The Halo franchise might have started out with a cool guy in a wicked suit of armor, but the lore quickly expanded outwards like a supernova. Follow-up titles, spin-offs, novels and television media soon followed which expanded on the story and gave immense exposition about the origins of the super-soldier known as the Master Chief.
At the center of it all was Catherine Halsey, a brilliant scientist with multiple doctorates and degrees who orchestrated the infamous Spartan-II program. Her actions saved humanity on countless occasions, but the cost was great. Here are little-known facts about this morally ambiguous character.
10 She Was A Child Prodigy
Catherine Halsey may have come out of the womb a full-blown genius, especially given her remarkable academic achievements. As a child, she possessed an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and would spend most of her time devouring whatever educational materials she could get her hands on.
This helped her later on when she blew the doors off education standards at the Endymion Gifted academy. Ever-obsessed with A.I., Halsey began learning old command-line interfaces which she used as the basis for her future work.
9 She Was Recruited Without Her Knowledge
Halsey stood in relative opposition to Elias Carver, a political science and sociology graduate who accurately predicted a human insurrection within the Outer Colonies. She was directed by the battle-hardened UNSC to test Carver's model and determine whether it was accurate or flawed.
Soon after, Halsey learned that her own separate findings ran parallel with the Office of Naval Intelligence, and that they had been waiting for her to convince herself of the need to join up. In effect, she was recruited by ONI without even realizing it.
8 Her Ends Justified Her Means
Realizing that the key to preventing humanity's downfall rested on a military force capable of suppressing insurrection, Halsey began planting the seeds of what would later blossom into the SPARTAN-II project. One of the key factors in its success would be the need to use children as genetic subjects, which would allow them to be indoctrinated and more easily controlled.
At first, Halsey struggled with the moral implications, but a nuclear terrorist attack that claimed the lives of over two million convinced her to adopt an "ends justifies the means" attitude. Moral ambiguity faded, and thus was born the first iteration of the SPARTAN-II program.
7 She Had A Child With Captain Keyes
Hardcore Halo fans who eat and drank all the lore from various secondary materials already know this fact, but casual Halo gamers probably had no idea that Halsey and Jacob Keyes hooked up. In fact, their daughter is none other than Miranda Keyes, the heroic Commander who gave her life to stop the Prophet of Truth from activating the Halo array.
Keyes himself perished earlier in the first Halo game after being infected by the mysterious and terrifying Flood, which forced the Master Chief to put an end to his life. That left Halsey without anything truly resembling a family, even though none of them were particularly close to begin with.
6 She's An Atheist
Halsey's fascination with the universe is based entirely on factual evidence rather than a deep-seated spirituality. As such, she's an Atheist who denies the existence of any higher power, instead looking inwards towards biology, physical matter and spacetime.
It may also be a reason why she finds it easy to bend or outright break the rules in order to achieve her goals. With no absolute power to answer to, Halsey is willing to take steps that fly in the face of what is considered moral, even if such decisions pain her greatly.
5 She Never Got Over The Spartan-II Program
Although Halsey had shown resistance to the moral ambiguity of her particular objectives, she very often followed through when she determined that the ends would justify the means. However, one of her greatest accomplishments was also the one she held the most regret towards.
The Spartan-II program would end up saving humanity countless times, and her original justifications proved valid, but the sheer immorality of the program left her feeling personally and permanently liable for the suffering of all her candidates.
4 Her Namesake
Catherine Halsey was a character in the novel The Fountainhead, written by Ayn Rand in 1943. In the novel, Halsey is influenced by her uncle's own sense of selflessness and altruism, which is a squeaky clean mirror image of the Halsey from the Halo franchise.
While Halo's Halsey pursues knowledge and new developments designed for the betterment of mankind, it isn't out of charity of selflessness. Halsey's own introverted nature often leads her to justify her actions by convincing herself that she's thinking of everyone else, rather than herself.
3 She Perfected The MJOLNIR armor
Halsey was instrumental in the creation of the Spartan MJOLNIR armor which gifted her soldiers with unparalleled strength, resilience and battle prowess. She was also pivotal in developing the shield generator technology for the suit, which was adapted from a Covenant Jackal shield.
She took many of the designs from an earlier suit of armor created during the ORION project and refined them to be lighter and sturdier. Among many improvements were slipspace and atmospheric insertion, energy shield shaping and AI transfer abilities.
2 Her Journal Was Her Undoing
While on the planet Reach, Halsey purchased a journal where she could express her thoughts and feelings without having them filtered through ONI or the UNSC. This was a chance for her to jot down her motivations for many of her most controversial actions.
Unfortunately, this would come back to haunt her after she lost the journal following the Covenant's attack on the planet. It was later recovered by an Elite ONI Spec Ops team and used as Tier 1 classified evidence against her to brand her a war criminal.
1 A Mother Figure
Halsey is the closest thing to a mother figure that the Master Chief can relate to, since she was one of his earliest acquaintances. Over the course of the Spartan-II program and the immensely powerful soldiers it created, John-117 became her favorite, and the two forged an interesting bond that only slightly resembled a mother/son relationship.
Nevertheless, it was enough to influence the Master Chief. When he encountered the Librarian in Halo 4, his interpretation of her was of an older woman more closely associated with his relationship towards Halsey. Conversely, Halsey saw the Librarian as a much younger woman, which might signal her subconscious relationship to her "daughter," the unique A.I. known as Cortana.