No one should dive into a TV adaptation of their favorite game alone. Potential heartbreak and raucous joy should be shared with a friend. As such, my coworker (Damien "Second-Biggest-Halo-Fan" Lykins, as a matter of official record) and I have begun watching Paramount's Halo television series together, and it's been a bumpy Warthog ride so far to say the least. Nevertheless, we can't help but enjoy the various references and easter eggs the showrunners have hidden within each episode.

Some of these pay respect to the original source material while others give a nod different IPs entirely. As the show goes on and we continue to watch the Master Chief take off his helmet more times than should be Spartanly possible, we'll continue to collect the best hidden references you might have missed your first time watching.

SPOILERS AHEAD! If you've not watched the most recent episode of the series, you may want to avert your unspoiled eyes!

Updated February 16, 2024 by Amanda Hurych & Damien Lykins: Here we are again. We're watching the newest season of the Halo show. Turns out we're gluttons for punishment. But on the bright side, we've (kind of) enjoyed the first two episodes of season 2. And we're always down for more Halo Easter eggs.

14 James Ackerson Is A Big Character In The Books

Season 2

This newest season of the Halo show has introduced us to one James Ackerson, who is the new ONI head replacement after both Halsey and Parangosky got ousted from the secretive government agency. Played by Joseph Morgan (an actor most notably known for his role as Klaus in The Vampire Diaries), James Ackerson in the show has thus far presented himself as an antagonist to Chief's protagonist. He takes the time to undermine Chief's mental health, preventing him from going on missions away from Reach.

In the books, there's a lot more to Ackerson than that. Not only does he still play a counterpart to Halsey in ONI, he's also responsible for the creation of the SPARTAN-III program. It remains to be seen if we'll get Spartan IIIs in the show, but Ackerson's inclusion could lead to this plot point (fingers crossed).

13 She'll Hold

Season 1

The final episode sees John and his fellow Spartans hurtling toward the hidden Covenant planet where Makee took the artifact. The trip is quite bumpy for the team's Pelican, with some rather jarring space travel doing some real damage to their ship. Vannak expresses some highly warranted concern about the structural integrity of their hull, to which John calmly states, "She'll hold." Fans of Combat Evolved will recognize this as the same assurances Master Chief gave to Cortana when flying a decaying Banshee onto the crashed Pillar of Autumn.

12 There's Two Of Us In Here

Season 1

The eighth episode was a bit of a tangle of multiple plot threads coming together, but no one can deny that it was super cool to see John and Cortana finally working together in a fight. The show had been teasing his potential strength if the Chief properly utilized Cortana, and this episode yielded the result. She assisted his awareness during the fight and even took control of a nearby Warthog to help him out of a tight spot. And of course she threw out this iconic line during this superb moment of Spartan versus Spartan combat.

11 The Siege Of Madrigal

Season 1

Madrigal is an important location in the Halo TV show. It's the planet where the show starts and apparently also the location of some secret well that Kwan Ha's family has guarded for generations. But only fans who've read the books will know that Madrigal is also an existing planet in the canon timeline.

And if you want to go even deeper into Halo lore than that, only mega Bungie fans will know that Madrigal is the name of a city from one of Bungie's earlier games, Myth: The Fallen Lords. There is a piece of music from that game called the Siege of Madrigal that has made cameo appearances in many Halo games, and its inclusion in the Halo franchise as a whole is a clear nod to Bungie's early work.

10 Shield Recharge Noise

Season 1

A bit on-the-nose? Maybe, but it's hard not to crack a grin when you hear it. In the thick of the battle for the Madrigal colony during the first episode, Spartan Kai is pinned down by a trio of Covenant Elites and calls out for assistance. The Master Chief obliges, drawing the Elites' fire and soaking up a fair bit of punishment in the process.

He holds out for quite a while before his shields overload — at which point his suit provides a subtle alarm that's sure to be all-too-familiar to any gamer that's played Halo. After the Chief ducks into cover for a precious moment, we're given the equally-familiar beeps and bloops associated with a Spartan's personal shields coming back online.

9 This Cave Is Not A Natural Formation

Season 1

Everyone who has played Halo: Combat Evolved can recall the first time they drove into the interior of the ring's structure. After rescuing some marines and hopping into a Warthog, you head toward a large, metallic, rectangular opening in a cliffside, and just as you approach it, Cortana states, "This cave is not a natural formation." Well, no shit.

This line became instantly memeable as gamers reveled in the hilarity of Cortana, super-smart, advanced AI that she is, noting the utterly obvious. The Halo TV show shares the same sense of humor. Spartan Kai, as she and Chief enter an underground area, very clearly says, "This cave network does not appear to be a natural formation," as the perfect homage.

8 Admiral Parangosky

Season 1

If you haven't read the books, you might very well assume that Admiral Parangosky is a brand-new character created specifically for the show. However, the name of Parangosky has appeared in more than one of the Halo novels. In the books, Margaret Parangosky is in charge of many of the ONI operations the UNSC would rather not know about, responsible for green-lighting some projects of dubious morality.

She's also one of the few people in the Halo universe to properly butt heads with Dr. Halsey and come out on top. How her character turns out in the show still remains a mystery, but we look forward to how the series handles other characters taken straight from the books.

7 Mass Effect Reference

Season 1

Fans with especially keen hearing or the foresight to put on captions were delighted to find the Halo TV showrunners included a hidden reference to the Mass Effect games. After Miranda's failed attempt to get Kwan Ha on her side through a forced video conference call, you can hear someone asking for a "Commander Shepard" to go to a "Skyllian Response Center." In the Mass Effect series, the Skyllian Verge is an area of contested space that humans and Batarians fight over. We highly doubt the Skyllian Blitz is part of the Halo show's lore, but it's a fun little easter egg to find.

6 Wort Wort Wort

Season 1

This bit of alien gibberish was first spouted as a sort of battlecry by the Sangheili in Halo: Combat Evolved. Originally produced by reversing and distorting the original “Go, go, go” line recorded for a particularly familiar and well-loved UNSC marine, it was cultivated into a much-beloved meme by Halo’s fanbase over the years — apparently, this wasn’t lost on the showrunners.

At a couple of junctures during the Elites’ assault on the Madrigal insurrectionist compound during the very first episode of the series, a keen ear can pick out this iconic warbling in the background. Specifically, you can hear it when they first breach the gates, and again shortly after Kwan Ha emerges from the rooftop hatch above the protective vault where the non-combatants are sheltering during the chaos.

5 The Door Chime Of The Far Future

Season 1

This one’s admittedly a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but it’s definitely worth a note. Shortly after Chief and Kwan Ha arrive at Soren’s Asteroid Orphanage for Misfits, Murderers, and Malcontents in the second episode, “Unbound,” they shuffle down a rather spartan (get it?) hallway and are confronted with a touchpad-operated door leading into the base’s main thoroughfare.

The sound the door makes is lifted straight from the games — a common, elongated “blooop” sound emitted by the doors on Covenant vessels. Of course, this seems to be a human colony, but who’s counting? It’s a neat bit of appreciable fanservice all the same.

4 Fear The Pink Mist

Season 1

While the Spartans of Silver Team are hanging around in Miranda Keyes' lab after some experimentation with the artifact, Spartan Kai noses around some of the Covenant tech that's been kept around for research purposes. Of particular interest to her is a Needler, which she describes as her "favorite" Covenant weapon.

She launches into a worryingly enthusiastic tirade on how the weapon works, mentioning that after the needles super-combine and explode "all you see is a big pink mist of blood and evaporating body fluids." Gross. But also a subtle nod towards a semi-memed phrase often associated with the weapon from the games — "fear the pink mist."

It was the title of an achievement associated with the Needler in Halo 3 (which in itself is a reference to Jarhead, apparently, but we're not playing Inception today), and the phrasing has remained attached to it since.

3 The Reclaimer Symbol

Season 1

A huge part of the Halo game series’ story deals with humanity’s role in the universe as “Reclaimers.” As a matter of fact, starting with Halo 4, the games were considered to follow a storyline known as the Reclaimer Saga. Without diving too deeply into lore, just know that Reclaimers are what Forerunners designate humans as the next species to succeed them.

Given that the show features Forerunner artifacts as central facets of the plot, it makes sense that the symbol for Reclaimer would pop up at least once in the first season. In the episode “Reckoning,” when the Chief grabs hold of the second artifact on Eridanus II, you can see the Reclaimer symbol flash on it.

2 "I'm Gonna Need A Weapon"

Season 1

Things really do go to crap after the artifact's been activated on Eridanus — things don't get much better after the Chief makes a judgment call to ditch the artifact mid-transit and feed a knuckle-and-boot sandwich to an Elite putting the hurt on a downed Spartan Kai. Unfortunately, the Covenant decides to make the most of the situation and send down a Brute with a gravity hammer to recover the artifact.

The Chief makes a mad dash for it but is knocked flat by the Brute's energized bludgeon. Realizing he's going to need a bit more "oomph" to take on the big baddie, he mutters "I'm gonna need a weapon," to Cortana.

It might be a bit of a stretch, but it's really difficult to avoid parsing this line as a throwback to a now-iconic quote the Master Chief tosses out during the opening hour of Halo 2 (and more recently, Halo Infinite).

1 "What's The Discharge Rate On An M6E Battery Cell?"

Season 1

Shortly after Halsey's kicked off the Spartan project, Miranda Keyes has the gang get up to speed on the most recent upgrades to the UNSC arsenal. Kai happens to find the rest of the team doing just that in an armory. The object of discussion at that moment happens to be the M6 Spartan Laser. When Riz asks what the discharge rate on the weapon's battery cell is, Vannik says that it's 20%. Riz then muses, "Right, 20%, so maximum five shots."

These figures are totally true-to-form for most iterations of the Spartan Laser that are seen in the games (barring Reach, Halo Wars, and other spin-offs). A Spartan Laser has an ammo capacity of 100, and each shot depletes your ammo count by 20 — five shots of Elite-vaporizing, Wraithbusting firepower before the weapon needs to be swapped for a new one.