.fortune

.fortune is an Easter egg in the Xbox version of Halo: Combat Evolved, as well as Halo 3, Halo: Reach, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection. In all cases, the egg causes a funny message to appear when ".fortune" is written somewhere, but the egg is more extensive in Halo: Combat Evolved. In Halo 3 and Halo: Reach, giving a map variant the description of ".fortune" will produce the phrase "My modem is on fire". In Halo: Combat Evolved, if the player creates a profile, renames an existing one, or creates a map name and names it ".fortune", a random fortune-cookie-like saying will appear on the screen.

The ".fortune" on the text box will then also instantly disappear. However, if the player places a symbol at the beginning (such as a left parenthesis) to make ".(fortune", and subsequently uses the arrows to move to and delete the parenthesis when finished, ".fortune" will remain, allowing the player to use it as a profile name if they so wish.

Activating the Easter egg in Halo: The Master Chief Collection unlocks the Mystery Achievement.

List of Fortune Quotes in Halo: Combat Evolved

 * All your hard work will eventually pay off
 * Everything lies in silence
 * If anything just cannot go wrong, it will anyway (The first of Murphy's Laws)
 * Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. (A subdivision of Murphy's Law)
 * Never wear your best pants when fighting for freedom.
 * Rest is good, but idleness is its brother.
 * Smile when you're ready.
 * You cannot fall off the floor. (Another Murphy's Law)
 * Your luck is about to change.
 * I like beans. (Rare)

Trivia

 * This joke was also present on Bungie.net's Myth metaserver.
 * The Easter egg is similar to the fortune command found on most Unix-compatible operating systems. Like the fortune command in Unix, the Halo: Combat Evolved egg draws a random quote from a database, albeit much smaller in size than the lists accompanying most fortune implementations.
 * "My modem is on fire" is a reference to a notorious Unix error message "lp0 on fire".