Seven

File:VWNUM7.jpg

"Some of you may be wondering - "What's up with this unhealthy obsession with the number 7?" This page offers some insights."

— Luke Smith, linking to this very page

"Cause that's the best number. It's like rock. Nothing beats rock or 7."

— Michael Wu

Bungie Studios has long enjoyed using the number Seven (7) in its games in many prominent ways.Ensemble Studios and authors also have certain obvious seven references in their works about Halo. While almost anything can be made into a reference to something with effort or construed accidentally through pareidolia, the following attempts to list the intentional references Bungie placed into Halo for the fans to find. As such, not all of these references may be fully accurate, and many of them may be proven to be false at any time.

Halo 3

{{Scroll box |content = *On Crow's Nest on the walkway above the barracks there is a box with a large red 7 written on it.

• There are 7 structures coming out of the bottom of Epitaph.
• Cold Storage is the seventh downloadable Halo 3 map, and was released on Bungie Day (7/7).
• In the Cold Storage Transmission the time elapsed since an outside agent accessed the delta site has an approximate seven year margin of error.
• On matchmaking there's a playlist called "7 on the 7th" which is featured on the 7th of every month.
• Miranda Keyes has a seven engraved in her cheek (you can see it clearly on Crow's Nest).
• In one of the Terminals, it is revealed that Mendicant Bias made contact and studied the Gravemind for 379,807 hours (3+7+9+8+7=34, 3+4=7).
• The UNSC Forward Unto Dawn has the number 7 on the front of it.
• There are 7 pairs of monoliths around the Portal.
• “The casing is constructed of an unusual porous metallic compound. Shrapnel from the Spike Grenade reaches a temperature of approximately 270 to 315ºC and retains that heat for upwards of seven seconds. By design.” Taken from Bungie.net on Spike Grenades.
• In the mission Crow's Nest, a rocket has the number 7 on each side.
• At the beginning of Crow's Nest, some of the monitors have "Sector 331" written in a corner. 3+3+1=7.
• Last Resort is Zanzibar Municipal Turbine 7.
• The SMG has a scratch in the shape of a 7 (easier to see if weapon is aimed at sky or near a light source).
• It takes 7 seconds of Hornet Chain Guns to destroy a Warthog.
• It takes 7 seconds for 343 Guilty Spark to explode after being dealt the fatal shot in the level Halo.
• It takes 7 seconds from being infected by an Infection Form to turn into a Combat Form.
• In the level Cortana, in the beginning of the cut scene where you rescue Cortana, there is 7 seconds of silence before she says "You found me".
• The seventh level of the game (The Ark) is the first level of the series (chronologically) where you first see the Installation that developes the Halo Rings.
• On the side of the Warthog, below where the driver and passenger get in, just above the side skirts, there are 7 dashes.
• In the level Crow's Nest, when you first take control of the Master Chief, the emergency power generators on the far side of the room, where you need to go to get the Black Eye Skull, have the writing "EPG 2401". 7⁴ = 2401.
• The Magnum has a Korean Hangul symbols on the barrel, and the very bottom of the mag. When reflected, it translates to the number 7.
• In Tsavo Highway the doors at the start of the level all have the number 7 on them.
• In the multi-player level Sandtrap, the UNSC frigate, Aegis Fate, has a number 7 surrounded in a star on the side.
• When Miranda Keyes dies, there are 7 spikes from the Brute Spiker lodged in her back.
• In the Level The Covenant, there are 7 Elites that help you (not including the Arbiter or the other Elites in Co-op).
• There are 7 levels that the Cortana and Gravemind Moments occur.
• There are 7 lists of objects to put on a map in Forge. Weapons, Vehicles, Equipment, Scenery, Teleporters, Respawn Points, and Goals.
• There are 7 usable vehicles on the level the Ark, the seventh level of the game, including Arrival.
• There are 7 Chieftains in the level 'The Covenant'.
• In the multi-player map "Foundry", at the wide end of the map there are 14 full squares in between the walls, 7 on each side.
• It takes 7 shots from the Magnum to destroy the Gravity Lift object.
• A Power Drain lasts for 7 seconds.
• The center screen in the sword room on The Pit features the name sector 331. 3+3+1=7.
• It takes 7 seconds for the screens in The Pit Ops Center to scroll through all of the visuals.
• In the room with the Silent Cartographer, there are 7 trapezoids above the doors.
• There are seven pieces of grating involved with the missile launcher scenery on High Ground (including the one placed under the aiming machine).
• On the 'fire point' sign on High Ground there are 7 licks of flame coming from the white triangle.
• There are 7 lines of text on the screen of the gate switch on High Ground.
• Deaths that do not require two people have a seven second respawn when no other penalties are active.
• There are two sevens on the side of Grunt Minor armor.
• There are seven plates of metal grinding on the cranes used to board your first scarab, including the elevators.
• There are seven pallets on the pathway with the missile pods on the storm.
• The are seven pipes you can walk into on the lake bed where you fight your first scarab.
• There are seven symbols on each end of the handle on the Energy Sword.
• On Sandtrap there are 7 standing angled pillars on the long indoor walkway.
• The Multiplayer map Epitaph has 7 hologram projectors, 6 minor ones and the Mendicant Bias projector.
• You can get 7 Objective Sprees in Halo 3.
• There are 7 scoped weapons: Battle Rifle, Sniper Rifle, Beam Rifle, Carbine, Rocket Launcher, Fuel Rod Gun, and Spartan Laser.
• In the credits, Bungie frequently replaces the letter 't' with the number '7'.
• There are 7 Vidmaster achievements; 4 achievements can be found in Halo 3 while the other 3 are in Halo 3: ODST.
• There are 7 Gravemind moments on Cortana.
• On the mission Halo there are 7 vehicles other than the Warthog: 4 Ghosts, 1 Mongoose and 2 Choppers.
• There are 7 bellows of smoke on the horizon in Rat's Nest.
• On the level Tsavo Highway you exit the base through door number 7.
• On Sandbox the Golf Club is called a 7-wood.
• The blue lights that shoot out of the towers on Valhalla appear every 49 seconds. 7*7=49
• The Human-Covenant war had begun 2525 and ended 2553, approximately 28 years. 28 divided by 4 = 7
• In matchmaking, there are 7 pieces of equipment that can be used.
• At the bottom of the 'pit of death' on Orbital, there are 7 purple lights randomly scattered (not including the ring of 6 lights, which have a darker shade of purple)

Halo: Reach

• Jorge-052 is another reference to the number 7. 5+2=7
• The Halo: Reach Announcement trailer was 1:17 minutes long, or in seconds, 77.
• The number 7 is visible in the Halo: Reach VGA Trailer.
• There are 7 characters visible in the Halo: Reach World Premiere Trailer.

117

117 is Master Chief's SPARTAN tag number, but there is more than meets the eye when it comes to this number, including many religious and historical references.

• 1x1x7=7

• Yayap determines that the Master Chief will need to flee the Pillar of Autumn via hatch E-117. Likely a reference to his Spartan number.

• Dr Halsey points out that there is only one hour and 17 minutes (1:17) left before the portal closes.

Biblical Reference

• John-117 is believed by many fans to be a reference to New Testament of the Christian Bible.

• In the year 117, the 7th Pope of the Catholic Church was named, Sixtus I, as well as John 1 becoming 7th bishop of Jerusalem.

• The Gospel of John speaks of the 7 miracles of Jesus, the last one, John claims, culminating in his death.

• Bungie Studios is known to have placed many biblical references in their earlier Marathon video game series, and many other such references have been found in the Halo series.

• Here are passages from the Book of Revelation (more formally known as The Revelation of St. John the Divine). Revelation in Greek is called "The Apocalypse", a title possibly shortened from "The Apocalypse of John."

"And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death."

Book of Revelation, KJV. Chapter 1 - verses 17 and 18.

"And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascended out of the pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them."

Revelation. 11:7

• And here are passages from the Gospel of John. These are thought less likely to be references:

"Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judea again."

Gospel of John, 11:7

"For the law was given by Moses, [but] grace and truth came by Jesus Christ."

Gospel of John, 1:17

"There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe."

Gospel of John, 1:1-7

(Out of all of these, perhaps the most likely to be a reference to Spartan-117 would be the last verse.)

• Leviticus 25:9 (Sierra 259 in the Halo Reach trailer) is a conversation between Moses and God about the year of jubilee, and the past Harvest(!?!):

Leviticus 25:8 "Count off seven sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years."

Leviticus 25:9 "Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land."

• Halo 3's plot also resembles the story of Noah's Ark. Because the Forerunners kept a few of every sentient species in the galaxy in the Ark because the parasitic life-forms known as the Flood were coming, much like in the bible story of Noah's Ark. The flood was coming and Noah put two of every animal in the Ark to save them from the water flood, much like the Forerunners did before they activated the Halos to keep the other lesser sentient species from extinction.

Site 117

Alternatively, others believe the number to be a reference to "Site 117", an archaeological site containing the first evidence of a human battle. The site is near Jebel Sahaba, Nubia and dates from between 12,000-10,000 BC. The site contains 59 human remains of men, women and children who were clearly killed with primitive hunting implements.

117 and 7

It is conjectured that the numbering system for Halo installations' Monitors is, where $n$ is the number of their installation, $7^{n-1}$. With this in mind, it is reasonable to assume that the number of the Monitor of Installation 07 is $7^{6}=117649$. As well as including the number 117 when it is written in base-10 (decimal), it also includes 649. $9+4-6=7$.

The number 819 appears numerous times in the Marathon series. $819/7=117$. This tradition started in Marathon Infinity, with two secret terminals on the first and last levels of campaign mode. At first sight, these terminals seemed to contain nonsense. However, if the data from both terminals was copied into ResEdit (the classic Mac OS's hexadecimal editor), converted into text format, then expanded twice with Stuffit Expander, a map file would be revealed which could then be loaded in Infinity. The 819 was a reference to Hamish Sinclair, a prominent member of the community at marathon.bungie.org (the sister site of halo.bungie.org) as if one assigned letters to numbers sequentially ($a=1,b=2,c=3\ldots$) then Sinclair's initials, H.S., would be 8.19.

Marathon

• The music for Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity was composed and produced by an external music group called 'Power of Seven'. (Similarly, Marathon 2: Durandal also has an achievement with the same name.)

• In the original Marathon, the barrels all have a backwards 7 in the serial number.

117 Trivia

• In Halo 3, the game won't let you input the I.D. tag "I (upper-case i)-17", "l (lower-case L)-17", or "T-17" saying that these numbers are already reserved by the UNSC.

• In Halo: The Flood, Yayap tells 'Zamamee that Master Chief must go through corridor E-117.

Links

Internal

• List of Biblical References in Halo

• List of Marathon References in Halo

External

• The Septionary is a fan-created list every seven letter word in the english language.

• The relevant Bungie.Net forum topic is here.

• List of "Three" References in Halo - Parody of this list at Gruntipedia.