lore with the introduction of "Femstodes."

On April 18th, 2024, as a response to the female Custodes being stated as always existing by the Warhammer Official (@warhammer) Twitter / X account, fans of the series began to post their own fan interpretations and ideas using the original phrase from the Sonic post and pretending that Games Workshop tweeted it.

For example, on April 18th, X user @Kevinbolk^[3] posted a picture of a squad of Space Marines that were edited with the heads of characters from Hamtaro, claiming that "everything is canon" (shown below). The post received over 57,000 views and 2,200 likes in six days.

On the /r/grimdank subreddit, numerous memes using an edited tweet with the catchphrase coming from the Warhammer Official Twitter were posted in late April 2024. For example, Redditor dazli69 posted one on April 19th with Roboute Guilliman (Primarch of the Ultramarines) and the Eldar character Yvraine in reference to a fan theory that the two are lovers, receiving over 2,400 upvotes and 120 comments in five days (seen below, left).^[7]

On April 20th, 2024, Redditor Valentinuis posted another example referencing the Female Custodes drama to /r/grimdank,^[8] receiving over 1,400 upvotes and 220 comments in four days (seen below, right).