List of rectified inconsistencies in the Halo series

"Catalog's answers are correct as of time of [publication], but users should be aware that reconciliation effects and integrity checks may alter specifics at a later time."

- Catalog

This page lists internal inconsistencies and canonical conflicts that have since been resolved in the Halo series whether from reprints or external sources.

Halo: The Fall of Reach
There are two reissued editions of The Fall of Reach; the first one, released on August 3, 2010, retained many of the errors present in the original printing while spawning some new ones of its own, prompting Tor Books to publish an additional "Definitive Edition" with further revisions on June 28, 2011.


 * The dropship used to transport the 75 SPARTAN-II trainees to the Military Wilderness Training Preserve in Chapter 5 was originally identified as a Pelican, whose troop bay would be too small for 75 people. In the reissue the dropship is replaced with the larger Albatross, a change that was carried over into the comic and animated adaptations.


 * On page 46 of the original edition, Kelly-087 hands out parts of a map to the 75 Spartan trainees. Then on page 48, when John checks to make sure the children arrived at the lake, he counted only 67. In the re-release, "sixty-seven" is changed to "seventy-four".


 * In the original edition, when the Spartans are browsing through the cargo manifest of the freighter Laden, the ship is said to carry champagne of a "Beta Centauri vintage", implying the Beta Centauri system had been colonized by humanity. In the re-release, "Beta Centauri" has been changed to "Procyon". This is likely due to the fact the system is situated well beyond the known sphere of influence of humanity and thus unlikely to house a colony.


 * In the original edition, Captain Keyes refers to Ensign William Lovell as "Michael" when first meeting him. This has been corrected in the 2010 edition.


 * In the original, a UNSC frigate was referred to as the Alliance, and then shortly thereafter as the Allegiance. In the 2010 edition, the ship is referred to as the Allegiance in both instances.


 * In the original edition, the ship was referred to as a cruiser and then later as a carrier. In the 2010 edition, the ship is referred to as a cruiser in both instances.


 * On page 19, Michael Stanforth was said to be a Vice Admiral, and on page 95, it said he was a Rear Admiral. In the 2010 edition, he is referred to as a Vice Admiral in both instances.


 * In the original edition, Vice Admiral Stanforth was stated to be ten years Dr. Halsey's senior. "Ten years" is changed to "six years" in the 2010 edition, most likely to accommodate Stanforth's and Halsey's birth dates established in the ONI memorial in Halo 3: ODST.


 * In the 2001 edition, the Pillar of Autumn is said to be missing its port-side emergency thrusters, though it later uses them twice. In the 2010 edition, the mention of the thrusters being missing has been removed.


 * In Chapter 22, James-005's left arm is severed by an assault cannon. In the original edition, it is said a few pages later that he saluted with his left hand—while it was still missing. In the 2010 re-release, he salutes with his right hand.


 * In the original edition, the first time John-117 encounters Sangheili warriors in the battlefield is on Gamma Station during the Fall of Reach. In addition, the UNSC is depicted as not having any first-hand intelligence on the species prior to the battle; Dr. Halsey only speculates their existence. This was ignored in later material; in the subsequent Eric Nylund novel Halo: First Strike, the Spartans of Red Team casually refer to the Elites at a time they would have been no more familiar with them than John and Blue Team aboard Gamma Station, and in Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, the Spartan-IIIs encounter Sangheili as early as 2537 and 2545. Later fiction has portrayed Sangheili as having been present in battles throughout the war numerous times. References to the Sangheili as being a never-before-seen species were altered to be more in line with the revised canon in the reissue. When Dr. Halsey briefs the Spartans for Operation: RED FLAG in chapter 26, the line
 * "We believe there is a 'race' of field commanders, which we are currently calling 'Elites'"
 * is changed into:
 * "We also know that there is a 'race' of field commanders we have historically called 'Elites'".
 * During the Spartans' mission to Reach Station Gamma in chapter 35, the following sentence:
 * "These must be the elite warrior class Dr. Halsey had conjectured. The Covenant's best? They were about to find out."
 * is changed into:
 * "These were Elites - the iron heart of the Covenant. Would they best the Spartans this time? They were about to find out."


 * In chapter 29, the sentence
 * "From this distance, the Pillar of Autumn could have been mistaken for an elongated frigate."
 * is changed into:
 * "From this distance, the Pillar of Autumn could have been mistaken for a Marathon-class carrier."
 * This passage is still erroneous as the Marathon class is a cruiser, not a carrier.


 * The number of the Covenant ships present at the battle over Reach is changed from 314 to "well over seven hundred" in the 2010 reissue. This may be due to a line spoken by Fleet Admiral Terrence Hood in Halo 2, where he states that the fleet that destroyed Reach was "fifty times" the size of the Fleet of Sacred Consecration. However the change is only done once while all other instances state the fleet consists of 314 ships. The number is changed back to its original form in the 2011 Definitive Edition.


 * In the 2001 edition, Admiral Roland Freemont recalls all UNSC warships in the "REACH, JERICO (sic) and TANTALUS systems" to the defense of Reach. The 2010 reissue changes the spelling of "JERICO" to "JERICHO", but the rest of the line remains unchanged. In the 2011 Definitive Edition, the reference to the Tantalus and Jericho systems has been removed: Reach and Tantalus are both planets in the Epsilon Eridani system, whereas the so-called Jericho system had fallen to the Covenant many years prior.


 * During Blue Team's mission to Reach Station Gamma, the original edition states that Kelly shouted "All secure!" while the Spartans' Pelican prepares for maneuvering, even though she is not aboard the Pelican. "Kelly" has been corrected to "Linda" in the reissue.

Halo: The Flood

 * The cutscene in Halo: Combat Evolved at the end of the level The Pillar of Autumn clearly shows the Autumn being fired upon with plasma. However, in Halo: The Flood, the Prophet assigned to the fleet forbids the Covenant ships to fire, lest they strike the "sacred relic". However, this is remedied in the fleet broadcast log in the ancillary content of the reissue of Halo: The Flood, where it is revealed that the order was ignored by the fleet's Supreme Commander.


 * The original edition describes how a group of entrenched Marines could not be hit by Ghosts' plasma fire, as the vehicles' plasma cannons were fixed and the marines were on a hill. In the games, the Ghost's plasma cannons can easily increase or decrease their angle. The line is altered to be more vague in the new edition:


 * "Fortunately, the weapons that fired the energy bolts were fixed, which meant that the rise would continue to offer the humans a good deal of protection, so long as the Ghosts weren't allowed to climb the slopes."


 * is changed into:


 * "Fortunately, the Covenant vehicles couldn't get a fix on the Marines' position, which meant that the rise would continue to offer the humans a good deal of protection, so long as the Ghosts weren't allowed to climb the slopes."


 * A reference to a Hunter having a spine is changed in Chapter 4 in a scene where John-117 kills one with a Shade turret. In addition, the male pronoun used to refer to it is changed to the neutral "it" in some instances:


 * "The Hunter didn't have time to bring its shield fully into play, and plasma blasts burned through multiple layers of armor, and exited through his spine."


 * is changed into:


 * "The Hunter didn't have time to bring its shield fully into play, and plasma blasts burned through multiple layers of armor, and exited through its back."


 * However, the male pronoun remains unchanged in most instances and Ogada Nosa Fasu is still said to have a spine when John-117 kills it in Chapter 6.


 * In the original edition, Sergeant Parker is consistently referred to as a he, and then a she. He is consistently referred to with the male pronoun in the new version.


 * The previously unidentified "loader-type exoskeleton" used by Oros when unloading cargo from the Pillar of Autumn is now identified as a Cyclops.


 * In Chapter 8, the original edition consistently mistakes the 8-gauge shotgun as 12-gauge. This has been corrected in the 2010 edition.


 * In Chapter 9, the Second Squad was implied to have been completely consumed by the Flood, specifically saying that their numbers dwindled until two PFCs remained, before the last of the Marines fell. On the next page, however, it is stated that Foehammer proceeded to pick up the Marines. The following change is made in the new edition:


 * "The Spartan had vanished, and there was little the pilot could do except pick up the Marines, and hope for the best."


 * is changed into:


 * "The Spartan had vanished, and there was little the pilot could do except hope for the best."


 * In Chapter 10 of the original version, it says that three weapons would be unwieldy for the Chief, not to mention "damned heavy." It then says he chose a shotgun and sniper rifle. During the ensuing engagement, it is then stated the Chief "switched to the pistol", despite the fact it was established he was only carrying a shotgun and a sniper rifle at the time. In the 2010 edition, "pistol" is changed to "shotgun".


 * In the original edition, First Lieutenant Melissa McKay's mission clock, seen in chapter headings, is prefixed by an extra 1, creating an inconsistency with the Master Chief's mission clock. This has been fixed in the 2010 edition.


 * All mentions of the Prophet of Stewardship's antigravity belt in the original are replaced with "antigravity throne". This is likely because antigravity thrones were not established as the Prophets' primary means of transport until after the novel was written, making Stewardship's constant use of a belt rather than a throne seem rather out of character.

Halo: First Strike

 * The Longsword used by the Master Chief and the other survivors from Installation 04 to land in the Ascendant Justice was repeatedly referred to as a Pelican in the original edition. The ship is consistently referenced as a Longsword in the reprint.


 * In the original edition, the headings for chapters 5 through 9 refer to the Soell system as an "uncharted system". In the 2010 edition, the headings identify the system as Soell.


 * The formerly unidentified Covenant excavation machines at Menachite Mountain are now stated to be Scarabs.


 * Vinh is referred to as "SPARTAN 029" twice in the original edition, even though the tag 029 is assigned to Joshua throughout the rest of the book. In the 2010 edition, Vinh is correctly referenced as "SPARTAN 030" in both instances.


 * In the original novel, the Spartans are seemingly unfamiliar with the design of what is implied to be a prototype of the BR55 battle rifle. Since later material has established that the BR55 series had been in service for decades prior to the timeframe of the novel, the reprint identifies the weapon as the "BR55's newest version" and the Spartans are now shown to be familiar with its predecessors.


 * In the original edition, Lieutenant Wagner states that Reach was the closest thing he had to a home in the Outer Colonies, despite Reach being part of the Inner Colonies. "Outer Colonies" is replaced with "colonies" in the 2010 edition.


 * There are two instances in which the descriptions of the Covenant's glassing doctrine are modified. The first is located in chapter 11 during Lieutenant Wagner's debriefing by the UNSC Security Council. The line:


 * "When the Covenant destroys a planet, they typically move their large warships closer and blanket the world with a series of crisscrossing orbits to ensure that every square millimeter of the surface is covered with plasma bombardments."


 * is changed into:


 * "When the Covenant destroys a planet, they typically move their large warships closer and blanket the world with a series of crisscrossing orbits to ensure that nothing could ever survive on its surface."

Two pages prior to this, the line:


 * "Before I jumped to Slipspace, I witnessed the poles destroyed, and approximately two thirds of the planet's surface was on fire."


 * is changed into:


 * "Before I jumped to Slipspace, I witnessed the poles destroyed, and a significant portion of the planet's surface was on fire."

Additionally, Fred's description of the event in chapter 12 is also slightly modified:


 * "Something didn't fit. Covenant plasma bombardment had always proceeded in an orderly crisscrossing pattern across a planet until every square centimeter of the surface was glass and cinder."


 * is changed to:


 * "Something didn't fit. Covenant plasma bombardment had always proceeded in an orderly crisscrossing pattern across a planet until everything on its surface was glass and cinder."


 * Similar to the inconsistency of the Spartans' first encounter with Sangheili, in Halo: First Strike, the Spartans did not have any prior knowledge of the Jiralhanae until their encounter with them on the Unyielding Hierophant during Operation: FIRST STRIKE. This has also been contradicted in multiple later works which show Brutes as being well known to UNSC forces throughout the war. Like the Sangheili encounter inconsistency in The Fall of Reach, in the re-release of First Strike, references to the Jiralhanae have been altered so that the Spartans are now familiar with them:


 * "Also be advised, Chief, that there are ceremonial guards in this temple — a race we have not encountered before. Roughly translated from Covenant dialects, they are called 'Brutes'. They shouldn't be a significant threat or they would have been used in previous military situations."


 * is changed into:


 * "Also be advised, Chief, that there are Brutes in this temple. They shouldn't be a significant threat."


 * Also, in the next paragraph, the sentence "The name "Brute" didn't sound promising." is removed.


 * On the same page, the sentence
 * "The creature Cortana had called a "Brute" stepped from the shadows and faced John."


 * is changed into:


 * "The Brute stepped from the shadows and faced John."

Halo 2

 * In the opening cutscene of Outskirts, the Warthogs have no drivers. This was corrected in the Anniversary edition.
 * In the final cutscene of "Sacred Icon", Miranda Keyes duel-wielded SMGs while firing at the Arbiter, without any visible recoil. Supplementary material claimed this was impossible for non-Spartans, due to the strength it took to fire them accurately. In Halo 2: Anniversary, the cutscene is changed so Miranda only carries and fires one SMG.
 * A glitch in-game causes 343 Guilty Spark's "eye" light to dim when he speaks, unlike other games where it lights up as he speaks. This was fixed in Anniversary.
 * A visual glitch in the opening cutscene of Gravemind causes an Unggoy Master Chief frightens to slide across the ground motionlessly rather than running. This is fixed in the Anniversary edition.
 * Rtas 'Vadum is depicted as speaking clearly despite having lost half his mouth. Anniversary slightly modifies his design so that he still retains part of his left mandibles.
 * After Dr. Halsey's personal journal revealed Miranda Keyes was her daughter, Miranda's design in Anniversary has been modified to resemble her better.

Halo: Contact Harvest

 * The novel establishes Harvest as humanity's most distant colony world, further stating that the planet is six weeks away from the nearest colony, Madrigal, and two months from Reach. It is stated that Harvest is situated in the Epsilon Indi system, which is only 12 lightyears from Earth. This would place Harvest only 1.5 lightyears further from Earth than Epsilon Eridani, the heart of the Inner Colonies, and significantly closer than many other colony systems which have not been specifically mentioned as being particularly distant (e.g. 111 Tauri, Lambda Serpentis, and Zeta Doradus). This is rectified by Catalog, who claims this discrepancy is the result of both the fundamentally different geometry of slipstream space (resulting in a longer de facto distance), as well as propaganda during humanity's colonial expansion period supposedly labeling Harvest as the most distant colony even if this was not strictly true.

Halo 4

 * In the opening cinematic, Dr. Halsey envisions Spartans wearing John-117's customized Mark VI armor from the campaign, even during a scene when John canonically wore the Mark V. Cortana created this design aboard the stranded Forward Unto Dawn years after her last meeting with Halsey, meaning the doctor could not be aware of its appearance. Josh Holmes later clarified that the armor in the cutscene is not canon; the modified Mark VI design was used because the production team lacked the time necessary to create canonically accurate models that would receive mere seconds of screentime. Halo 4: The Essential Visual Guide makes a tongue-in-cheek reference to this, stating that John's redesigned armor resembles a version of the Mark IV. John's original Mjolnir suit as shown in Halo: The Fall of Reach - The Animated Series appears to be the variant in question, as it combines the overall design of the Halo Wars model with a helmet and forearms reminiscent of his Halo 4 armor.
 * Although Cortana used nanomachines to heavily overhaul John's armor while he was in cryo, the suit retains a gash on its right side received from John's freefall drop in Halo 3. The Halo 5: Guardians Multiplayer Beta revealed a scarred variant of the Mark VI in multiplayer, with the chest damage mirroring John's Mark VI. The in-game description states that it is possible for the MJOLNIR's triply-redundant self-repairing systems to fail. Hence, Cortana was simply unable to repair the gash because it was extensively and permanently damaged.
 * Though is heavily redesigned both superficially and structurally, 343 Industries writer Jeff Easterling has confirmed that the ship's original Halo 3 appearance is canon.
 * The Librarian is depicted as an old woman, despite having been claimed to be an ideal beauty in Primordium, having subconsciously influenced what humans imagine to be the perfect female. Silentium explains this as being a spiritual beauty, having the usually unfeeling Catalog be attracted to her despite noticing various imperfections on her face.
 * In the Spartan Ops chapter "Didact's Hand", Gabriel Thorne seemingly claims (due to his fumbled wording) to have have served in the Army for a year before joining the Spartans in response to the New Phoenix Incident. However, Halo 4: The Essential Visual Guide explicitly states that Thorne had already joined the Spartans prior to the attack, and that he was not in the city at the time because he was away on deployment with them. Thus, Thorne actually means that he had been in the Army until he joined the Spartans a year before the incident. Halo: Escalation supports this by revealing that his grandmother (who was killed in the attack) bought a Master Chief action figure to celebrate her grandson's acceptance into the SPARTAN-IV program.

Halo: Silentium

 * The journey of 160,000 lightyears to Path Kethona is described as being an unprecedented and exceedingly challenging undertaking to the Forerunners, in particular due to the reconciliation debt involved with the long distance. Even with a state-of-the-art ship specifically designed for the voyage, the trip is noted as potentially accumulating catastrophic causal strain. Strangely, no such difficulties are mentioned in reference to the trips to Installation 00 or its older counterpart, the greater Ark, particularly where the construction of the two extragalactic installations is concerned. Installation 00, at 262,144 lightyears from the galactic center, is roughly 100,000 lightyears more distant than Path Kethona; in Silentium, upon arrival at the greater Ark, it is mentioned that the lesser Ark is "hidden a third of the way around the outer boundaries of the galaxy". This would suggest that the greater Ark is situated well over 700,000 lightyears away, placing the apparent difficulty of reaching Path Kethona in a rather absurd light. While the comparative ease of voyages following the collapse of the ecumene at the end of Halo: Silentium and in Halo 3 can be justified by the galaxy-wide cessation of Forerunner slipspace travel, the construction and subsequent consistent traffic between the galaxy and the Arks for over a thousand years is more difficult to explain. When constructing the Arks, the Builders would have moved resources amounting to untold times the mass of Audacity over a far greater distance, yet the Arks' construction — which had already occurred at the time — goes unmentioned as an incident comparable to the Path Kethona expedition when it seemingly exceeds Audacity's voyage as a technological feat.
 * Although it is specifically stated in Halo: Silentium the Halo installations' mass (or size) is a major factor in the generation of space-time debt, according to Catalog, reconciliation is mainly determined in a nonlinear fashion by discrepancies in information transfer between locations and considerations involving tension on the space-time brane.

Halo Waypoint

 * In the Adjunct transmission included in the re-release of Halo: The Flood, the Ascendant Justice is referred to as a "supercarrier", despite being only 3000 meters long, well below the 28 kilometer length of a Covenant supercarrier. A Canon Fodder post later clarified that "supercarrier" is a general term for several heavy-tonnage ships, and that the Justice was specifically a DDS-class carrier.
 * A bio for Kelly-087, when first posted, claimed her birthdate was June 21, 2511. This date was unlikely as Dr. Halsey's personal journal, on an entry dated September 15, 2517, claimed Kelly was abducted close to her birthday, mistaking the ONI agents's capture attempts for a birthday game. The date on the bio was later corrected to September 21, 2510.
 * Mason Hundley's biography on Waypoint originally stated that he was born in 2535 and that he served "several years" in the Home Fleet before transferring to ONI in 2552. However, this would mean he enlisted in his mid-teens (too young to enlist even with parental consent) and joined ONI when he was 17 years old. The biography was later amended to say he was born in 2532, meaning he could have enlisted as early as age 16 with parental consent and transferred to ONI at age 20.
 * In an interview featured in the Special Edition of Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn, Chyler Silva describes as having grown up on Cygnus amid constant Insurrectionist violence; she specifically mentions that "it was just part of life on Cygnus". According to Halo: Contact Harvest, the Cygnus system had not been involved in the Insurrection as of 2524. Halo Waypoint's Canon Fodder blog later retconned this so that Silva had spent much of her childhood on Mamore, which was heavily involved in the Insurrection.
 * In Halo: Silentium, the Domain was destroyed by the firing of the Halos at the conclusion of the Forerunner-Flood war. This is seemingly confirmed in Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Halo 4, the former when 343 Guilty Spark notes the Monitors had lost contact with the Domain, and the latter when Cortana notes a Terminal that appears to be caught in an unending loop of trying to access the Domain over and over. In Halo 5: Guardians, the Domain is depicted as still in existence, and considerably different as it can be physically entered but requires hub worlds like Genesis and Kamchatka to access, while in The Forerunner Saga it could be accessed from anywhere much like the Internet.  The Halo Waypoint entry for Genesis claims the Halo rings' blast merely cut off access to the Domain, and that the Domain itself was damaged but gradually self-repaired over the following hundred millennia, as well as noting that most Forerunners had passive access to the network besides hub worlds.

Data Drop

 * In Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, the M90 shotgun used in the original Combat Evolved is replaced with the model of the M45 shotgun from Halo: Reach, although it retains the same range and spread as the M90. Data Drop 6 explains this as being the M45E, a variant that is functionally identical to the M90 in performance, and further explains that all the M90's aboard the Pillar of Autumn had been taken by the Spartan-IIs before they dropped to fight on Reach.
 * In Halo: The Fall of Reach, the titular Fall is depicted as occurring on August 30 2552, but Halo: Reach has the attack begin much earlier on July 24, 2552. The 2010 rerelease of The Fall of Reach did not alter the date of the attack's start, though it did include an Adjunct with a letter from Jacob Keyes admitting that he knows the Covenant are at Reach and is keeping the knowledge hidden from the Spartans and crew of the Autumn. Later on Data Drop 5 clarified that the coverup on the Autumn's crew was instigated by ONI Section Three, who were hoping to lure a Covenant flagship to Reach in hopes that it could be hijacked for Operation: RED FLAG.

Halo 5: Guardians

 * In the promotional trailer A Hero Falls, Lieutenant Penelope Boren gave the date of John-117's supposed death as October 27, 2560, two years after the events of Guardians take place. A Hunt the Truth blog post depicting a letter from Michael Sullivan to Admiral Osman explained the discrepancy as an in-universe error; Boren had lost focus in the emotion of the moment and misspoke the date during the press briefing. As penalty for her mistake, she was reassigned to a remote mining colony.