One of Tolkien’s letters describes orcs as“squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.”
And I was thinking about, 1.) Look at the legs on these Mongolian wrestlers all decked out for a major national wrestling festival, and also 2.) how Tolkien’s racist description wasn’t enough, and orcs have been depicted as more and more grotesque over time. Canonically orcs more or less just look like humans, but that’s not “other” enough so they keep getting turned in to more and more bizarre looking monsters.
Either way, this is what i’m thinking about when i’m laid up with the 'rona. If y’all like wrestling or buff men in tiny pants check out Mongolian wrestling. From what I understand it’s a hugely popular sport there and has been for like a thousand years.
The fiction setting’s comic relief rampaging more out of control than usual may well be like an allergic reaction to the fiction setting straying that far from its satirical roots.
If you mean in universe everything escalated pretty harshly since orginal Rogue Trader and even first editions of 40K. Out of universe it’s mostly just “SHUT UP I KILL YOU” Ahmed kind of humour recently. Though even in it they still have moments, like Ghazghkull at pretty much close to beginning of his career came to space hulk where he met greater daemon of Khorne coming straight from the permanent warp portal, krumped him in less than minute then screamed straight into the warp “THAT WAS PATHETIC! SEND SOMETHING BIGGER!” to which the portal closed and daemons all over hulk evaporated.