List of pop culture references in the Halo series

This is a list of pop culture references in the Halo series. For a list of references to the Halo series made by other works, see here.

300
With the IWHBYD skull activated, marines will sometimes shout "THIS IS SPARTA," a reference to a line in the movie and a popular internet meme.

Designs and technology

 * The Pelican's design was influenced by the Cheyenne dropship.
 * The “fins” that rise from the ground upon activation of the Portal on Earth very much resemble similar structures that can be seen surrounding the enormous atmospheric processing unit used for terraforming purposes on LV-426.
 * UNSC frigates, such as the, the , and especially the , with their protrusions from the bow, greatly resemble the ship Sulaco, both in appearance and usage. Also, in Halo 3, when the Forward Unto Dawn arrives at the Ark, the process of launching Pelicans from the frigate's hold is practically identical to that of launching the single dropship from the hold of the Sulaco.
 * The novelizations of Alien and Halo say that people go into cryo-stasis naked, though the films and game show them clothed.
 * In the Halo 2 level Outskirts, there are several posters showing what appears to be the head of an Alien.

Humanity

 * The Marines' combat armor in Halo: Combat Evolved and Aliens share many similarities.
 * In the mission log of PFC Jenkins during the level 343 Guilty Spark, Sgt. Johnson yells at Private Mendoza to identify a noise the squad hears, foreshadowing the coming of the Flood. This is much the same as the scene in which Sgt. Apone yells at PFC Hudson before the encounter with the Alien. Similarly, Mendoza and Hudson both start out cocky and confident, but start to break down and panic.
 * Marines in both Halo and Aliens have mission log cameras installed in their helmets.
 * Hudson's panicked "game over, man!" speech is included in Halo: Combat Evolved. It and other variations can sometimes be heard in gameplay by Naval personnel and Marines. One variation is heard aboard the Truth and Reconciliation by a Marine before being hushed by Captain Keyes. He also yells "we're screwed man, we're screwed!"
 * Bungie has admitted that Johnson was based from Apone.
 * In Halo 3, if Gunnery Sergeant Stacker is infected by the Flood, sometimes he mutters "kill me" or "shoot me", which is a line uttered at least three times in the Alien series by an infected host. Again, this may not necessarily be a deliberate reference.
 * Jonesy is a cat lost on the Pillar of Autumn, named in homage to a cat in Aliens.
 * The "Attention Marines: South Pacific Duty..." notice is said to be another reference to Aliens.
 * Halo: Combat Evolved includes similar dialog from the movie, such as "I got a bad feeling about this," and the response, "Boy, you always have a bad feeling about something". Similar words can be heard in the Halo 2 level in which the Arbiter first encounters the Flood. Ironically, the lines were spoken by Grunts, aliens themselves: "Me have bad feeling about this..." with the response "You always have bad feeling. You had bad feeling about morning food nipple." The line was also featured in Bungie's earlier game, Marathon.

The Covenant

 * Many aspects of Elite armor, such as the "shoulder spikes" on Heretic armor and the shape of the head-dress on Councilor armor, as well as the shape of the legs, are very similar to that of the Aliens.
 * The headdresses worn by Councilor Elites closely resemble the Alien Queen's head.
 * Both the Covenant and Aliens have a caste system. While the Covenant's is based on race and religion, the Alien's is based on their different life stages and species.

Flood

 * There are numerous similarities between the Flood and the Xenomorphs from the Alien series of films.
 * The Aliens and Flood both reproduce in a way that could be described as parasitic, though the Flood seems to modify existing biomass, (or create their own in the case of the Pure Form) while the Xenomorph "chest bursters" only develop inside the host up to a certain point, at which time they erupt from the victim's chest and presumably make up the rest of their mass by food consumption.
 * The Flood screeches in Halo 2 resemble the Xenomorph screeches at a higher pitch.
 * The Flood and Aliens have similar qualities such as climbing walls, jumping large distances, and are hive-minded yet learn as individuals.
 * Both inherit traits based on their hosts. A Xenomorph is different whether the face hugger attaches to a human, ox, or Yautja. Similarly, a Flood combat form is different depending on whether an Infection Form attaches to a Human, Elite, or Brute.
 * During Flood levels in both Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, most notably 343 Guilty Spark and High Charity, when visibility is limited and close quarters fighting is common, the player is forced to keep an eye on the motion tracker, a homage to Aliens.

Master Chief

 * Ripley begins and ends both Alien and Aliens in cryo-stasis, much like the Chief's overall story throughout the three games.
 * Both Ripley and Master Chief begin Alien and Halo in a large ship with other people and end up alone in a smaller shuttle.

Predator

 * The four mandibles of the Sangheili are similar to those of the Predator.
 * The cloaking device of the Predator is similar to active camouflage.
 * The energy sword, the signature melee weapon of the Sangheili, is the counterpart of the Predator's wrist blades.
 * The opening of Predator could resemble the cutscene from the level, "The Flood" introducing Fire Team Charlie. Both teams are being dropped off into jungle-like terrain by helicopter. In this case, a Pelican.
 * The Elites' honor system in battle resembles the Predators'.
 * Both the Elites and the Predators have worked with humanity to eliminate a greater threat. The Sangheili worked with humanity against the Flood and the Covenant Loyalists, and the Predators worked with humans against the xenomorphs.

Battlestar Galactica
Marines can be heard saying 'Frak', the trademark expletive of the show. The novel Halo: Cryptum also shows several parallels to the reimagined version of the show, such as a highly-advanced human civilization forced after warfare to live without technology on Earth, further enhanced by both taking place 150,000 years before the present day.

The Culture
Bungie has acknowledged Iain M. Banks' Culture series as one of the inspirations for the Halo universe.


 * In Conversations from the Universe, 343 Guilty Spark calls the Covenant a "primitive, hegemonizing swarm"; in the Adjunct section of the re-release of Halo: The Flood, Spark again refers to them as a "Tier 2 Hegemonizing/Religio-political Swarm". In the Culture series, the titular Culture, a hyper-advanced, post-scarcity civilization, uses the classification "aggressive hegemonizing swarm" to refer to self-replicating beings which assimilate other life forms. Guilty Spark's definition clearly differs from this, however, as the Covenant's manner of assimilation is merely cultural.
 * The Halo rings are very similar in concept to Orbitals from the The Culture, although the Halos are significantly smaller.
 * Many human ships in the Halo universe, particularly in the works of Joseph Staten, have whimsical, non-conventional names such as, or . A similar nonstandard ship naming convention is a staple of the Culture series.
 * The Portal is referred to as "the Excession at Voi", similar to the Culture's naming of the titular object in the novel Excession.

The Dukes of Hazard

 * With the IWHBYD skull on, Marines or Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck, will yell out the horn from the General Lee when you do something insane in the Warthog.
 * Sometimes Gunnery Sergeant Stacker will say: "Drive her like she's got a trunk-full-of-moonshine!" when ordered out of the drivers seat of a Warthog, a reference to the Dukes' family moonshine smuggling business.

Firefly and Serenity

 * Nathan Fillion (Malcolm Reynolds), Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb), and Alan Tudyk (Hoban "Wash" Washburne) provided the voices of Marine NPCs for Halo 3. All three actors returned to voice main characters in Halo 3: ODST: Buck, Dutch, and Mickey, respectively. Their in-game dialogue contains multiple references to Firefly. Commonly heard references include "Gorram", "Gorramit" and, in Halo 3, "Shiny, the Chief is here."
 * Marines voiced by Adam Baldwin can be heard saying, "Say 'hi' to Vera!" and "Gee, it'd be nice if we brought some grenades, wouldn't it?!" The former is a reference to Jayne Cobb's favorite weapon, while the latter is a direct quote from Jayne.
 * Gunnery Sergeant Reynolds, (who is voiced by Nathan Fillion), is named in reference to Malcolm Reynolds, Fillion's character from Firefly and Serenity. Fillion returned in Halo 3: ODST as Gunnery Sergeant Edward Buck, who boasts a very similar personality to Reynolds and is based on Fillion's likeness.
 * Mickey in Halo 3: ODST has previously served as a pilot and serves as an impromptu pilot for the squad during the events of the game. Alan Tudyk's character in Firefly and Serenity, Hoban "Wash" Washburn, is the pilot of the eponymous vessel.
 * The has an enlarged cargo bay that greatly resembles that of the eponymous 03 Firefly class, the class to which Serenity belongs.

Ghostbusters
When picking up a Spartan Laser, Dutch will occasionally shout "Don't nobody cross my stream!". This is a reference to the proton beams, which would theoretically annihilate the entire universe if crossed with one another.

Green Day
"Sometimes I give myself the creeps," a lyric from a Green Day song, is in Halo: Combat Evolved as an Easter egg.

Gulliver's Travels
Dr. Catherine Halsey, in complaining about the small size of the Han, noted that it would be better suited to "Lilliputian ambassadors."

He-Man
When Kamal Zaman starts beating up Jersey Morelli, Jersey sarcastically compares him with his macho display to He-Man.

Ice Station (Book)

 * The description of the Silhouette strongly resembles the Pelican.
 * In many ways the ICG is like ONI.
 * The book explains the existence of a possible race of intelligent beings before humanity who left behind artifacts, such as the Silhouette and the white box in the Inca temple. This is the same for the Forerunners.

John Keats

 * John Keats' poem Ode on a Grecian Urn is referenced in one of the Mayday Texts. The quote "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" is paraphrased in the statement "survive evade reveal escape. That is all you know, or need to know."
 * While held in the clutches of the Gravemind, Cortana criticizes her captor's poetry, saying he is no Keats.

Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel written by William Golding in 1954. It discusses how culture created by man fails and how man shall always turn to barbarism, using parallels of a group of school-boys stuck on a deserted island who unsuccessfully try to govern themselves and consequently have disastrous results, leading to many acts of horrible barbarism and deaths. CPO Mendez and Kurt-051 had both read the book some time before beginning the training of the first generation of SPARTAN-III soldiers in 2531. Mendez had feared that the results of training hundreds of child soldiers would be similarly disastrous, but Kurt disagreed, believing he would provide the leadership to make the SPARTAN-IIIs successful.

Man in the Iron Mask
The Man in the Iron Mask is a novel written by Alexander Dumas in 1850. Catherine Halsey has read the novel. Remembering the terror she had felt as the noble prisoner had been encased in a metal shell, Halsey wondered how the Master Chief coped with the constant enclosure of his suit.

The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is referenced in the quote displayed in the header of I Love Bees (Blog): "One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug."

Moby-Dick
In the fourteenth of the Mayday Texts, the Operator says "If they're all dead and I alone am left to tell the tale", which bares similarity to "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee" from Job 1:17, included in the epilogue of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, in the similar context of the main character having just survived a shipwreck.

Oz
In Dr. Halsey's personal journal, Halsey mentions her father recited every "adventurous tale of L. Frank Baum's Oz" to her when she was a child.

Prince of Persia
In the axon shipwrecked, Kamal Zaman says "People think time is a river that flows in one direction, but time is an ocean." This is a reference to "Some say time is like a river that flows swift and sure in one direction, but I have seen the face of time and I can tell you they are wrong. Time is an ocean in a storm." said by the Prince in Prince of Persia. Both characters are voiced by Yuri Lowenthal.

Queen (Band)
Rarely in Halo: Combat Evolved, or while having the IWHBYD skull on in Halo 3, some Grunts will say "We are the champions," which is the name of a song by Queen. This only happens a few times in gameplay.

Run Silent, Run Deep
The nineteenth of the Mayday Texts includes the quote "got to run silent. got to run deep", which alludes to Edward L. Beach's Run Silent, Run Deep, a WWII submarine story based on Moby-Dick.

William Shakespeare

 * Alas, Poor Yorick references a line from Hamlet.
 * In the third Mayday Text, the Operator says, "Those are pearls that were her eyes: / Nothing of her that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange". This is nearly a direct quote from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, but with "her" substituted for "his".
 * She goes on to say "Eight legs (I feel them walking on me) and how many voices-three? Five? Eight? - I am become a most delicate monster indeed.", another reference to The Tempest. The original quote is "Four legs and two voices: a most delicate monster!"
 * Directly after, she makes another reference to The Tempest with "What a brave new world-sand and darkness, sand and loneliness, sand and emptiness, sand and the spider-what a brave new world, that hath such monsters in it." The original quote is "O brave new world / That has such people in't."
 * In the fifth Mayday Text, she makes one more The Tempest reference with "All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost!" and "What, must our mouths be cold?" from the first scene of the play, during a shipwreck.

Starship Troopers

 * The SOEIV pods used by the ODSTs were inspired by the concept of orbital drop pods popularized by the novel.
 * Starship Troopers was one of the first science fiction stories to depict powered exoskeletons, which are commonplace in the Halo universe.

Star Trek

 * The ideology and logic of the Flood as described by the Gravemind in the Terminals is remarkably similar to the goal of the Borg. Both desire to 'perfect' every species they encounter.
 * In the Second Battle of Harvest, the presence of 40 UNSC ships-of-the-line against one overwhelmingly powerful enemy ship strikes a remarkable resemblance to the Star Trek-Universe's Battle of Wolf 359. At Wolf-359 the Federation's (or Humanity's) numerically superior fleet of 40 starships took on a single Borg Cube. The results, however, were completely opposite to those of the Halo Universe. The Federation lost 39 of its 40 vessels, and the Borg Cube left the battle without so much as a scratch on its hull and moved on towards Earth.
 * Captain Picard later attempted to distract and lure the Borg Cube away from Earth by maneuvering the USS 1701-D. Similarly, the made a blind jump in an attempt to lure the Covenant away from Reach and their possible discovery of Earth.
 * Spock is a cat seen in Halo Wars that may take its name from Mr. Spock from the Original Series.

Star Wars

 * The Wraith heavily resembles the Armored Assault Tank (AAT) from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
 * The scene in Halo: Combat Evolved where the Halo is shown and when the camera pans out to show the Pillar of Autumn looks quite similar like the opening scenes of each Star Wars episode.
 * Sometimes, with the IWHBYD skull activated, a Marine can be heard saying "They remind me of Wookiees from Star Wars," after they kill a Brute. When fighting Brutes, Sergeant Stacker occasionally says, "Hey, Chewie. You're about to be turned into a foot rest!", in reference to Chewbacca.
 * Truth's personality is similar to that of Emperor Palpatine, who used a political shakeup to legalize an extermination of the Jedi Order and transformed the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire. Truth eventually became the autocrat of the Covenant Empire which he had schemed for years since he took office, eventually betraying the Sangheili, who were the sworn protectors of the Covenant.
 * The Elephant bears a great resemblance to the Jawa Sandcrawlers.
 * Edwards Buck's line "Look at the size of that thing!" in regard to the assault carrier over New Mombasa is a quote from Wedge Antilles, commenting on the size of the Death Star.
 * With the IWHBYD skull active on the level New Alexandria, one of the gunners on the Falcon the player pilot sometimes says, "It's like shooting swamp-rats back home". This is a reference to a line by Luke Skywalker, who claims starfighter combat is "Just like bullseyeing womp rats back home!"
 * SPARTAN-B312's line "The last transport is away," is likely a reference to Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. A similar line, "The first transport is away," is said when an orbiting Star Destroyer is disabled by a land-based ion cannon, allowing a transport vessel to evacuate Echo Base; In Halo: Reach, SPARTAN-B312's line is said when an overhead Covenant corvette is damaged by a land-based missile battery, allowing a civilian transport vessel to escape.

Terminator
The Halo 3 multiplayer level The Pit was referred to as "Cyberdyne" during its production. The name references Cyberdyne Systems of the Terminator series.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre
In Halo Wars, marines will occasionally shout "We don't need no stinking Spartans!", a reference to famous misquote "We don't need no stinking badges!" In reality, the line is a combination of "We don't need no badges" and "I ain't got to show you no stinking badges!"

Wilhelm Scream
The frequently-used movie stock sound effect known as the "Wilhelm Scream" appears several times in the Halo series:


 * In Halo: Last One Standing, the scream can be heard moments after T. Rymann is killed, when the Marines take cover from a Banshee's fuel rod. It is barely audible through the noise of the explosion.


 * In Halo Wars, the scream appears in the opening cinematic of the level Alpha Base, when a Marine is hit in the back by a plasma blast.


 * The scream is heard in Halo: Reach, in the opening cutscene of the level Tip of the Spear, as a Warthog falls off a bridge, accompanied by another trooper screaming. However, the Wilhelm Scream is not heard on all difficulties as the scream varies according to difficulty.


 * In Part 9 the motion comic adaptation of The Mona Lisa, when Commander Tobias Foucault is watching a recording of the events of Installation 04, the scream is heard when a Marine is overwhelmed by the Flood.


 * In Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn the scream is heard in the classified video Michael Sullivan shows to his fellow cadets, as an Insurrectionist is thrown against a wall, just after the Spartan announces an unknown hostile.