History Characters / HaloOther

* BodyHorror: Infectees get their entire bodies mutated to better fit their role within the Flood (to the point where even their DNA is completely rewritten), and once an outbreak has reached a certain point, their bodies are broken down into building blocks for even more gruesome "Pure" Forms.

** In the final hours of the Battle of the Ark, High Charity itself teleports to the battlefield to try and stop Truth from activating the halo array, bringing the entire Flood hive with it once it crash lands. It also inadvertently threatens the galaxy with a swift and instant extinction when it takes down Rtas ship with pieces of itself, which was ready to blow the citadel Truth was in to hell and skip having to breach it in person.

** The Forerunners wiped out all sentient life in the galaxy (including themselves) with the Halo array, just to stop them from consuming EVERYTHING, "thereby rendering the parasite harmless" as Guilty Spark would say in ''Halo 2''.

* KillItWithFire: The Flood are particularly weak to the Energy weapons of the Covenant. Even an energy shield can destroy an Infection form on contact.

* MeaningfulName: Their preferred method of attack is to [[ZergRush drown their foes in a wave of dead bodies]] and cover the galaxy in an ever escalating and unstoppable tidal wave, like a ''Flood''.

* EvilIsPetty: Goes through the trouble of sending the Librarian a message while she waits on earth (delivered by reconstructed representations of ancient humans whose fate she feels immense guilt for, no less) simply to reveal to her the nature of [[spoiler: the Domain]] as "the greatest thing in the universe", that firing the Halos will destroy it... and when she tries to send the IsoDidact a message, reveals the Halos have ''already fired''. All to drive home what a failure her entire species is, push her to the depths of guilt and despair, and ''laugh in her face'' within her final moments of life.

* GadgeteerGenius: In a sense; WordOfGod states the Gravemind is fully capable of upgrading captured technologies to perform far beyond their original functionality through the application of [[spoiler:Precursor science]]. In fact, it didn't even need a portal to jump from our solar system to the Ark; it simply gave a major upgrade to ''High Charity'''s engines.

* ZombieApocalypse: Have likely consumed ''at least'' one other galaxy already before ever setting foot in ours.

* TheBadGuyWins: In a nutshell, and even if it didn't last for too long, the Gravemind DID get what he wanted at the end of ''Halo 2'', by escaping Installation 05 and infesting High Charity.

* TheCorrupter: One of its most dangerous abilities is the "logic plague", which allows it to subvert intelligences through non-biological means, generally through aggressive argumentation and other, more violent, mental attacks. Once an outbreak reaches a sufficient size, [[spoiler:it doesn't even need to personally talk with [=AIs=] to subvert them; a simple, self-replicating adaptive data instance carried in every Flood form and turncoat AI will do]].
** [[spoiler:As seen with the Ur-Didact, not even biological intelligences are immune]].

** Some of Cortana's cryptic whispers in ''VideoGame/HaloInfinite'' are spoken in rhyming trochaic heptameter - the same speech pattern the Gravemind uses, implying that Cortana's FaceHeelTurn in the previous game was due to his influence.

* HiveQueen: To a small extent; each of its physical manifestations works as a central hub for the collective Flood intelligence, with multiple "bodies" seemingly needed to coordinate a galaxy-size outbreak. However, actually destroying up a Gravemind does relatively little; its knowledge is backed up in every Flood form down to the last spore, and feral Flood maintain enough intelligence to not only be very dangerous in their own right, but will work to quickly rebuild their Gravemind.

* MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning: [[spoiler:"Resignation is my virtue; like water I ebb and flow. Defeat is simply the addition of time to a sentence I never deserved... but you imposed."]]
** [[spoiler: Considering that if the Flood ever reaches critical mass again, the next Gravemind will have all the memories of its predecessors, this quote takes on a whole new context.]]
* NearVillainVictory: It ''almost'' wins in Halo 3, after Truth is dealt with and the Ark's activation is halted. It is only undone by the Ark constructing a new ring to replace Installation 04, (the one the Chief destroyed back in the original) the Chief's daring rescue of Cortana from the infested High Charity, (who retained the activation index that could be used to fire it off) and The Gravemind being so arrogant as to think it had already won, leading it to, in its hubris, concentrate almost its forces at the Ark, outside our own galaxy and therefore just about the only place the humans and elites wouldn't have much of a problem actually activating Halo.

* ResurrectiveImmortality: Even if the Flood are reduced back to a non-sentient level, any Gravemind that manages to reform will have ''all'' the memories of its predecessors.
** [[spoiler:Even the Primordial, which may have been only a prototype Gravemind, is able to fully resurrect itself as a full-blown Gravemind after the [=IsoDidact=] completely destroys its original body.]]

* EldritchAbomination: [[spoiler:See "Precursor."]]

** Even the Banished, particularly Atriox, understood how dangerous they are despite only hearing stories about them. [[spoiler:He was willing to immediately abandon a number of fortified positions, which he was using to fight the ''Spirit of Fire'', in order to contain a severe outbreak originating from High Charity.]]

* DamagedSoul: [[spoiler:As part of the retribution dictated by the reality-warping {{Precursors}}, Flood infection is able to corrupt a lifeform's "pattern", analogous to a soul, making it impossible to restore that person with cloning or BrainUploading. Any attempt to do so results in [[CameBackWrong utter insanity and catastrophic physical deformation]], no matter what precautions are taken. This is why the Forerunners deemed [[Unwillingroboticisation the Composer]] a failure, as it was originally intended to save the infected.]]

* DamagedSoul: [[spoiler:As part of the retribution dictated by the reality-warping {{Precursors}}, Flood infection is able to corrupt a lifeform's "pattern", analogous to a soul, making it impossible to restore that person with cloning or BrainUploading. Any attempt to do so results in [[CameBackWrong utter insanity and catastrophic physical deformation]], no matter what precautions are taken. This is why the Forerunners deemed [[UnwillingRobotization the Composer]] a failure, as it was originally intended to save the infected.]]

** High Charity fell when ''In Amber Clad'' suddenly teleported nearby and rammed itself into High Charity's inner walls, then deploying UNSC Pelicans to then crash land all around the city and release tons of Flood.
** In ''Halo 3'', the mission Floodgate begins when a formerly Covenant owned cruiser, the ''Indulgence of Conviction'', teleports into Earth's atmosphere and crash lands in Voi, threatening to infect all of Africa, and then Earth.
** ''Halo 3'''s terminals shed some light on the Flood's naval tactics during the war with the Forerunners. In the first terminal, they use large commercial freighters and cruise liners as troop transports to crash down on cities, accompanied by thousands of smaller craft that sacrifice themselves as a sort of ablative armor -- the local defense fleets are otherwise ignored entirely. In the second terminal, it's specifically noted that Flood ships employ no meaningful strategy beyond attempting to make physical contact so they can board other ships.

* {{Foil}}: In terms of combat style, Flood Tank Forms could be considered a "foil" for the Hunters in the sense that both warriors are highly durable and can kill someone in one smack but Tank form's backs are less vulnerable whilst lacking the ranged weaponry the Hunters have. They also both roar when first seeing an enemy and shriek out when in agonizing pain due to taking damage. Interestingly you never see them in the same scene of any level.[[note]]Mods have shown that Hunters will utterly curbstomp Tank Forms.[[/note]]

* PunyAliens: Averted prior to the human-Forerunner war when they were near-technological equals to the Forerunners and could straight-up challenge them for galactic dominance alongside their human allies. Played straight after their defeat following the war's end.

* AmbiguousSituation: Their implied TimeMaster abilities, and the fact that the Forerunners are utterly terrified of them, hints at some connection to the Precursors. (Consider that the Xalanyn are called the "Endless", while the Precursors are associated with the adjective "Timeless" more than once.)

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* SelfServingMemory: Many Innies like to complain about how Earth and the UNSC abandoned them to the Covenant during the war, conveniently forgetting how the Insurrectionists spent years attacking {{UEG/CMA/UNSC}} representatives before the Covenant showed up, and how thousands of UNSC personel died trying to save Outer Colonies like Harvest, Bliss, and Biko during the early years of the war.

* TheWarOfEarthlyAggression: Operation: TREBUCHET was a decades-long counterinsurgency operation launched by the UNSC military against the Innies accross human space, which only ended with the arrival of the Covenant. Post-War, the surviving Insurrectionists are wary that the UNSC will try it again once they've rebuilt their military, and are re-arming themselves in preparation for a full-scale armed seccession from Earth.

* CassandraTruth: Outside of his old associate Andrew Remo, no one else outside of the UNSC believes him, not even his first wife or his second family.

* TheImmune: Explicitly stated to be immune to [[KillEmAll Halo's effects]], mandating their imprisonment rather than willfully ignoring their existence in the closing days of the war; as they would simply survive to supplant their plans rather than be extinguished.

* NamesTheSame: ''Franchise/MassEffect'' players will instantly think of the ''other'' [[AbusivePrecursors Abusive Precursor]] BigBad of that series when hearing her name. [[invoked]]

* UncannyValley: Invoked, as her model is animated at a different framerate than everyone else, to make her subliminally unsettling.

* Mean

* [[DatingCatwoman Dating The Insurrectionist]]: [[spoiler:When she's undercover, she quickly hits it off with Cole, despite the fact that she knows he's the captain of a ship that's already fought hers thrice; they become married and even have a child together, though they are forced to separate after her true identity is discovered.]]

* [[TheBigGuy The Big Gal]]: She is a ''Gigantopithecus''. The name says it all.

* SpikeShooter: Ranged Forms.

* HeroAntagonist: They're the main enemy for the first half of the Arbiter's campaign.