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Wikipedia claims that the Chinese character with the most strokes translates to the English word 'verbose' [0, 1].

Whoever came up with that one must have been a wicked deadpan humourist. I live with regret that I will never appreciate good Chinese (written) poetry.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters#Rare_and_co... [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%F0%AA%9A%A5

Also from Language Log: "Writing Chinese characters as a form of punishment" https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21965

How do these complex characters come about? Surely they could express the same meaning with a couple of smaller characters?

I feel that this is comparable to writing "Jentacular" instead of "pertaining to breakfast." It's a single word instead of 3, but who understands that (let alone write it, in Biangbiang's case)?