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Several pieces of construction machinery scattered around Los Santos are decorated with designs and paint jobs that closely resemble Claptrap, the excitable robot companion from the Borderlands series.
Throughout the campaign, Cortana and the Gravemind periodically break into the Chief's mind through what Bungie internally called 'character interludes.' During these moments the screen washes with color, background music cuts out, and player movement slows drastically, a deliberate way of weaving story beats directly into gameplay rather than pulling players out to a cutscene.
After assassinating Carlo Grimaldi, heading to the Venice dock area lets players find Da Vinci's flying machine still lying wrecked where it crashed earlier in the story.
The Gravemind's telepathic voice isn't only heard by the Chief. According to the wider lore, a Marine once overheard it speaking through nearby combat forms and was driven to insanity by what's known as the logic plague, implied to have taken his own life off-screen as a result. It's a small aside that hints at just how psychologically dangerous simply being near the Flood's collective mind can be.
