Trivia / Halo

• Actor Allusion:
  • Nathan Fillion appears in Halo 3, voicing GySgt Reynolds. He also appears in Halo 3: ODST, as a sergeant leading a squad that includes characters portrayed by Adam Baldwin and Alan Tudyk. Again!
  • In H3, Adam Baldwin voices an ODST who yells: Gee it sure would be nice if we had grenades, don'tcha think?. In ODST, his character yells out "Gorramit!" occasionally, another Firefly reference.
  • Katee Sackhoff, the actress who portrays Kara Thrace in the 2003 revival of Battlestar Galactica, voiced a marine in Halo 3. You can hear her yelling "Frak!" if she gets hit.
• Adored by the Network: It's becoming clear that Microsoft loves their franchise based on references cropping up in their other products. Besides the smartphone assistant named after Cortana, the replacement for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, was codenamed Spartan while the Windows 10 codename was Threshold, the name of the fictional gas giant that Alpha Halo orbits.
• Ascended Fanon: The first edition of the Halo Encyclopedia pretty clearly copied a lot of its information from the Halo wiki, including several of the latter's errors. While 343 Industries have said that the Encylopedia's errors should not be considered canonical, one bit of fanon that snuck has managed to become official canon; the United Rebel Front, which originated from a misinterpretation of a single line in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, was eventually established as an official faction in later Halo media.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: Ten games,^note Counting ODST and the Wars duology but not the low budget twin-stick shooters. various books and comics, the requisite action figures, an anime series, two mobile games, several Alternate Reality Games, and two live-action serials, not to mention various promotional tie-ins. As of 2015 the franchise had sold 65 million games grossing $3.45 billion in revenue, plus another $1.2 billion from non-game media, making it one of the biggest sci fi franchises of all time. By 2021 the games have sold 81 million copies.
• Cast the Expert: Pete Stacker, who voiced Captain Jacob Keyes and Sergeant Stacker, was a Vietnam veteran. An outtake on the Bungie website has him talking about hearing incoming artillery fire for the first time.
• Creator Backlash: Bungie began to regret what it created; note that this only applies to the franchise specifically. They're proud of their own games, but were neutral-to-hostile when it came to the spin-off games, novels, etc. that cropped up around them, despite originally giving their blessing. According to Eric Nylund, author of several of the EU Halo novels, Bungie tried to kill the whole EU project in the cradle halfway through the first novel, thinking that the EU filled in too many details that would be best left to the players to decide for themselves, most notably Master Chief's personality, which they wanted to be a blank slate a la previous FPS protagonists. According to Ensemble Studios founder Tony Goodman, Bungie flat-out said that letting spin-offs be made (like the Halo Wars project he worked on) constituted "whoring out the franchise." This may be the reason that Halo: Reach crapped all over the meticulously-laid timeline of the extended universe.
• Creator-Driven Successor: The series is made by Bungie, who also created the Marathon games. Red vs. Blue references this now and again.
  • To elaborate, the original Halo CE could just as well have been called "Marathon 4", due to the abundance of elements (technology, terminology, texture and weapon design, etc) lifted wholesale from the Marathon games and the game itself fitting neatly into the segment titled "This century intentionally left blank" in the official timeline of the Marathon setting. Subsequent installments reduced the connection between the two, the most important change being the clear delineation that the Forerunners are not related to the Jjarro in any way due to conflicting timelines.
  • There are also several multiplayer ones. For example, Guardian is a spiritual successor to the Halo 2-era Lockout, Sword Base is a spiritual successor to both Prisoner and Boarding Action, etc.
• Creator Killer: Even by tabletop game standards, Fleet Battles and Ground Command sold absolutely horribly and were the direct reason the once-promising Spartan Games ended up closing their doors in 2017.
• The Danza: Recurring marine sergeant Marcus P. Stacker is voiced by Pete Stacker^note The "P" stands for "Peter".
• Defictionalization: The Windows Phone and Windows 10 digital assistant is named Cortana. Jen Taylor even voices her, and the avatar is a halo. Word of God states that the two are completely different entities, though she does give some Continuity Nods if you ask the right questions.
  Question: Which is better, you or Siri?
  Answer: Not to brag, but apparently I'm going to save the universe in about 500 years.
• Fake American: SgtMaj. Avery Johnson was voiced by the British David Scully.
• Franchise Zombie: Originally, the franchise was supposed to end in 2. Then it was supposed to end in 3. Now it has seven games in the FPS genre alone, with more scheduled to come, though the original studio that created the franchise doesn't even own it anymore.
• God Never Said That:
  • Before Halo Wars, Halo fanon had claimed that the armor worn by Arbiters was the same exact suit that it had been through history, the successor receiving it after his predecessor had died (which is implied, but not said, in Halo 2, with the Prophets saying that the bodies were all in the mausoleum, and the armor's systems being outdated). However, the Arbiter of Halo Wars Ripa 'Moramee was killed and pushed down a chasm before his body was destroyed in a Earth-Shattering Kaboom. Henceforth, that meant the armor had been destroyed with it. Fans were annoyed, but it was later pointed out that since the Arbiter is intended to be sent on suicide missions, there would have been many cases where the armor was destroyed and/or impossible to recover. Such as falling to the core of a gas giant, like Thel 'Vadamee was about to.
  • One of the major complaints from the fandom when 343i took hold is that they made the Jossed the idea that the Forerunners were human, and instead established the ancient humans as another species entirely. Many fans seemed to think the Bungie-Era games unambiguously painted the Forerunners as ancient humans, and that 343i was retconning a major aspect of the franchise. In reality, there was always enough evidence (both in the Bungie games and in the EU) for both interpretations of the Forerunners, so what 343i did was more like Cutting Off the Branches on a Multiple-Choice Past than anything else.
• Hire the Critic: Luke Smith of 1UP got hired to Bungie after he wrote the article "Broken Halo", where he criticized Halo 2's multiplayer for being highly unbalanced. Following that, he put some real work into designing the multiplayer for Halo 3 and Halo: Reach.
• Long-Runners: 20 years and counting. Since 2001 the franchise has seen seven main games (Combat Evolved, 2, 3, Reach, 4, 5, and Infinite), one standalone expansion pack (3: ODST), two RTS games (Wars and Wars 2), and a canon series of DLC missions for 4 (Spartan Ops). Plus dozens of pieces of spin-off media including novels, mobile games, comic miniseries, animated movies, live action web series, tabletop games, and even in-universe encyclopedias and books.
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: The first game was originally conceived as a Real-Time Strategy game, but it made it to shelves as a First-Person Shooter, probably because its plot and factions coupled with its genre would have made it too similar to RTS heavyweight Starcraft. They eventually revisited the RTS idea, though.
• Newbie Boom: Pre-Halo, Bungie had a small but very dedicated fan community, primarily drawn from previous Bungie titles like Marathon and Myth, with whom they kept a very close relationship, hosting fan events, or attending events organized by fans. They even would release a few teasers into the fan community before any formal announcements had been made (such as with "The Cortana Letters".) When Halo came onto the scene, the fan community experienced an explosion in population size, often completely bypassing the original "old school" community entirely and forming vast new communities which quickly overshadowed them in size and visability. The older Bungie community is still alive and active, but is now a small piece of a much larger whole.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Both Miranda Keyes and the Prophet of Truth got new voice actors in between Halo 2 and 3.
    • Truth's voice changed from Top Dollar (Michael Wincott) to Zod (Terence Stamp).
    • Keyes changed from Julie Benz to Justis Bolding. Additionally, the character got a new (and sexier) design as well.
  • In Halo Legends, John-117 is voiced by David Wald instead of Steve Downes, while Cortana is voiced by Shelley Calene-Black instead of Jen Taylor. Additionally, neither of them apparently voiced the Halo 4 teaser trailer, though they both came back for the game proper (which was the first time they actually worked side-by-side^note they had never even met until 2010).
  • Avery Johnson was voiced by an uncredited actor in Halo Wars 2, as David Scully was involved with a video-game voice-actor strike at the time.
• Referenced by...: In Stellaris, one Megastructure you can build is a Ring World Planet. Doing so may net you a visit from a neighbor civilization concerned that it might be a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The Master Chief Collection originally introduced skins for the Warthog in Halo: Combat Evolved inspired by the paint jobs of the jeeps in Jurassic Park, complete with descriptions using quotes from the film. These were later removed and replaced with new skins, presumably due to this trope.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Among the most famous, influential and profitable console first-person shooters ever... was originally going to be an RTS. For Mac.^note Except not really, Halo was originally being developed for Microsoft Windows, a first for Bungie, when they were invited to Mac World 1999 they had to scramble to put together a Mac port. Steve Jobs just falsely claimed it was being developed for Mac first.
  • There was originally going to be a film of the game directed by Neill Blomkamp, the director of District 9. Of course, District 9 was only made because Blomkamp couldn't do the Halo movie; if there had been a Halo movie, we might be lamenting the opposite situation.
  • Bungie tried and failed in each of their numbered games to get the Engineers in, but programming and rigging led to them being cut each time until they finally debuted in ODST. Per Halo 2's commentary track, they would have been seen in the intro as Arbiter is branded, floating around like a popcorn dispensery.
  • There have been a number of cancelled games and rejected pitches throughout the franchise's history:
    • Halo DS was pitched by an unknown studio as a Halo game for the Nintendo DS, with a proof-of-concept demo featuring the multiplayer map "Zanzibar" from Halo 2 running on the handheld GoldenEye: Rogue Agent engine. If it ever was seriously pitched to Bungie, it never went any further than that.
    • Halo: Chronicles was a game developed by WingNut Interactive, a studio created by Peter Jackson, and intended to serve as a companion-piece of sorts to a Halo film he was also attached to. It would have focused on an ordinary Marine who had an alien arm grafted onto them, which slowly turned them into a Forerunner warrior. Gameplay was built around that transformation, as the player gradually unlocked new abilities that enhanced their mobility and combat skills. The game was ultimately cancelled when Peter Jackson's involvement in the troubled Halo film came to an end. Halo 3: ODST was created in its place and incorporated some of its gameplay ideas, while the Forerunner warriors, Prometheans, would make their debut in Halo 4. Meanwhile, the 'human is given an alien arm that slowly takes over their body' idea found its way into District 9, which was a direct successor to the cancelled Halo film project.
    • Titan was an Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game game set in the Forerunner-era developed by Ensemble Studios, who created Halo Wars after the project was cancelled.
    • Haggar was the Working Title for a game by n-Space based on the Mega Bloks line of Halo toys, which would've seemingly played like a cross between the LEGO Adaptation Games and Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. It was cancelled around 2013.
    • Creative Assembly made a rejected pitch for a Halo Wars 3 shortly after the release of Halo Wars 2. The pitch focused on the idea of space battles, with the ability to upgrade specific parts of your capital ship to affect its performance in battle.
    • Halo Online was a free-to-play multiplayer game based on Halo 3 exclusive to Russia and developed by Saber Interactive (who handled the graphics of both Anniversary games), which was cancelled after its closed beta. It is most infamous for a Fan Remake named ElDewrito that was created after its cancellation, which was shut down a few days after its first release by 343 Industries. In a happy ending, 343 cited the existence of the ElDewrito project as a major factor in their decision to port The Master Chief Collection to the PC, and even consulted with the ElDewrito developers when doing so. In addition, several armor customisation options and maps created for Halo Online would make their way into MCC, where they are integrated into Halo 3.
    • Early in the development of Halo Infinite, 343 Industries held an internal game jam to brainstorm ideas for future Halo gameplay experiences. The one pitch from this event to become publicly known is Halo: Starfighter, a space combat simulator that would've essentially been the well-received "Long Night of Solace" level from Halo: Reach expanded into a full game. This pitch caught fan's attention when concept art for the game was included in a banner on the 343 Industries website, and it was finally confirmed to exist when the embargo for Halo Infinite concept art was lifted and several pieces made for the pitch was released.

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