History Literature / HaloContactHarvest

** An Insurrectionist is literally blown to pieces when Johnson hits him with a round from his Stanchion gauss-rifle, a MagneticWeapon originally designed to destroy bombs and other ordinance.

* AncestralWeapon: [[DropTheHammer The Fist of Rukt]], an ancient weapon wielded by Brute Chieftain Maccabeus, and later by Tartarus.

* CoitusEnsues: [[spoiler:The penultimate scene of the epilogue is some GladToBeAliveSex between Johnson and Jilan. While the scene is brief and non-explicit, it can still come across as somewhat jarring.]]

* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene: The prologue has Byrne torturing and executing Insurrectionist prisoners on ONI's orders.

* StunGuns: A paintball-based variation; in training exercises, the militia recruits use tactical training rounds (TTR), bullets which dissolve into harmless blobs of red paint within 10 cm of any surface, with the "stun" part being that the paint is a powerful anesthetic. Additionally, the paint also stiffens the nanofibers of the recruits' training fatigues, in order to simulate non-fatal but crippling injuries like getting shot in the knee.

* BadDreams: Johnson is continually plagued by nightmares of his worst missions against the Insurrection, not matter what brand of medication he takes to prevent them.

* ColdBloodedTorture[=/=]JackBauerInterrogationTechnique: Marine Nolan Byrne tortures an Innie prisoner in order to find their bombs. He does so only after his unit's ONI advisor gives him the go-ahead, implying that the UNSC as a whole approves of this.

* ConnectedAllAlong: In ''VideoGame/Halo2'', Johnson plays a pivotal role in defeating [[spoiler:Tartarus]]. Here, it's revealed that the two had already directly fought against each other during the first battle of the Human-Covenant War.
* ContinuityNod:

* SlaveRevolt: The Unggoy/Grunt Rebellion, which nearly shattered the Covenant before it was finally put down.

* SignLanguage: Dadab and Lighter Than Some primarily communicate with each other in Huragok sign language, with the former acting as the latter's interpreter.

* ICanStillFight: Despite still recovering from his injuries, Johnson leaves his hospital bed to get back to training his recruits, since he realizes that they're going to be the only thing standing between the incoming Covenant and Harvest.

* {{Tsundere}}: Sif is Type B, and finds it frustrating how Mack is able to so efficiently push her buttons. One example of such is when he misquotes a Creator/WilliamShakespeare play and jokes about her not knowing what it is, and she's so irritated by it that she replies with not just the complete works of Shakespeare in several different languages, but a multitude of other plays ranging from Aeschylus to "the twenty-fifth-century absurdist dialectics of Cosmic Commedia Cooperative". He just finds this overreaction amusing.

* NeedsOfTheMany: [[spoiler:After being repaired by Lighter Than Some and helping Loki evacuate Harvest's last survivors, Sif nonetheless agrees to let Loki finish destroying her in order to prevent her data from falling into Covenant hands, and eventually convinces a heartbroken Mack to let Loki do so.]]

** The ''Minor Transgression''[='s=] engage in a major heresy by tampering with their ship's Luminary, not to mention the fact that they're glorified SpacePirates.