History ARG / HuntTheTruth

* TheWoobie: In-universe in Episode 7, Ben presents the [[spoiler: flash clones as these, infants painfully stretched into newborns and plunged into another kid's world as soon as they're ready, with nobody to comfort them.]] [[spoiler: Then, they're barely settling into their new home when they start rotting and suffering from a slow, ''incurable'' wasting disease, with only the terrified parents who they don't even ''know'' watching them rot away.]] All of this [[spoiler: to cover up the disappearance of the actual kids]] who would be soon made into {{Super Soldier}}s.

* TheWoobie: In-universe in Episode 7, Ben presents the [[spoiler: flash clones as these, infants painfully stretched into newborns and plunged into another kid's world as soon as they're ready, with nobody to comfort them.]] [[spoiler: Then, they're barely settling into their new home when they start rotting and suffering from a slow, ''incurable'' wasting disease, with only the terrified parents who they don't even ''know'' watching them rot away.]] All of this [[spoiler: to cover up the disappearance of the actual kids]] who would be soon made into {{Super Soldier}}s.

* TheBadGuyWins: In the final episode, [[spoiler: ONI manages to convince Giraud's sources to turn on him, and release the second video that exonerates the Chief. Because of this, Giraud is publicly humiliated and taken away. However, see also RayOfHopeEnding below.]]
** [[spoiler: As an adjunct to the above, the chances of ONI facing consequences for the SPARTAN II Program become practically nil, with the crimes behind it relegated to nothing more than a discredited conspiracy theory.]]

* InUniverseFactoidFailure:
** Part of ONI's cover up of John's history was having Deon Govender saying how a 12-year old John participated in high school boxing and easily defeated the other boys. The only problem was that not only was boxing ''illegal'' on Eridanus II, the colonists there had never even ''heard'' of the sport until after they got off world.
** Another point in ONI's cover up story was how Insurrectionists were abducting civilians in Elysium City, among which where John and his parents, the latter having died during the experience. Questioning John's childhood friend, Ellie, reveals that the Insurrection's presence on Eridanus II was purely political and relatively peaceful, and that there were no abductions; while Ray pulls up files that proved Katrina's (another of John's friends) claims that John's parents were still alive and employed up to 2528, four years after their supposed deaths.

* HateSink: [[spoiler: Ex-Captain Del Rio returns in Episode 10, now a Senator demanding the Master Chief's arrest.]] He was already hated back in ''Halo 4'' for being the biggest JerkAss in the franchise, but now the fans ''really'' want to pump him full of bullets.

* MarkedBullet: A ''Hunt the Truth'' trailer showed a bullet marked [[spoiler:[[AC: TRAITOR]]]] shattering the Chief's helmet.

* MilitaryScienceFiction

* MoralEventHorizon: InUniverse; Ben is willing to go along with ONI, get paid, and publish a story he knows is lies, until [[spoiler:he finds a recording of them drugging him a minute after he meets Walker then shoving his unconscious body on another flight. Giraud is so infuriated at how they treated him that he cancels the story and leaks everything he's recorded to the public.]]

* TheReveal: In Episode 11, [[spoiler: Ben finds out that several of his "interviewees" were bribed to do so, or outright acting.]] Oh, and in Episode 13, [[spoiler: his sources too.]]

* TheWoobie: In-universe in Episode 7, Ben presents the [[spoiler: flash clones as these, infants painfully stretched into newborns and plunged into another kid's world as soon as they're ready, with nobody to comfort them.]] [[spoiler: Then, they're barely settling into their new home when they start rotting and suffering from a slow, ''incurable'' wasting disease, with only the terrified parents who they don't even ''know'' watching them rot away.]] All of this [[spoiler: to cover up the disappearance of the actual kids]] who would be soon made into a SuperSoldier.
* TookALevelInJerkass: Michael Sullivan, once a jokester recruit as a kid in ''Film/Halo4ForwardUntoDawn'', is now met again as an adult working for ONI. While still friendly, it's in a StepfordSmiler way, and he treats Ben like a special-needs child, frequently acting fake-excited and using catchphrases while not paying him much attention and doing covert stuff on his compad behind his back. [[spoiler: And he cuts off Ben's bank accounts, and the whole of Waypoint.]]
* UnexpectedCharacter:
** Benjamin Giraud actually is a returning character from the ''Halo'' canon. He first appeared, unnamed, in ''ComicBook/TheHaloGraphicNovel'', as a photographer [[{{VideoGame/Halo 2}} who's in New Mombasa when the Covenant attacked]]. The comic ends with him giving up his place on a lifeboat for another survivor, [[BolivianArmyEnding making it seem as though he died in the city]]. With no followup to the story since 2006, most fans expected he was dead, and never thought once thought he'd come back being played by the comedy star Creator/KeeganMichaelKey.
** While many correctly guessed the young boy in the "Starry Night" trailer was John, there was only speculation on who the girl was and once again, nobody expected the commercial to be referenced again. It came as a shock to many that not only was it made canon, but the girl in it received a name, Ellie Bloom, lived to adulthood, and has been a recurring character.

* CriticalResearchFailure: InUniverse.

* PinchMe: [[spoiler:Ben]] makes [[spoiler:FERO]] show him the time on her datapad twice so that he can know he's not dreaming.[[spoiler: When he learns of [[TheMole FERO's identity]], he begs her to show the datapad again as she's walking away so he confirm or deny that it's reality.]]

* OrwellianEditor: Throughout the ARG, ONI is initially trying to rewrite history to make Chief seem like a hero to the civilians. That is, until Ben did some investigating.

* GoMadFromTheIsolation: What usually happens at [[BlackSite Midnight Facility.]] [[spoiler:Poor Ben...]]
** [[spoiler:Mshak is suffering from this as well, locked in a safehouse in the middle of nowhere without internet access.]]
* GravityScrew: a side effect of the [[spoiler:Guardians]] emerging.
* GreyAndGreyMorality; Neither the UNSC or the Insurrectionists really give a damn about the innocent victims of the colony attacks, they only want to understand and control the anomalies for their own benefit. Both sides claim they are working to protect human lives, but when [[spoiler:the colony on Laika III is being destroyed]] the two factions are more interested in fighting each other than trying to evacuate the locals, which Maya notes with disgust.

-->[[spoiler:'''Mshak:''']] "Wow, I have a ''lot'' of unread messages. [[OhCrap Oh no...]]"\\
'''Maya:''' "What?"\\
[[spoiler:'''Mshak:''']] "The unthinkable has happened! I fell off the leaderboards at Unggoy Farmer."\\
'''Maya:''' [[spoiler:'''''"MSHAK!"''''']]\\
[[spoiler:'''Mshak:''']] "One billion percent focused!"
* WhamLine: From Episode 00:
--> '''ODST:''' Whoa, calm down [[spoiler:"FERO"]]!
--> [[spoiler:'''FERO:''']] Hey, I outrank you Lance Corporal! [[spoiler:You don't get to call me FERO! It's Commander Sankar to you, copy?!]]
** In Episode 01, [[spoiler:We learn that the "glassed planets" thing was in fact Sully's best attempt to ''warn'' Ben.]]

* AdaptationalVillainy: ONI has never been shown to be a particularly nice organization, but in general they were shown in the games and novels to be a group of [[WellIntentionedExtremist well intentioned]], if not amoral operatives working to protect humanity from alien threats like the Covenant and the Flood. In the ARG, however, they are the main antagonists and are shown to be an incredibly ruthless organization that will crush anyone who threatens to expose their dirty secrets to the public. They even try to frame the [[spoiler:Master Chief for a terrorist attack when he appears to go rogue from the UNSC.]]

* BigBrotherIsWatchingYou: ONI is pretty much watching everyone in the galaxy, and can do whatever they can to shut you up for good. Left your house? They'll condemn the entire building and wreck your apartment. Fled underground? They'll find you. They can even disable the Internet for whole planets or cut off your bank account or destroy your feed at the press of a button, and they are willing to track whoever has talked to you and make them disappear. And so far, as Ben so painfully finds out, [[spoiler: you cannot bring them down.]]
** They've also started seizing various Twitter accounts, most prominently Sapien Sunrise's.
* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler: Just as ONI finally finds Ben, FERO saves his ass by storming in and shooting up the agents.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Ben's name is publicly ruined, ONI manages to pin the faked footage and records on him, and he's "black-bagged" by the Feds to space-Gitmo. On the other hand, Petra is more than motivated enough to [[TakingUpTheMantle take up his banner]], since she delivered the bait that screwed over Ben, and she says that unlike Ben, she's not making it about respect. ''She's'' making it about fear.]]
** Goes into DownerEnding territory when Season 2 reveals that [[spoiler:she was captured by ONI after a few months]]

* TheBusCameBack: In Episode 10, [[spoiler:Andrew Del Rio, former Captain of the UNSC ''Infinity'',]] thought gone after ''{{VideoGame/Halo 4}}'' comes back, [[spoiler:now a Senator who whips up an anti-Master Chief campaign in wake of the Biko massacre]].

* DidNotThinkThisThrough:
** During episode 9, ONI has every bank freeze Ben's assets after he [[spoiler:leaks the truth of the Spartan Program to the UNSC senate]]. Ben immediately laments not withdrawing every credit to his name before trying to actively take on possibly the most powerful agency in human history. Granted, walking into a bank would likely immediately alert ONI to his location, and he is technically on the run.

* [[invoked]]MoralEventHorizon: InUniverse; Ben is willing to go along with ONI, get paid, and publish a story he knows is lies, until [[spoiler:he finds a recording of them drugging him a minute after he remeet Walker then shoving his unconscious body on another flight. Giraud is so infuriated at how they treated him that he cancels the story and leaks everything he's recorded to the public.]]

* RogueProtagonist: Ben eventually whistleblows on ONI's atrocities, and [[spoiler: Chief seems to have become one by escorting alien diplomats to safety after opening fire on a peace conference and kidnapping human diplomat Richard Sekibo]].
** HeroWithBadPublicity: [[spoiler: As it seems to have turned out, nine members of an anti-alien terrorist organisation were attempting to attack the conference, and Chief was actually trying to save everyone else, including Sekibo. It worked. Almost. Too bad the UNSC, for whatever reason, is apparently trying to cover up the involvement of said terrorists, despite the protests of both Sekibo's people and the aliens.]]

* [[invoked]]TheWoobie: In Episode 7, Ben presents the [[spoiler: flash clones as these, infants painfully stretched into newborns and plunged into another kid's world as soon as they're ready, with nobody to comfort them.]] [[spoiler: Then, they're barely settling into their new home when they start rotting and suffering from a slow, ''incurable'' wasting disease, with only the terrified parents who they don't even ''know'' watching them rot away.]] All of this [[spoiler: to cover up the disappearance of the actual kids]] who would be soon made into a SuperSoldier.

* WhamEpisode: Episode 8. [[spoiler: The galaxy goes crazy over the leak FERO and Ben started, people are beginning to riot in the outer colonies, the anomalies in deep space are increasing and worst of all, the Chief, TheHero of the Halo universe and beloved by many players, attacks Biko's peace conference for seemingly no reason, killing several human bodyguards and kidnapping the head diplomat (who's later found dead), all the while escorting the ''alien'' delegation to safety.]]

* HopeSpot: After the end of Season One, Petra promised to take up Ben's fight to expose ONI. [[spoiler:She's been captured by ONI in between seasons.]]

* MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: By Episode 3 [[spoiler:Maya is fed up with ONI's treatment of her and their attacks on innocent civilians, and goes rogue with the Guardian data.]]

** Sapien Sunrise is an human-supremacist group that advocates revenge against former Covenant species.

* WhamEpisode: Episode 8. [[spoiler: The galaxy goes crazy over the leak FERO and Ben started, people are beginning to riot in the outer colonies, the anomalies are increasing and worst of all, the Chief, TheHero of the Halo universe and beloved by many players, attacks Biko's peace conference for seemingly no reason, killing several human bodyguards and kidnapping the head diplomat (who's later found dead), all the while escorting the ''alien'' delegation to safety.]]

* MeaningfulName: Mshak was a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mshak Russian newspaper]] that espoused democratic Russia ideals. It was shuttered in 1921 with other anti-Bolshevik media.

* OneNameOnly: The pre-Master Chief is just John, with his last name unsaid and actually blacked out when written down.

* CanonImmigrant: Black-Box from the [[Literature/HaloGlasslands Kilo]]-[[Literature/HaloTheThursdayWar Five]] [[Literature/HaloMortalDictata novels]] is assigned as Maya's partner/handler. [[spoiler:Ilsa Zane and her New Colonial Alliance rebels]] from the ''Halo: Initiation'' comics are also major antagonists, as are [[spoiler:Dasc Gevadim and his Triad cult]] from the ''Literature/HaloEvolutions'' anthology.

* SerialEscalation: Ben simply investigates and gets more and more puzzling clues to the origin of Chief. Eventually, his investigation leads to galaxy-wide grumbling, [[spoiler:the revelation of Chief seemingly attacking the Biko peace conference (and subsequent revelations about the ''real'' circumstances of that event)]], and by Episode 9, severe rioting in the outer colonies.

In 2558, six years after the end of the Human-Covenant War and one year after the events of ''{{VideoGame/Halo 4}}'', former propaganda journalist Benjamin Giraud ([[Series/KeyAndPeele Keegan Michael-Key]]) is hired by the Office of Naval Intelligence to write a biographical article on legendary SuperSoldier John-117, the Master Chief himself. Giraud enthusiastically signs up for the job, and is being paid well to interview exclusive witnesses who claim to have known John since his childhood. But as Giraud does his own investigating on the side, he finds that the stories he's hearing don't match up with the evidence. Soon Giraud finds himself doubting everything ONI's been telling about the Master Chief, and sets out to discover the truth, even if it's not the heroic story he wants to believe.

** Benjamin Giraud actually is a returning character from the ''Halo'' canon. He first appeared, unnamed, in ''ComicBook/TheHaloGraphicNovel'', as a photographer [[{{VideoGame/Halo 2}} who's in New Mombasa when the Covenant attacked]]. The comic ends with him giving up his place on a lifeboat for another survivor, [[BolivianArmyEnding making it seem as though he died in the city]]. With no followup to the story since 2006, most fans expected he was dead, and never thought once thought he'd come back being played by the comedy star [[Series/KeyAndPeele Keegan Michael-Key]].

''Hunt the Truth'' (sometimes stylized [=#HUNTtheTRUTH=]) is an 2015 AlternateRealityGame that [[ViralMarketing served as advertising for]] ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians''. It can be found on {{Website/Tumblr}} [[http://huntthetruth.tumblr.com/ here]], and is published through a series of photo blogs and audio journals.

In 2558, six years after the end of the Human-Covenant War and one year after the events of ''{{VideoGame/Halo 4}}'', former propaganda journalist Benjamin Giraud ([[Series/KeyAndPeele Keegan Michael-Key]]) is hired by the Office of Naval Intelligence to write a biographical article on John-117, the Master Chief himself. Giraud enthusiastically signs up for the job, and is being paid well to interview exclusive witnesses who claim to have known John since his childhood. But as Giraud does his own investigating on the side, he finds that the stories he's hearing don't match up with the evidence. Soon Giraud finds himself doubting everything ONI's been telling about the Master Chief, and sets out to discover the truth, even if it's not the heroic story he wants to believe.

* ParanoiaFuel: In-universe one: ONI has enough power to target anyone you've spoken to and make them disappear. They can drug you on flights, withdraw your money, cut off the Internet because you spoke out of line...and even completely destroy the apartment you live in, and condemn the whole building, ''

* ContinuityPorn: Whoever's running this show loves their ''{{Franchise/Halo}}'' mythos. We've got Benjamin Giraud, our protagonist, straight from ''ComicBook/TheHaloGraphicNovel'', Michael Sullivan from ''Film/Halo4ForwardUntoDawn'', references to a ''VideoGame/Halo3ODST'' comic, and of course Master Chief's original origin from the books weaved into the plot, and many more besides. Episode 8 also showed that Mshak knew about the [[Anime/HaloLegends two SPARTAN-II escapees that killed themselves once they met their clones.]]

In 2558, six years after the end of the Human-Covenant War and one year after the events of ''{{VideoGame/Halo 4}}'', the former propaganda artist Benjamin Giraud ([[Series/KeyAndPeele Keegan Michael-Key]]) is hired by the Office of Naval Intelligence to write a biographical article on John-117, the Master Chief himself. Giraud enthusiastically signs up for the job, and is paid well to interview exclusive witnesses who claim to have known John since his childhood. But as Giraud does his own investigating on the side, he finds that the stories he's hearing don't match up with the evidence. Soon Giraud finds himself doubting everything ONI's been telling about the Master Chief, and sets out to discover the truth, even if it's not the heroic story he wants to believe.

!!Hunt the Truth provides examples of:

''Hunt the Truth'' (sometimes stylized [=#HUNTtheTRUTH=]) is an AlternateRealityGame that [[ViralMarketing served as advertising for]] ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians''. It can be found on {{Website/Tumblr}} [[http://huntthetruth.tumblr.com/ here]], and is published through a series of photo blogs and audio journals.

A second season ran from September 22 to October 26 of 2015, ending just before the release of ''Halo 5: Guardians''. It follows the story of FERO, the recurring [[RebelLeader Insurrectionist Leader]] from from Season One.

''Hunt the Truth'' (sometimes stylized [=#HUNTtheTRUTH=]) is an AlternateRealityGame [[ViralMarketing as advertising for]] ''VideoGame/Halo5Guardians''. It can be found on {{Website/Tumblr}} [[http://huntthetruth.tumblr.com/ here]], and is published through a series of photo blogs and audio journals.

A second season was confirmed at San Diego Comic-Con 2015. It began on September 22nd of 2015 and will continue even after the events of ''Halo 5: Guardians''. It follows the story of FERO, the recurring [[RebelLeader Insurrectionist Leader]] from from Season One.

* GreyAndGreyMorality; Neither the UNSC or the Insurrectionists really give a damn about the innocent victims of the colony attacks, they only want to understand and control the anomalies for their own benefit. Both sides claim they are working to protect human lives, but when [[spoiler:the colony on Laika III is being destroyed]] the two sides are more interested in fighting each other than trying to evacuate the locals, which Maya notes with disgust.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The fate of [[spoiler:Mshak, Ilsa Zane, and Dasc Gevadim after the events on Laika III are unknown.]]
* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: Black-Box delivers one as a report to CINCONI Admiral Osman.

* BodyHorror: The Kig-Yar (Jackal) pirates keep a wall of dead alien and human body parts on their ship as a bizarre trophy/history display. [[spoiler:Bostwick]] comes very close to joining the collection.
* CanonImmigrant: Black-Box from the [[Literature/HaloGlasslands Kilo]]-[[Literature/HaloTheThursdayWar Five]] [[Literature/HaloMortalDictata novels]] is assigned as Maya's partner/handler. [[spoiler:Ilsa Zane and her fellow New Colonial Alliance rebels]] from the ''Halo: Initiation'' comics are also major antagonists, as are [[spoiler:Dasc Gevadim and his Triad cult]] from the ''Literature/HaloEvolutions'' anthology.

* GreyAndGreyMorality; Neither the UNSC or the Insurrectionists really give a damn about the innocent victims of the colony attacks, they only want to understand and control the anomalies for their own benefit. Both sides claim they are working to protect human lives, but when [[spoiler:Laika III is being destroyed]] they are more interested in fighting each other than trying to evacuate the locals, which Maya notes with disgust.