The recent MW 7.8 Kaikoura Earthquake in New Zealand was one of the largest in New Zealand history and produced some of the largest surface displacements ever observed in a continental earthquake. Initial observations of faulting and landsliding are troublesome to the hazards community. Surface rupture of at least nine different faults, both on land and offshore, accommodated upper plate transpression at the interface between continental strike-slip faulting and subduction. The complex and widespread array of faults that ruptured have virtually every possible orientation and slip sense, ranging from sinistral normal to pure strike-slip and dextral reverse faults. The earthquake involved coeval rupture of both low slip rate (< 1 mm yr-1) and high slip rate (~20 mm yr-1) faults, ruptured through some preexisting fault scarps while passing over others, and jumped over important plate boundary faults. Over 80,000 landslides and have been identified, with hundreds damming streams and potentially posing a flooding hazard in the coming months. Some of the largest landslides were seemingly related to fault surface rupture rather than strong ground motions. Determining the relationship between fault structure at depth, surface rupture patterns, strong ground motions, fault triggering mechanisms, and landslide hazard are key research directions that are being explored. Lessons from this earthquake other recent earthquakes in New Zealand have important implications for seismic hazard.