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1New entries on the bottom. Beware of Spoilers.
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3''Please check to make sure your question has not already been answered, '''especially if your question involves the ending'''''.
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5----
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7[[foldercontrol]]
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9[[folder:Martyr Reality]]
10* Midway through the game, Elizabeth takes you to a world where Booker died. What happened to the Elizabeth of that world? The autolog you read from Booker implies that he never managed to rescue her. This is a fairly pressing question when you realize that ''the rest of the game takes place in that world'', which means that the fact that there should be completely screws up the plot.
11** Not entirely: if that version of Elizabeth has been recaptured by Comstock -- or was never successfully rescued in the first place (summaries of the voxophone aren't clear) -- then it follows that the Songbird that attacks Booker prior to the events of Comstock House cannot belong to that dimension. After all, if that universe's Elizabeth is in Founder custody, Songbird shouldn't have any interest in the Elizabeth Booker has with him; plus, if Elizabeth had been moved a different fortress in preparation for the arrival of "the False Shepherd", then it probably wouldn't have ended with Songbird in the water -- in which case, why does it have the signature crack in its eye? From all this, I think it's possible that the Songbird of the first Columbia visited is actively following Booker and Elizabeth through dimensions. After all, it's been perfectly established that Comstock can manipulate Tears of his own through machinery. Thus, it can also be assumed that the Songbird eventually brings the recaptured Elizabeth to the first Comstock. From there, I'm not sure: either this version of Comstock has holed up in alternate Comstock's house while the original resident tries to escape the Vox, or you actually do end up back in the first Columbia after all. Sound plausible?
12** You never end up back in the original Columbia. The final conflict is against Vox revolutionaries trying to sink Comstocks head ship. Of course the whole ending of the game makes the "paradox" moot. Chew on this though: the Elizabeth that Booker rescues after coming back from the BadFuture? What if that wasn't ''our'' Elizabeth? What if that was the Elizabeth native to the Vox rebellion world and her Booker died? What if "our" Elizabeth was taken back to the original universe and is subjected to years and years of torment and torture at the hands of Comstock, all the while holding out hope that Booker will come to save her, but he never does... at least, not until she's already begun her attack on New York and purposefully brought Booker there to give him the solution they never could find together, and then sent him off to save the third Columbia's Elizabeth who ''he'' never met in the first place, but she remembers him as the Vox revolutionaries' martyr. [[FridgeHorror Sound plausible?]]
13** Not plausible. When she's released, Elizabeth recognizes Booker as the same Booker she's always loved. The possibility exists that they are both taken to a FOURTH dimension where the Vox are in full uprising mode AND Comstock is searching for them. Crossing the bridge clearly sent you through time, it's plausible that it also sent you to a new dimension.
14** The Songbird would care about "your" Elizabeth even if there's still in its world; the music that controls it would attract it, it would see an Elizabeth, and would make the logical conclusion that there was only somehow. Though the other audiolog from martyr!Booker makes it clear that World-Three!Elizabeth was removed from the tower in that world by Comstock, which might also have set the Songbird off if he no longer totally understood how to control it without Fink.
15** This could be FridgeBrilliance if you look at it from another angle: The entire time between you opening a gate to the third world and Elizabeth willingly going back with the Songbird, there's no hint that Comstock is making any attempt to recapture her. Granted, the Vox likely occupy his attention, but protecting Elizabeth from them would be his most important goal. What if the reason why he doesn't do anything about her is because he already has an Elizabeth and isn't aware there's a second? The only question then becomes what happens between then and the final encounter with him. His Elizabeth (who was removed from the tower to protect her from martyr!Booker) vanished or died in the confusion of the Vox rebellion, and he simply assumes that yours is his (or realizes what's up and doesn't care.) Another possibility is that that's the reason why he suddenly becomes so willing to take extreme measures to convert her -- ''he has a spare''.
16** You don't travel between universes, but rather merge. If you did indeed travel between realities, the people you'd killed would have still been alive. But they're not alive, they're in a state of Tear Sickness because the dead and alive versions of them got merged.
17** What you're saying makes no sense. You blatantly travel through dimensions. The people you killed ARE alive, they just ''remember'' being dead, and that paradox is what's causing them to have their little mental breakdown. The mind creates memories where none exist, remember? And besides, what in game evidence do you have to support this idea that she merges the universes? When do they ever say that's what's happening in the game?
18** I also thought that the universes were merged due to the fact that the newly alive people could remember being dead. If it was a simple travel between the universes, the various versions of the people would have logically been entirely separate with their own lives and memories, and so wouldn't change after Booker comes through. If you take the idea that the universes were merged, then it makes sense why they could have more than that and why they could be alive and dead at the same time. There is also the way that Elizabeth opened the Tears: She moved them outwards until they were part of the room and then continued outwards past the point where they could be seen. It's entirely possible that Booker and Elizabeth were just moving through the Tears, but there is some argument for the merging of the universes. It just depends on interpretation.
19** Here's a bit of logic/brilliance/horror blend for you: Elizabeth's time-jumps work largely on her personal beliefs with a strong dose of wish fulfillment, which is why the armed-Vox timeline is such a monkey's-paw scenario: she gets pretty much everything she wanted from that timeline and it's all dramatically worse. That said, considering how much of the time-jump is determined by what Elizabeth wants to happen, there's a strong possibility that she simply never considered the possibility there'd be another version of herself in her destination reality. Which means when she got there, there ''wasn't''.
20[[/folder]]
21
22[[folder:Elizabeth in Columbia-3]]
23* In the universe where Booker became a martyr for the Vox, what was that universe's version of Elizabeth doing?
24** Being groomed and prepared behind an extremely heavy layer of security. Don't forget that in this reality Booker was killed because Elizabeth had been moved from Monument Island -- necessitating Booker's more proactive involvement with the Vox, and subsequent death during the raid on Fink's factory.
25** One of the Vox members from Martyr!Booker[[note]]the one in the post-tear Graveyard Shift[[/note]] explains that in that universe, Comstock was ready for Booker and moved Elizabeth out of the tower before he got there. Martyr!Booker died there trying to rescue her and Fitzroy spun it for the Vox.
26** But, maybe I'm wrong here, but don't you remain in that universe for the rest of the game? Because you go to Comstock House near the end of the game, and Elizabeth is nowhere to be found. So where is she?
27** The general deal with alternate universes in ''Infinite'' doesn't seem to be the straightforward "everyone gets an infinite number of duplicates" version found in ''WhatIf'' and other such works. Rather, every individual occupies all timelines at once without knowing it, which is why Chen Lin goes crazy and you run into a number of guards who are both dead and alive at once. With that in mind, Elizabeth's location in the Martyr!Booker timeline no longer matters, because the mainline Elizabeth jumped into that reality and took over the spot.
28** The two tears where you go into another universe (Chen not dying, the machine parts not being taken) are explicitly said by Elizabeth to be different. She doesn't seem to so much open a door and step through as forcibly pull that universe into the current one and sorta merge them. Hence when why Booker gets some memories of the martyr version of himself before, the guards in their sorta not quite dead state, and looted containers are still looted. The Elizabeth of that version would have merged into the Elizabeth that just opened the door and so the one we stay with is the only one there.
29** So if Elizabeth merges with her alternate self every time they jump universes, why didn't Booker merge with Comstock at the beginning of the game, or on any subsequent jump?
30** Booker does get the nosebleeds of individuals that have trouble merging with their other selves around Comstock, most likely because the universe wants to unify them but they are so differentiated nothing but feedback occurs. Comstock's recordings suggest he metaphorically killed the man he once was and may believe he even left his old soul behind when he was baptized.
31** Because Booker and Comstock, despite being the same person, are still distinct entities. Elizabeth is Elizabeth in all the transitions, but in every transition there is always a Comstock and there is always a Booker to oppose him. Booker replaces Booker, and Comstock stays Comstock.
32** You could also argue it's also because Booker came to Columbia via the Lutece's tears instead of Elizabeth's. Doing that, as Robert went through, forces new memories to be created instead of taking on the memories of the you from the alternate timeline.
33*** Another possibility is that Booker and Comstock remain separate beings because they diverged from one another at a much earlier time, whereas all the other conceivable Bookers are from roughly around the same point of divergence in their respective parallel dimensions.
34[[/folder]]
35
36[[folder:The Deal With Universe-3 Fitzroy]]
37* What makes Booker and Elizabeth think that the Universe-3 Daisy Fitzroy made a deal with Universe-3 Booker for the guns and the airship?
38** They were still figuring out how the whole dimension-hopping thing worked at the time.
39** Their original intention was just "cross into a universe where everything is the same, but Chen Lin's equipment was not confiscated". However they accidentally skip about five steps in the quest chain and end up in a universe where the Vox Populi is supplied with guns and in full revolt. Elizabeth speculates at one point that her power is based on wish fulfillment; by the time she creates the tear, not only have her experiences in Shantytown convinced her that open revolution might be a good idea ("It'd be just like ''Literature/LesMiserables''!") but she ''also'' expresses a desire to have Booker fight for the revolution too... which he ''does'' in that universe, with disastrous consequences.
40** So, in short, Elisabeth is able to subconsciously open a rift to any one of the universes that have events happen the way that would be most efficient for what she currently wants. However what she wants and what her actual goal is don't always line up, which in this case meant she opened a rift to a universe where Chen Lin wasn't killed by the cops and his equipment wasn't confiscated. However her powers pulled open a rift to the one where a revolt was in progress because beneath rational thought of how to make that happen a revolt is what she ''really'' wanted to see happen, just like Les Miserables.
41[[/folder]]
42
43[[folder:Travelling through the Tears]]
44* Does traveling through the tears merge the two dimensions in a weird way? After traveling through a tear some of the people are in a weird dead/live state and memories get seem to get mixed up. So by tear jumping is Elizabeth going to a new world or overwriting the original?
45** Seems to be a combination of both. Pulling elements from another world into the one they inhabit resulting in a merger, although later she gains the ability to outright travel to other worlds. It would explain why Comstock and Songbird chase you through all the different worlds despite the fact that you never return to your "original" dimension.
46[[/folder]]
47
48[[folder:Songbird & Tears]]
49* Is the "original" Songbird actually following you through the Tears? It's confirmed that in the third universe that you visit, Elizabeth was never rescued, so the Songbird of that dimension wouldn't be interested in chasing the two of you down. Plus, just before Elizabeth is recaptured, you see that Songbird has a crack in its eye just like the one you first encountered, so maybe it is. But this raises another question: when you follow it to Comstock House, have you actually followed it right back to the Columbia you first visited? Just looking to straighten things out in my mind.
50** Another question in the same vein; has the first Comstock been chasing you as well? Because the showdown clearly takes place in a universe undergoing a full-blown Vox uprising, yet both the Songbird and Comstock seem to match up with facts and events established in the first version of Columbia you visit.
51** They establish very early on that the alternate timelines often only differ from one another in one simple way; what Elizabeth says as an example is "tea instead of coffee." Comstock doesn't change between universes because most of the time, when Elizabeth jumps universes, he's a constant factor that isn't affected directly by the change she's hoping to exploit.
52** Elizabeth doesn't just jump into another universe, she merges them. If you note: anyone you killed might be alive, but all the barrels you looted are still looted, the tower is still half-destroyed, and Elizabeth never encounters her double, nor is there a hint that she has one. Neither does Booker have a "me and me team up" scenario in universe 2. It's weird, but she's deliberately messing with things.
53[[/folder]]
54
55[[folder:Law of Interdimensional Continuity]]
56* So in the third universe (Vox-Have-Weapons one) Booker never found Elizabeth because she was moved out of the tower. Then Booker died... then why does World III Comstock mention that she destroyed her tower during her escape (and we indeed see the tower destroyed)? It'd make sense if the tower was destroyed by Booker's failed attempt to find Elizabeth, but Comstock blames her for it, despite the fact that she wasn't there to destroy it, by '''his''' own orders.
57** I'd guess that the reason ''for'' Elizabeth being moved was that she made a successful escape on her own.
58** Elizabeth doesn't seem to understand what exactly she was doing (she wonders in dialogue if she brought them to a different world, or created an entirely new one.) The most likely solution is, as speculated elsewhere on this page, that Elizabeth merges the realities together in those instances, instead of just creating portals. This results in things from both universes crossing over: Two different Bookers are around, one of whom died, but only one Elizabeth. Slate and the Vox Populi remember Elizabeth being moved out of the tower, but Comstock is still the same old Comstock from the first universe and not the one who had Elizabeth moved.
59** Maybe Elizabeth doesn't merge universes either, but creates them. It may sound farfetched, but in the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics universes are constantly being created because for each possibility there is a universe in which it becomes true, so you would create a new one just by making a choice (even if in the VideoGame/BioShockInfinite multiverse some possibilities never materialize, the interpretation could work for the rest of them). In this case, you may have created the universe to which you arrive by deciding to open the tear. And said universe could have been influenced by Elizabeth's memories; after all, she says that the Siren (also brought to life by her powers) was influenced by her thoughts about her mother.
60[[/folder]]
61
62[[folder: What's so ridiculous about a city at the bottom of the sea?]]
63* When Booker finds himself in Rapture he says, "A city at the bottom of the sea? Ridiculous." Why? How is a city at the bottom of the sea any more ridiculous than the flying city he just left?
64** Practically speaking, an undersea city has a lot more logistical issues than a flying city. A flying city doesn't have to worry about air supply, for instance.
65** To be fair, a flying city that's over 15 thousand feet above sea level would have the same problem with the air supply. There's not much oxygen up there. Rapture at least traps its air inside.
66** There's plenty of oxygen up there, it's just thinner than it would be at sea level. True they would have a lot of trouble breathing at 15 thousand feet, but it's possible. It's not so easy to look at Rapture and forget all the logistical details with air, water leaks, and so on. Neither one of them are particularly plausible, but Rapture is a little more implausible than Columbia.
67** An undersea city doesn't have to worry about gravity, however.
68** But it does have to worry about the pressure.
69** Indeed. Pressure that ''crushes the NighInvulnerable Songbird''. Rapture must have been built out of some ''really'' sturdy materials. And considering that it's still standing in ''2'' with almost no maintenance...
70** To be fair, anything designed to be light enough to fly would likely be crushed by sea-floor pressure.
71** This is actually the case. In one level a [=DaVinci=]-style sketch of Songbird can be found with a note that it is designed to function at low pressures and handles high pressure badly. Early in the game an eye cracks and it balks as it tries to dive only a few feet underwater to grab Booker. Safe to say, Songbird marks a quick retreat and goes back to being airborne.
72[[/folder]]
73
74[[folder:Elizabeth's amazing changing hair color]]
75* Throughout the rest of the game, her hair is pretty much consistently black. However in Finkton, it changes to reddish brown, and then changes back after you leave. So what's up with that? Is it the lighting? A bug?
76** Finkton has brighter, warmer colors overall compared to the rest of Columbia, and Emporia has more of a dark, cool-colored theme. It's probably just the lighting of the areas having an effect on the shading of her hair.
77** You know how some dogs and cats have a peculiar coat color that normally looks black but becomes reddish-brown in sunlight? Same deal.
78** You can even see it happen with people with black hair IRL.
79[[/folder]]
80
81[[folder:The Respawn Room]]
82* What's the deal with the respawn room? Does Booker have some probability-altering magics himself to prevent his death? Does he die and get replaced by someone from a timeline where he did everything up until that point but didn't die there? Has he, throughout the game, always operated from some kind of limbo caused by the ending's paradox where he returns to if his consciousness isn't occupied reliving a particular timeline?
83** The Multiverse Theory says every action/event creates an alternate universe/timeline in which that event/action didn't occur or occurred differently. Given the nature of the game chances are the "re-spawn" is as you said: "get replaced by someone from a timeline when he did everything up until that point but didn't die there". And later when Elizabeth revives you it's actually Elizabeth pulling another Booker from an alternate reality, which as you said, did everything up until that point but didn't die (only exception is that she accidentally brings back some enemies along as well).
84** Elizabeth is shown injecting you with medicine and helping you to your feet, implying that its the same Booker that she managed to drag to a safe distance and heal. Enemies never target her in combat, and that may be a real aspect of her powers that lets her do this unimpeded. If it was meant to be a new Booker coming through a Tear, they'd show it. Note that Liz shouts, "Booker, don't die!" when you fall. Not something she'd do if she were just going to call up a spare. As for the respawn room, it might be the Luteces messing with your timeline.
85** When you die without Elizabeth it's a different timeline starting, just obviously skipping past everything you did. In that life Booker was killed at the point you were. When Elizabeth is there you're not getting killed, she's resuscitating you which allows "that" Booker to continue in his timeline alive and reasonably well.
86** But that wouldn't explain Booker's time in the respawn office at all -- confused, clearly remembering his previous death, etc.
87** There's good evidence that it's always the same Booker: the first time you die, the game says, "When your life is saved...", meaning it's the same life every time. Elizabeth also promises to "keep you on this side of the abyss", meaning you never cross over.
88** She's just using flowery language at that point. Her healing methods are old school, rather than mystical.
89* This troper's understanding is that the Lutece twins are bringing the original Booker back every time (appropriate, since it's them banging on the office door).
90* So, to summarize:
91** When you die with Elizabeth following, she resuscitates Booker with plain old medicine. So it's the same Booker, who was OnlyMostlyDead.
92** When you die ''without'' Elizabeth following, you continue as a different Booker whose personal timeline is almost identical to the previous one except for the short period of time just before the other Booker's death. His disorientation is a side effect of different timelines merging (a mild case of what e.g. Chen Lin of Columbia-2 experiences).
93* This troper always figured it was Booker manifesting some sort of tear ability to save himself, probably when on the verge of death. When you first use the respawn door, Booker comments, he asks "What just happened?" or something similar, and after that never mentions it again. This, adding in that Booker can recognize when it isn't "his" Anna/Elizabeth, and when you "respawn" the enemies and items you used do not. This points toward it is always the same Booker and Elizabeth back in whatever universe he "died" in. This is also why the respawn door has the "tear" effects, Booker's tears look like his door, since it is beyond that door that this whole mess started. This is how Booker was also able to see the Invasion universe, where Columbia is attacking New York. He came close to drowning in the Baptism, this activated his tear ability. Like Elizabeth, came back to the Infinite!universe. This is what makes Alpha!Booker special, the one who can actually save Elizabeth.
94** This is maybe also why only Booker, Elizabeth, the Robert Lutece and baby!Anna appear in the room, they are the only people who have/will have similar abilities, not counting Rosalind.
95[[/folder]]
96
97[[folder:The Grandfather Paradox]]
98* How does Elizabeth killing Booker not create a time paradox since she would no longer exist to kill Booker? Wouldn't that just create an even bigger Time Loop?
99** [[http://setmyfrozenmindtothaw.tumblr.com/post/72219770699/a-theory-on-the-luteces-motivations There's a theory that the potential timeloop created was entirely intentional on the part of Rosalind and possibly Robert.]]
100** Obviously you can interpret the ending in a lot of ways, and that is a completely valid one. However, the idea most people seem to have gone with is they simply drowned the Booker that was going to go along with the baptism and become Comstock, since as we had seen, our Booker pushed his way out of the baptism circle before he got dunked under. So they killed all the Bookers that became Comstock, but the Booker who remained Booker is fine.
101** It doesn't, because Elizabeth is operating outside of the laws of cause and effect at this point.
102** I thought this was extremely clear when they showed the infinite universes. Only the Booker that decided to get baptized was killed off, as there is now literally zero chance for Comstock to come to being. The Bookers that didn't decide to get baptized in the first place all still live. The epilogue is evidence of this.
103** The thing is that if Elizabeth never existed to kill Comstock, Comstock would exist... which would bring Elizabeth into existence, who would once more wipe him out of existence. Essentially, Comstock cannot possibly exist, because his very existence creates events that invalidate his existence. The end of Comstock is the very same moment as his creation, meaning that to those who aren't looking at it from an outside perspective, it never happens.
104** Or, Elizabeth was born before the baptism. Booker only considered going through with it due to the crushing weight of both atrocities he committed and selling his daughter. Killing Comstock before she was born would've wiped ALL versions of Elizabeth out, but since she was born before Comstock (as a personality) was, only the Elizabeths who came from realities which specifically required his existence (for whatever reason it may be) were destroyed.
105** I think most people are not considering the possibility that she allows the Comstock (Comstocks? with the three dimensions) we know to live through the baptism, since he gets killed anyway by Booker. Thus, there is no paradox.
106** The interpretation I was left with was that Elizabeth was creating a fixed point around the baptism. Instead of the divergence of Booker enters the water and Comstock emerges, she changed it so that the constant outcome would always be Booker enters the water and drowns during the baptism. Thereby regardless of her existing the result would be that the priest held him under for too long and the entire potential tree of Comstock was severed at the root.
107* Another Grandfather Paradox: If Comstock never came to exist, he couldn't have taken Anna/Elizabeth, and she wouldn't have developed her reality-altering powers.
108** In a linear sense, the events of the game (and the events in all the timelines in which Comstock can possibly exist) still 'happen'. The universe just restructures itself in such a way that it cannot happen again because the necessary variables do not exist. It also helps that Elizabeth is functioning beyond normal limitations of space and time.
109** There's actually a theory out there (I've lost the source, but I'll link when I find it) that talks about something called "Most Stable Time State". Now, the timeline of the game looks like [[http://i.imgur.com/MaHNjLo.jpg this]]. Elizabeth removed all possible points in time where Booker split into Comstock, eliminating the Prophet from existence. Therefore, she and the Booker you played as are ''both'' eliminated, and revert to their most stable state in time. This, for both of them, is October 8, 1893, the day Booker gave her up. Elizabeth and Comstock are gone, Anna and Booker remain.
110** Also, note that by this point, Booker is no longer hounded by Robert Lutece; nobody's shouting at him to "bring us the girl..." Presumably, this may also mean that Comstock really was the one to whom he owed a debt before. And since Comstock no longer exists, neither does his debt.
111[[/folder]]
112
113[[folder:The Ending & The Multiple Universe Mechanics]]
114* So why exactly in a plot based around infinite alternate realities, Booker can eliminate Comstock in all of them at once? The baptism is a branching point as is. There will still be alternate realities where he accepted it, rejected it, or drowned.
115** Booker didn't. Elizabeth/Anna did, by going back to the baptism and making sure he drowned. He didn't get baptized, and he didn't run away from being baptized. No Comstock the Prophet, no Booker the False Shepherd. The events of the game therefore [[RetGone never happened]]... but TheStinger indicates that some version of Booker remains who didn't sell Anna.
116** But wouldn't there still be timelines where Booker didn't get drowned? IT doesn't close any timelines, only add to the myriad of other timelines. Now instead of "Booker becomes Comstock or Booker runs away" there's now "Booker becomes Comstock, Booker runs away, and Booker Dies." But all three of those possibilities still exist.
117** No, there would be no timelines where Booker doesn't get drowned. Elizabeth is explicitly using her RealityWarper powers to utterly destroy the Booker/Comstock timelines. Imagine a timeline that runs from A to B, then forks to C and D (two possibilities). Elizabeth destroys Point B, which eliminates the C/D junction (zero possibilities) and every single junction thereafter. This leaves only one path: to Point E, the "Booker drowns" path.
118** But wouldn't Elizabeth drowning Booker just create a junction at point B instead of destroying point B? Couldn't there easily be timelines where Booker decides to not allow himself to be drowned?
119** Then she would also have the power to terminate only the Comstock timelines and wipe out her present self but not Booker (which arguably would've been an even more of a TearJerker). MagicAIsMagicA, folks...
120** It ''does not'' create a junction at Point B because she is intervening ''before'' Point B occurs. And while in ''normal'' circumstances, a junction could be created where Booker does not allow himself to be drowned, Elizabeth is using her RealityWarper abilities (with Booker's co-operation) to ensure that doesn't happen. One thing you have to accept about the ending sequence is that Elizabeth -- at that point -- is operating above and beyond the normal rules of the parallel universe theory, which would create junctions for every possible outcome. She has moved from being a character on the page to being the author. Another theory is that there ''is'' no path where Booker resists because, no matter what version of himself (and Elizabeth) reaches that point, he has made the decision to let himself be drowned. Think of it like the Heads/Tails coin flip near the beginning of the game: just like that coin is always going to be Heads, Booker is always going to choose to let himself be drowned.
121** Except she's not preventing Event B. Booker still goes to get baptized in all timelines. She is changing all instances of Result D (he goes through with it and becomes Comstock) to Result E (he goes through with it and is drowned). That's why Booker is still alive in TheStinger and Anna exists. That Booker rejected the baptism (Result C), and thus lived.
122** But won't that create a paradox anyway? Elizabeth was born after Booker's baptism, so if she kills him in all versions of the past, she never exists (we even see the other Elizabeth's disappear. So who killed Booker if not Elizabeth?
123** No, if he goes through with it, he becomes Comstock and can't have children. Only the Bookers who reject the baptism actually have non-adopted daughters.
124** Elizabeth kills him outside time, using an element of her fantastically powerful ability to influence universes. Once the Siphon is destroyed, the old rules no longer apply. Elizabeth cannot cause a paradox anymore. You're asking why she can break these rules when the game makes it explicitly clear that those rules no longer apply.
125** Then why does she need to kill Booker at all if she's not bound by any rules? She could have just sent him a note or showed up and told past Booker not to do the baptism. And if she really isn't bound to the consequences, why do all the Elizabeths (except maybe one) disappear after killing Booker? And when does it ever even say she is immune to such a paradox?
126** You're getting confused because you've got a very specific idea in your head about how time travel and alternate universes are "supposed" to work, when this entire game is based around them working very differently. She drowns Booker because she knows it'll work; Booker dies before the choice that creates Comstock, which undoes the entirety of the Columbia endeavor. It provides an absolute finality that a note or a quiet word or a time-travel intervention cannot. No one is concerned about paradoxes within the game's mileau; that's an exterior argument that clearly has no basis upon the outcome as written. Why isn't this a paradox? Because of the nigh-omnipotent reality warper standing right there, and because it wasn't. That's all the counter-argument you need.
127** It's more based on what the Universe conveys as its rules. And her being able to break all those rules conflicts with killing Booker. If she's even close to Omnipotent, she wouldn't need to kill Booker to stop him from becoming Comstock. The only answer seems to be because the plot says so.
128** Again, you're overthinking it based on what ''you'' think the answer should be, rather than what the answer actually ''is''. She says point-blank at one point during the endgame that anything mundane they do to stop Comstock does not stop Comstock. It simply creates another alternate timeline where he ''wasn't'' stopped, and in so doing, starts a domino chain that potentially results in a religious fanatic purifying the multiverse with holy fire. If she sends a note, there will be timelines where it gets lost in the mail or rained on or Booker is too drunk to read it; if she shows up in front of him and says "Don't do this," there are timelines where he ignores or avoids or attacks her. What she does instead is to choke out the entire Comstock timeline in its cradle, from outside time. It's all there. The only reason not to get this is if you're being willfully obtuse.
129** And again your explanation contradicts itself. Killing Booker is just as flawed as sending a note and there is no reason why it wouldn't create a time loop as well. But if Elizabeth can truly ignore all those rules, she would find another way, period. I thought maybe I missed a recording or something but clearly the answer is because the plot says so, even when it makes no sense in the plot itself.
130** There's no contradiction aside from the one that you really want to be there. The game makes it very clear what's going on: Elizabeth destroys the entire timeline using her powers and is able to do so because she's standing outside the story. You're carrying something into the story that makes you not want to believe it, and that's not the story's fault.
131** Not that guy, but I think it kind of is the story's fault. What does it even mean to "Go outside of time"? Do you mean the preacher just saw Booker vanish and he was never heard from again? How does that change the fact that he was taken out of time by a person who, in erasing all possibility of him ever existing as Comstock, erased all possibility of herself being born to erase all possibility of him becoming Comstock in all possible worlds. Because this is an "all possible worlds" matter, a "That's not how time-travel works in this universe" explanation is not acceptable. If there is no possible universe in which Booker lives a day after his baptism, it's obvious there is a time paradox. The most likely answer is that they wanted to have a dark, edgy ending because gaming is going through growing pains as an art medium, like a teenager who only thinks things that are dark and angst have artistic merit.
132** It's an issue of people getting confused over a different multiversal theory than what's at play in ''Infinite''. When Elizabeth takes Booker into the ocean of infinite lighthouses, the thrust of what she's saying is that she and he are, at that point, outside of the multiverse; they're not on any specific world, but they're somewhere where they can see them ''all at once''. She's stepped behind the stage and she's messing around with the set, which is why she's able to do what she does. It's a clear-cut case of the players trying to make ''Infinite'' fit into the rules established by other works when it makes it perfectly clear that it A) operates by its own rules and B) Elizabeth in the endgame can break any of those rules that she damn well feels like breaking. You're trying to rules-lawyer a continuity when its rules aren't what you think they are.
133** The Singer only makes it more confusing and "your" Elizabeth not being there to drown you. I guess one could think of it as killing Booker Prime. The original Booker. But Elizabeth can't be all powerful and able to break all the rules. Or she wouldn't need to bother drowning Booker just to kill Comstock.
134** After some conversation on the topic in other fora, I think it's also important, in addition to not getting bogged down about "time paradoxes" when it's clearly not a rule the game gives a shit about, to remember that pretty much everything in the game that takes place after the visit to Rapture is increasingly metaphorical. You're beyond reality at that point ("I can see them all"), outside the story, and you're on a non-linear path through Booker's timeline and memories. The baptism motif is a lot like Schrodinger's Cat, as presented by Comstock: "One man goes into the waters of baptism. A different man comes out, born again. But who is that man who lies submerged? Perhaps that swimmer is both sinner and saint, until he is revealed unto the eyes of man." The baptism as shown at the end of the game is thus a living metaphor for the choice Booker makes, and Elizabeth drowning him is symbolic of her destruction of that choice. It's never made; the person under the water dies before he emerges; Comstock is thus never "born" and his timelines wither on the vine. In that interpretation in combination with the post-credits stinger, Elizabeth ''didn't'' kill Booker. She just wiped out the possibility he'd ever be Comstock and sent him back to 1892.
135** I think it makes much more sense when you factor in the concept of constants and variables. There is ALWAYS a lighthouse, a man, a city -- those are constants. However, their exact nature can vary. It could be said that Booker's demise at the hands of Elizabeth becomes a constant, of sorts. Furthermore, judging by the fact that it showed hundreds of lighthouses, each with their own Elizabeth and Booker, I think the ending also implies that it wasn't just your Booker and Elizabeth that went there -- ALL of them did, thus ensuring that Comstock cannot exist in any possible universe.
136** Exactly where I was going to go with this. Elisabeth exists as she is on all universes at once, so she's able to stop all eventualities that cause Comstock to happen. She has anti-time-split powers. Just as there are an infinite number of universes, there are an infinite number of Elizabeths making sure their timeline turns out the "correct" way -- with the un-birth of Comstock. Each of the timelines where she exists is a fusion of two timelines -- one with "Booker", and one with "Comstock" -- and so she has the ability to undo her universe-specific Comstock with no ill effects. And without a Comstock in existence (any existence) to offer to buy Anna, Booker gets his happy ending with his daughter.
137** In short, it seems like Elizabeth operates on the JustForFun/TimeLord rules. The above mentioned constants are also mentioned by [[Series/DoctorWho The Doctor]], and seem to exist purely to invoke YouCannotFightFate in a setting where protagonist would otherwise be able to fix everything, and thus make the story touching even if it doesn't exactly make complete logical sense -- in short, they're a physical principle based on RuleOfDrama, which, of course, makes perfect sense for an universe that is at least partly metafictional.
138** Elizabeth travels to different universes by merging the timelines. She doesn't step into another so much as pull the other into this one, as shown by the guards who are both dead and alive at the same time and people remembering parts of what happened in the timeline before Elizabeth screwed with it. So, she pulled everything to the timeline for Booker [=DeWitt=] when his and Comstock's hadn't become separate things, because everything up to that point had to happen the same way to lead him to that point in time. By drowning him in the version of events when he accepted the baptism, she essentially makes event B (accepting the baptism) impossible, because if event B occurs, she is created, the events of the game happen, and she shows up to keep it from happening. Essentially, the events that follow event B create a circumstance that cuts off the possibility for event B. Now, if event B doesn't happen, she doesn't stop it, therefore event B can happen... except that event B can't happen because it creates her and she stops it from happening. Therefore, the timeline ignores that possibility because it's no longer a possibility, because it cuts itself off, and goes back to the last point at which Comstock had no influence on events -- when he's alone with Anna, which is shown at the end of the credits.
139** There's also a strong possibility that it has to be Booker making the decision to not allow Comstock to exist, as it's not just him drowning that prevents that potential reality, Booker has to set his own heart to prevent Comstock, and the only way he can think of to stop that possibility is by dying before that possibility is born. A Man Chooses, as it were.
140** Didn't anyone think of the possibility that Elizabeth and Booker think they are erasing the timelines Booker becomes Comstock? But in reality, killing Booker really does create new timelines from each one, making the game about the futility of trying to change events that happen, have happened, will happen, constants and variables.
141** The crucial detail is that Elizabeth and Elizabeth alone is outside of the timeline due to her power. If she changes something, it stays changed. However, other people's actions are not fixed, and fork infinitely; if she had tried to change the events in a way that left Booker alive, for instance by telling him not to go to the Baptism, then not all versions of Booker would have listened; one version of Booker would understand and not go, another version would ignore the warning, and neatly undoes Elizabeth's change in the process. The only way to prevent all Comstocks is for Elizabeth to carry out an action that both makes Comstock impossible, and cannot be undone by Booker afterwards; drowning the versions of Booker that went through with the baptism (changing all versions of the baptism to either Booker fleeing or Comstock drowning) is viable because then no version of Booker/Comstock after Elizabeth's change can create another fork; he drowns and no version of him can continue, and only those who reach that point can become Comstock. It is unlikely that there is a non-lethal method of stopping all Bookers, because if he has a choice in the matter there is always a possibility that he might not choose to stop it, and thus cause more Comstocks instead. Booker [=DeWitt=], however, does not die in all timelines, because the ones that ran from the baptism were not drowned(and nor do they become Comstock, and there is in theory an infinate number of Bookers that were never at the Baptism to begin with.
142** The way I see it is that the Elizabeths and Booker travelled back to the root of every branch that might have created Comstock and changed the path from being A) Booker rejects the baptism or B) Booker enters the water and emerges as Comstock, so that the outcome for B would always result in Booker enters the water and drowns during the baptism. From a normal perspective, it would appear as the priest holding him under too long (like the baptism when you enter Columbia). There is no longer a possibility for Comstock to exist because the entire tree has been uprooted before it can start. There no longer exists a branching point as the Constant has been replaced with a new one.
143** Hmm. Hopefully I'm not repeating something above--I've read it and don't think I am--but it seems like most people are missing the point. We know that the baptism is a constant, but what happens there isn't. The attack on NYC requires two things: Anna to exist, and Comstock to exist. Without Anna, Comstock can't groom her, and without Comstock Anna grows up normal. If Booker doesn't get baptized, Anna exists. If he does get baptised, Comstock exists. Under normal circumstances, un all of the alternate universes, there can't be both at the same time, so all is well...until the Tears are created, allowing Comstock to "merge" those two divergent points and create a timeline where both Anna AND Comstock exist. Now the problem is this: no matter what, there's always going to be AT LEAST one Comstock universe (Elizabeth specifically says there is always one), and as long as there's one Comstock somewhere and one Anna somewhere NYC gets attacked. Any timeline that stops Anna causes a Comstock; any timeline that stops Comstock has an Anna. So the only way for it to stop is for them to destroy BOTH in the same timeline at a constant, and the only way to do that is to destroy Booker AND Comstock at the same time--there has to be a timeline where *neither* exists, which is presumably impossible. One precludes the other. How can it be done? *Kill Booker after he knows he has to make a decision but hasn't made the decision yet*--effectively, he's a Schrodinger's Booker. He is both Booker AND Comstock at that moment ("I'm both!"), and that is when Elizabeth(s) drown him. Booker does have to do this on his own, which is why none of the "brute force" methods will work. Make sense?
144[[/folder]]
145
146[[folder:Why did Comstock need to abduct...?]]
147* Anna was born in 1892. Wounded Knee happened in 1890, and we know Booker nearly got baptized right after. We know that in an alternate universe, Booker did get baptized, and took the name Zachary Comstock, and went on to become the "Prophet" of Columbia.\
148But why did Comstock abduct Anna from our Booker's universe? If Anna was never born in his timeline, he would never have had any knowledge of her. If she ''was'', then he would never have needed to abduct her. If Comstock knew what he was doing the whole time, then where did he learn it?
149** Some Voxophones talk about how they would use the Tears to observe other people to steal ideas from (explicitly mentioned about a biologist and implied for how they get a lot of the anachronistic music) It's likely Comstock used the tears as a means for his "prophecies" and saw that Anna would lead to his vision but in his world he never had her. Thus they needed to kidnap her from Booker who did.
150** It's explicitly stated that his use of the Tears to prophesy led him to learn his plans can only be continued to fruition by his own flesh and blood, but by then his usage of them had shortened his life and rendered him sterile. His only choice to find a true flesh-and-blood heir is to steal one from a Booker [=DeWitt=] that never became Comstock.
151[[/folder]]
152
153[[folder:Elizabeth's Social Skills]]
154* Elizabeth has oddly well-developed social skills for a girl who has been locked up in a tower for her entire life with her only companion being a robot bird thingy.
155** She may have all the knowledge of her different selves from alternate realities at some level.
156** Equally likely is the possibility that she's aping the conversations she might have seen through the Tears.
157** Elizabeth also lived in Comstock House until she started creating Tears. Then they put her in Monument Island to Siphon off her powers. Most of her basic social skills were probably developed then.
158** I find more impressive how level-headed she is during huge firefights.
159** Part of that could also be from interacting with Rosalind Lutece. An earlier Voxophone stated that she was the only scientist allowed near Elizabeth.
160** Do you really think the [[CreepyTwins LUTECES]] are [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} good people]] to learn social niceties from?
161** I'm certain that there were several etiquette books in that library. Victorian social mores were much more formal and we don't see many casual situations where lack of experience would come into play.
162** Seeing as the only people she really interacts with are Booker and people she considers her enemies, even being polite isn't likely to come up. She's read a lot of books so vocabulary isn't really an issue, she doesn't really need to understand or be adept at any social situation beyond expressing her thoughts, she just needs to say whatever she's thinking to Booker.
163[[/folder]]
164
165[[folder:Constants]]
166* The game decides to handwave Booker being unable to change certain events because they are "constants". But why are they constants? What makes them constants?
167** There are over a thousand ways to open a chess game, but first you need the board and two players.
168** Those constants have an explanation why they are constant (the game was designed to be played between two people on a board). There's no reason why the coin flip has to be heads, why Booker can't get Elizabeth to New York or Paris, or even why there has to be a lighthouse, a city, and a man.
169** You might as well ask why chess was designed with two players. Constants exist because otherwise nothing else does; everything happened because Booker [=DeWitt=] went to the river seeking baptism. The point is not why the universe is the way it is, but how one point in time can create so many potential universes. However, the logical conclusion of Booker and Elizabeth's quest to eliminate Comstock means things can only end with Booker's death at the crossroads. The point of the coin toss -- and many of the "choices" offered in the game -- is that regardless of what you pick, things can only end a certain way. Booker can't bring Elizabeth to New York or Paris because she never became Elizabeth-who-was-locked-in-a-tower-and-wanted-to-go-to-Paris.
170** That's not strictly true. Constants don't create potential universes, they destroy them. For example, one constant is that Booker cannot get past the Songbird to save Elizabeth from Comstock House. Therefore, any universe with that sequence of events will never come to pass. From a plotting standpoint, constants are kind of a cop-out in order to patch up some of the [[PlotHole Plot Holes]] that would otherwise exist as to why events proceeded the way they did. Why can't Booker and Elizabeth escape Columbia? Because her getting trapped in Comstock House is a constant of the multiverse. Why is that a constant? It just is, mainly because we don't have a plot without it.
171** Remember that the Lutece twins have probably seen Booker attempt to rescue Elizabeth hundreds of times, it might be possible that the coin toss and ball 77 are constants because only in the timelines in which they happen to be does Booker manage to find Elizabeth.
172** The coin-toss was noted by the Luteces to be part of an experiment. However, getting ball #77 ''is'' vital to Booker's progress; losing the raffle would negate the sequence of events leading to him procuring the Sky-Hook and opening the gates for the police to try and stop him.
173** Put another way, for the same reason sodium reacts violently with water. Something in the laws of physics simply requires it. In this case we don't know the underlying law and neither does anyone else. Even Robert and Rosland are still experimenting trying to understand the why of it all taking the opportunity of putting dozens of Bookers through identical circumstances to study the phenomena. That there are constants and are variable is what can say for sure happens by observation but the exact reason why is probably something only all powerful Elizabeth knows if anyone at all.
174[[/folder]]
175
176[[folder:Booker and Comstock's ages]]
177* So how come Booker looks to be about 40 and Comstock looks to be about 60? The fact that the two are very obviously not even closely the same age makes the Plot Twist come clean out of left field.
178** More importantly, how could Booker, a 38-year-old man, do all of the things he did? If his age is accurate, then he was part of the Pinkertons (and got kicked out), was involved at Wounded Knee as the part of the 7th Cavalry, fathered a child, and had accumulated a massive amount of debt all before he was 18 years old. Either he had a VERY interesting life as a teenager or there's some more time travel nonsense going on.
179** The "appropriate" age to do things was much different in the late 1800s. The way Booker speaks shows that he's not a very educated person, which means he probably didn't go to school past grade school, which was common at the time so kids could work on the farm. People got married and had children much younger because their life spans were generally shorter. Young teenagers joined the military and went to war. A gambling addiction and very poor choices could easily lead to being in a lot of debt at 18 -- hell, this happens now to a lot of people who get their first credit card at 18. For the time period, all of the things that happen are pretty realistic.
180** Comstock ''is'' about 40. A timeline in the Hall of Heroes shows that he was born in 1874, making him about 38 in 1912. The beard makes him look a lot older than he actually is.
181** It could also be a side effect of exposure to the machines that cause the Tears as later Voxophones tell that they really did a number on his health.
182** Comstock actually mentions in a Voxophone recording that he has tumors, and in another a woman says that her husband got stomach cancer after working on Monument Island and became a Handyman.
183** Technically, out of all those things, all pre-Comstock Booker did was fight at Wounded Knee. It's more likely that Anna was stolen from a Booker that refused the baptism, then went on to work for the Pinkertons, have a daughter, and accumulate a large amount of debt. Because the debt (Anna) was collected from a different timeline may also mean it happened at a different point along that timeline.
184** Elizabeth mentions during the ending that Booker "shared this room with your regrets for almost twenty years." The Hall of Heroes timeline shows Elizabeth being "born" in 1893, 19 years before Booker arrives. So no, the two timelines were perfectly or almost perfectly parallel to each other. Comstock, however, ''was'' prematurely aged by the same Tear-radiation that caused his sterility and tumors, as Rosalind Lutece mentions in one of the Voxophones on Comstock's flagship. As for Booker's interesting childhood, he was actually 19 when he sold Anna, and therefore around 18 when she was born/he was married.
185* If Columbia launched in 1893 at the World's Fair, doesn't that mean the late-teened [=DeWitt=]/Comstock developed fortune and connections enough to launch a miracle of the ages within one year of his baptism?
186** He didn't build it by himself, he just convinced the United States government to do it for him. He mentions in one of his Voxophones that it was created "through the dollars of Washington." The only thing he would've had to pay for himself was the funding for the Luteces to fully develop their technology. As for that, remember that his alter-ego was a big time gambler. Maybe in Comstock's world, he won the jackpot instead of accumulating huge debts?
187[[/folder]]
188
189[[folder:Elizabeth's Necklace]]
190* Is there any significance to the necklace that you get to choose for Elizabeth? Or is it just a RedHerring?
191** It's to prove a point in the ending -- that there are many ways the story goes, and many choices you can make, but you might always end at the same place. The game has plenty of moments where it offers false choices both to Booker and to the player.
192** Or to show that none of the Elizabeths that drown you are your Elizabeth. None of them have the necklace you chose for her.
193** Or it could be forming the beginnings of Booker's and Elizabeth's relationship. At the same time, the bird and the cage can also symbolize the Luteces' roles in Elizabeth's imprisonment. Robert has the bird because he is the one who got Elizabeth from Booker. Rosalind has the cage because she was the one in charge of experiments on Monument Island.
194* Interesting note on the ''Burial at Sea'' DLC: Alpha!Elizabeth has the Bird brooch, so Alpha!Booker chose the bird for her. It is probably one of the ways he recognized that the Elizabeth that drowned him wasn't Alpha!Elizabeth, as she did not have the brooch on.
195[[/folder]]
196
197[[folder:Booker and the Pinkertons]]
198* So, what did Booker do to get kicked out of the Pinkertons?
199** Supposedly he used "extreme methods" in his job. No specifics, but I recall him mentioning putting down some riots.
200** The Pinkertons' entire job was putting down riots and unionists, how on earth would that get him kicked out?
201** It might have been at one point that Booker disobeyed orders and was fired for it. When he speaks to Elizabeth about his work as a Pinkerton agent, it's clear that he greatly regrets it.
202** Likely a NoodleIncident and EvenEvilHasStandards mix. Considering what he did at Wounded Knee, perhaps he simply did his usual solution to problems and not realize that doing that sort of thing to Indians is okay, but not white workers.
203** Alternatively, character development and refusing to repeat the sins of his past.
204[[/folder]]
205
206[[folder:Bathyspheres]]
207* How was Elizabeth able to use the Bathysphere? Didn't Andrew Ryan lock it to only himself and those related to him?
208** Either the events of ''VideoGame/BioShock'' hadn't yet happened, it's another universal version of Rapture to the one in the ''VideoGame/BioShock'' games, or the fact she's a nearly omniscient reality walker.
209** You can hear the Songbird dying in the first ''VideoGame/BioShock'' just around the time you see Sander's student playing the piano, so it's pretty likely that Elizabeth and Booker travelled to around the same point as the first game.
210*** Ken Levine has stated in interviews that this isn’t true. They had no concept of Bioshock Infinite back when the first Bioshock was created. It’s just a coincidence that the sounds are similar.
211** Really? Interesting. I thought Booker and Lizzie's little trip in Rapture actually predated Jack's arrival, mostly because when the duo visit, the place is actually much less trashed. Not utterly pristine, mind you, but still, I'd have to replay ''VideoGame/BioShock'' a bit to make sure.
212** Go up to the machine where Jack gets his first Plasmid. It's broken. It's either a different universe or one where Jack already arrived.
213** There was a "Let us out" protest sign in the Bathysphere dock, so we at least know that Ryan had locked down travel by then. It's entirely possible that Booker and Liz were genetically similar enough to Ryan to fool the Bathysphere. Since they're apparently alternate reality versions of each other, it's not that farfetched. Also, consider that the Rapture you see might not have been really...''real''. Your sphere surfaces outside of the lighthouse instead of inside it, and when you open the lighthouse doors, you're fully in Liz's Abstract Multiverse Crossroad World.
214** From what I understand, Booker is ''Infinite's'' reality version of Jack, the original protagonist of ''VideoGame/BioShock'' (there is always a man, a girl and a lighthouse). Jack is the illegitimate son of Ryan which allowed him to use the Vita-Chambers and Bathysphere throughout Rapture. If Booker is this reality's version of Jack then he may or may not be related in some way to Andrew Ryan, allowing him to use the Bathysphere across the other reality. Multiple universes are fun.
215** Let me do you one better there: Comstock is Infinite's version of Andrew Ryan and Comstock is also Booker.
216** That makes sense. The twins are identical in their role to Tenembaum, Fink is somewhat similar in his to Sander Cohen, and I'd guess Fontaine and Fitzroy show some similarity, although it's much less clear cut.
217** ''Atlas'' and Fitzroy are pretty much a perfect match. You could say that just like it so happens that Rosalind Lutece's double in another universe is the opposite gender, Fitzroy's double (Fontaine) in another universe is someone who can talk just as passionately about the rights of people treated as second class as she can, but unlike her, is a complete fraud doing it to serve his own ends.
218** What a lot of what people are saying may be true, I'll also say this: the Songbird screech is also heard many times in ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' so I'm not sure that it MUST occur during the piano playing. Also to those that say Booker is ''Infinite's'' Jack: this is not true. Booker is not Ryan's son and they do not share the same genetics as each other like the Lutece twins. The reason the Bathysphere works is because the plot needed it to; a self fulfilling wish. The parallels are certainly there between the two and their experiences, but they are not different universe version of each other. Further proof that what you see in ''Infinite'' is not the same universe as Jack's: the walkway you enter right after obtaining your first Plasmid in the first game is missing. This means it must have never been done when Booker and Elizabeth enter and also helps illuminate the fact that the multiple universes also affect Rapture as well as Columbia.
219** I might be wrong, but that Rapture could be the same as Jack's. It could be explained that Booker and Liz arrived after Jack (thus no Electro Bolt Plasmid and the Bathysphere is docked at Rapture rather than at the lighthouse). The glass walkway probably broke off due to the damage caused by the plane wreck.
220** If you play that part in Infinite and look towards the window where Songbird dies you can see a glass tunnel and inside a dead Big Daddy and a Little Sister. If you play that part in the original there is no glass tunnel at that exact place an there also isn't a banner between stairs and the window that says something about the Great Chain. So it's most likely a different universe.
221** I always thought that in ''VideoGame/BioShock2'', the screeches were multiple Elizabeths and Bookers from other other universes going to that Rapture to kill the Songbird.
222[[/folder]]
223
224[[folder:Comstock at Wounded Knee]]
225* If Slate knew Comstock never fought at the "battle" of Wounded Knee, how could he know Booker, seeing as how they are the same person at that point in time?
226** The point is that Comstock ''did'' fight at Wounded Knee...the thing is, at that time his name was "Booker [=deWitt=]" and the Slate we encounter is the Slate of one of the realities in which Booker accepted baptism. However, he doesn't ''know'' that Booker and Comstock are the same person -- from different universes.
227* Does Slate know about the alternate universes? He seemed to understand that Comstock and Booker are different entities, but the same person. He makes no indication that Booker is related to Comstock in anyway though, other than the fact that Booker is a warrior and Comstock is not. He says that Booker "wrapped himself in glory" at Wounded Knee, which might imply that he still thinks Booker isn't honest about what happened.
228** The game doesn't indicate that Slate recognizes Comstock and Booker as being the same person at all, which is part of why he's set off about Comstock claiming to have been at Wounded Knee: If he ''knew'' Comstock and Booker were the same person this wouldn't have been nearly the BerserkButton it is in the game.
229** How could Slate not recognize Comstock as Booker, before Comstock became aged by his abuse of Tears? They are literally the same person; perhaps offset by a few years. Did he only become acquainted with Comstock after his transformation? Otherwise that sounds like a PlotHole to me.
230** Different [[ClarkKenting clothes, different setting, and a beard would all have a part to play]]. Furthermore, I don't recall anything indicating that Slate ever spent any significant amount of time anywhere near enough to Comstock to figure out who he was. As far as he knew, Comstock was just a famous prophet who only started pissing him off when he began claiming to be a war hero.
231** Comstock claimed to have LED the battle. [=DeWitt=] was a lowly corporal at the time. Wouldn't you be pissed by an upstart like that? Now Comstock is an old man with cancer and is now a weakling due to his use of tears THEN he claims to have led the men at Peking. Slate calls horseshit and is ruined for his troubles. Whether or not he knows that Comstock is [=DeWitt=], but the fact of the matter is that Comstock ISN'T [=DeWitt=]. He denies that part of himself exists and threw off his own name then he claimed both [=DeWitt's=] and Slate's accomplishments. Comstock claims to be better than the sum of these two parts, Slate and [=DeWitt=]. The Comstock that Slate is probably referring to is the version of himself that he made up. There was never a Comstock that did what [=DeWitt=] did that also led the cavalry. That Comstock was never there in any universe. It's a fantasy, a lie. That's what pisses Slate off. No matter what Slate knows and what he believes. The fact of the matter is that he's right. The Comstock that the Prophet says was at Wounded Knee doesn't exist and did not participate in the Massacre/Battle. Even though the real Comstock was there, he was there as [=DeWitt=] any ways and [=DeWitt=] died at the baptism in the metaphorical sense. So any way you slice it, the answer is always that Comstock was not at Wounded Knee.
232[[/folder]]
233
234[[folder:The Ending (Part 2)]]
235* Two-fold one here: How does drowning the player-controlled Booker erase the Comstock and Booker realities? He's already lived past that decision, so his death can't change it. Yet the game says it did, which brings up question two: how do the Tears work? Throughout the game, when the characters move between universes, it just means there are two versions of them in one reality. Yet at the end when our Booker is drowned it erases the Comstock and Booker timelines, but you'd have to drown a Booker who hadn't made that choice yet -- a younger version. So does that mean moving through Tears allows you to possess the existing version now? If so, why didn't Comstock override Booker when he came to take Anna then?
236** We're shown two ways for people to cross universes. One is via Tears, where you just replace your alternate self -- this is how Booker got memories of being a martyr for the Vox, and why Chen Lin was nose-bleedingly confused when his dead self was replaced by a living one. The other is the Lutece's work, where you come in addition to your alternate self -- this is how Robert Lutece could exist alongside Rosalind Lutece, despite them being the same person, and how Booker was brought across universes at the start of the game by the Luteces (at the end, Robert comments that he understands how Booker's mind is trying to cope because his mind went through it when he crossed over). So, when Elizabeth takes you to the river where Booker is offered the choice to be baptized, both times, Booker is taking the place of the other self and reliving the moment. The first time, you see him refute the baptism. The second time, he realizes that the only way to avoid Comstock's creation is to take the place of the Booker who was baptized by travelling there with Elizabeth, and be drowned instead. Basically, it's important to keep track of what kind of universe jump has been taken -- the Lutece's holes between universes, or Elizabeth's universe-replacement.
237** AWizardDidIt. Or in this case, "An Omniscient RealityWarper Did It". In the context of the game that sequence makes no sense (as you correctly pointed out), but in the context of the narrative, Elizabeth (through her superpowers) is drowning the past Booker, which in turn drowns the present (playable) Booker.
238** As for "it wouldn't change anything"... well it just ''does''. This isn't a case of a new decision creating a new timeline, this is a case of ''destroying'' two sets of timelines completely by excising the decision that originally created them. Once that is done, Booker [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble will have never lived]] through the decision because the decision never existed to begin with, hence why every version of Elizabeth disappears.
239** And to put it plainly -- the Baptism is the ''only'' way a person named Comstock (nee Booker) can ever exist. If he ever chooses religion again in a different time frame, it will be with a different preacher, who will pressure him to either keep his name or change it to something other than Zachary Hale Comstock, and after Booker has had enough time to learn to deal with his guilt productively rather than attempt to shunt it into religious fervor, and said Booker will never meet the Lutece of his universe and bribe him/her into building him a time machine and flying city. Every possibility that has Comstock ''never was''.
240** Does this mean that Alpha!Booker (the one we play as) survived and is the Booker we play as in the Epilogue? Since the drowning only kills Bookers who accepted the Comstock!baptism, Alpha!Booker never accepted it. After the drowning, his timeline is reset to a certain point, where he wakes up at his desk and Elizabeth becomes Schrodinger's!Anna, both there and not there until observed.
241** My theory goes like this: After Alpha!Booker was fused into this single Booker who accepted baptism and drowned, thus erasing even the possibility of Comstock, everything related to baptism Comstocks existence got erased down the line too. Timeline gets wibbly wobbly and tries to "reset" itself to most stable form, noticing that there is a wrong Booker at the wrong place(Alpha!Booker, who never took the baptism, being drowned), plucks him out (while leaving the event of drowning in place) and places him furthest of his own timeline before erasing: the moment before the offer was made, because that is the moment before Comstock!timeline start to intersect with Alpha!Booker!timeline, thus everything after that is erased.
242
243[[/folder]]
244
245[[folder:Leaving Behind Universe-1 Fitzroy]]
246* Did anyone else notice that Booker and Elizabeth never actually complete the quest to get Daisy Fitzroy her guns? They move into a parallel universe where this task was already accomplished for them, abandoning the original Daisy. Admittedly, this can be excused by their lack of knowledge on how the Tears worked at the time, and does come to bite them hard (since in the new universe, Booker never made a deal for the airship).
247** Presumably, the disappearance of Booker and Elizabeth entirely from the initial timeline threw that Columbia into an entirely different path. Daisy loses her man to get the guns (which could lead to her losing the fight if she couldn't find any other way), but that Comstock also loses his Elizabeth and thus his plans for her. Of course, Elizabeth's erasure of all timelines involving Comstock and post-baptism Booker meant that said timeline (and everyone in it) went away. As did all of the ones you enter in the game.
248[[/folder]]
249
250[[folder:Old Tech vs New City]]
251* In the future with the aged Elizabeth, why are the 1912-era airships attacking 1984 New York with seeming impunity? With 1980s weaponry it would be trivial to shoot them down.
252** Future Elizabeth probably went into some more veils to get some pretty fancy technology for the airships. Also, she is a borderline PhysicalGod, she can probably just wipe away all of 80s New York's weapons.
253** Not only are airships -- particularly heavier-than-air quantum-levitated airships like these -- decidedly ''difficult'' to shoot down, you're overlooking one crucial fact: the airships are not being used as air superiority fighters, they are being used as ''bombers'' -- a class of aircraft that typically comes into play after aerial superiority is established. This implies that the military forces were already dealt with by AA from the city proper, or by some other means, and what Booker was seeing was the subsequent carpet bombing of the city. And considering Columbia's access to heavily armored flying barges, quantum levitation, anachronistic rocketry and weaponry, not to mention SuperSoldiers, swatting a few lightly armored fighter jets held up by nothing more than forward motion would likely be child's play.
254** A correction: Future Elizabeth is ''not'' a PhysicalGod. She actually states that the Siphon has been draining her power for so long that she barely had enough strength to bring Booker into her BadFuture.
255** BUT the power it takes from her is used to make vigors and salts. The flying city is decades ahead of the normal surface and had had Elizabeths entire life to develop a massive stockpile of super-power potions. Not to mention that a single well-placed tear could, for instance, drop an atomic bomb from the past on 1980's New York.
256** Also, you're assuming that Columbia didn't significantly advance either in 70 years.
257** Certainly didn't look like it; it seemed to be as retro as it has ever been. By the 1980s, it should've been a genuine KillSat to bring the world down on its knees (to tie into the Jedi references). Rapture at least had the potential of its biotechnology wreaking havoc on the world and as such was a credible threat that shouldn't be allowed to resurface...
258** Most likely they ''should'' be more advanced, but the developers did not bother to create a new model for a single scene.
259** Equally likely: the blimp fleet was just too far away to see any significant technological advances.
260** Well, the fact that Columbia managed to remain undetected in an era of radar and satellites suggests it had some kind of stealth/cloaking ability, which could have allowed it to sneak up on New York with impunity. However, it's entirely possible that, had Booker watched the scene unfold longer, he would have seen the US military swoop in mop the floor with Columbia.
261** Not likely. You're overthinking it. The question isn't "how did this happen?" There is no question. This ''happened''. Whatever the situation was, by 1984, Columbia is a sufficiently powerful fleet that it is capable of burning New York City to the ground. Whether it did so with sufficient speed that the military has yet to respond, achieved its goals by sabotage and guile, or was simply an idiosyncratic but powerful air force that took on the American military directly and won outright, the point is that Columbia took on New York City and ''won''.
262** Also, it's certainly not saying that Columbia got very far past burning New York. Once the US figures out what they're dealing with they'd be happy to launch a couple more fighters and some surface-to-air missiles.
263** Yes, it is. Elizabeth's voice logs, found as you continue through 1984, include one that says that once she's done purifying this world, she's going to move on to others, which rather implies that her side's winning handily. Columbia is kicking the ''hell'' out of the rest of Earth.
264** That only gives us her game plan, it's never been in question that Columbia aims to purify everything they can find. How effective they are at following through on it is, which will require them to have something to deal with the military response and their ability to fight back is questionable.
265** It's important to note that we never see how all of that ends. It could go either way, but logic dictates that the United States probably wins easily after the sneak attack factor wears off. Elizabeth lacks her powers, and the United States of that world was powerful enough to construct Columbia and all its wonders in the late 1890s/early 1900s in a time of relative peace. Imagine what it could do by the 1980s under the threat of war -- the time when technology tends to advance drastically. The US is also far bigger than the single flying city of Columbia, giving it an immensely larger resource and population base to work with. The city itself is hardly invincible. The Vox go toe-to-toe with the Founders with their airships and jury-rigged tech, and Booker alone tears apart most anything they throw at him. Ultimately, reality likely ensues, and the US military's jets and missiles probably wreck the slow moving city into nothing. Worse comes to worse, a nuclear warhead or two wipes out Columbia in an instant.
266** Logic only dictates that if you leap to the conclusion that Columbia has no hard counter for the air force. Keep in mind they had comparatively advanced firearms, a fleet of airships, reality-warping combat powers in convenient bottle form, cyborgs, and tears that let them see the future in 1912. Given another seventy-two years, they have a lot of possible options, including weaponizing the tears, even more advanced weapons and missile defense technology, the ability to send in double agents or Vigor-swilling suicide bombers, using precognition to deliberately predict and counter the American defense, a fleet of nigh-invincible Songbirds, and a ground force of advanced Handymen. The problem with this particular complaint about ''Infinite'' is that it operates on the assumption that, because all we see are a few airships throwing fire down at the city, that's all Columbia has. That really is not the case.
267** It's also important to note that Elizabeth might not have her powers, but Columbia still has the technological capacity to open Tears on their own. Furthermore, that's something the US government ''didn't'' have a hand in: remember, the US might have funded the quantum levitation business and the formation of the city itself, but that's the only thing they had a good idea of; Songbird, Handymen, Vigors, Tears, and so on were kept very much in Columbian hands. Plus, Booker's rampage and the Vox rebellion occurred in 1912; the attack on America occurs in the 80s -- by which time nobody on the surface had figured out what the hell happened to Columbia, if you take the documentary on Columbia into account -- so it might be safe to assume Columbia had a few technological revolutions of its own, enough to give it an edge. Now, that doesn't mean that Columbia would win against the US or any other country with a significant air force; it could still go down in flames, but for all we know, it might just be able to take a lot of "The Sodom Below" with it. That's not important, though: even if the Columbia we see attacking New York ultimately fails, it still exists in thousands of other universes, and given the infinite variety of the multiverse, one such Columbia might be able to successfully "drown in flame the mountains of man"... and then move onto the rest of the multiverse.
268** Pun aside, the potential of the tears is literally ''infinite'', especially when it come to getting a good view of alternate 'verses and get a bounty of technology most impressive. The question is not, what can Elizabeth do with 70 years of prep' time and access to weapons and techs one cannot even imagine, the question is, what cannot she do? You can pretty much imagine the most insane mega-crossover, and the tears can make it happen. If Elizabeth feels like she needs THE Death Star to destroy New York, it's possible. If she feels like dropping the nine MP-EVA to destroy the National Guard, she can do it. Equipping Columbia with Thanix cannons? Sure. Why the hell not?
269** If she had such a weapon, it would have been used right from the start like the Death Star's planet-destroying laser was. Moreover, why wait so long? If she had such a thing, why not use it in the 1950s or something? Elizabeth's super powerful tears might have made the technology surge happen, but it is clearly established she no longer had that ability. Columbia would be using the much less reliable Lutece machines, which would also render the users sterile and insane like Comstock. Moreover, there are plenty of signs that this big technology boom never happened. Same old airships flying around? Check. Same infrastructure and steam punk technology (e.g. elevators) as the 1912 Columbia in the areas Booker traverses in 1984? Check. Same old voice recorders from 1912? Check. And it's not like the United States was sitting on its rump for those 70 years either. The early 1980s saw a massive expansion of the US military. Cold War America had a nuclear arsenal that could destroy thousands of cities, if not the entire world. One slow moving, flying city (that probably spent years recovering from the Vox rebellion and Booker's rampage killing hundreds of its best and brightest and thus cutting deeply into that prep time) is a prime target for nuking as it lazily flies over some empty plains. Even if it somehow destroyed the entire US, Columbia would need something to counter America's deep sea nuclear submarine fleet, and as we see with Songbird, that technology is clearly not their field of expertise.
270** This is an issue of someone making up their mind about how this is an accurate complaint and then refusing to accept anything that would even partially justify it. Here's what we know: in 1984 under Elizabeth's leadership, Columbia came with a fleet of airships to burn New York City to the ground and it succeeded. The city is ablaze. We see a five-second clip of the fighting and it's obvious that the airships have gotten the better of the city. ''America lost the fight.'' Any complaints by a player that America should not have lost the fight are thus pointless because not only are you not privy to the entirety of Columbia or America's game plan but you're complaining about something that, in-game, ''happened''. You should not be asking why America lost; you should be asking why Columbia won, and their generally advanced levels of technology provide a host of potential reasons thereof, up to and including the fact that they have the ability to deliberately reshuffle the multiversal deck in any situation where they lose. Any further harping on this point is a case of someone complaining to complain, like asking why Alderaan just sat there and took it when the Death Star imploded the place.
271** This is a Headscratchers page. It exists specifically for the discussion of potential PlotHole and other confusing events about the narrative. Saying that we can't argue that something [[PlotHole doesn't make sense following in-universe logic despite it happening anyway]] is missing the whole point of this page. The attack on New York is confusing because, based on what we see in Comstock House and during the brief clip of the battle proper, there is no indication either way that Columbia improved its technology.
272** The point being that it ''isn't a plot hole''. In order for this to be considered a plot hole, the critic must drag in a preconception from outside the narrative in order to raise it as an issue.
273** Within the narrative we see that the technologies of Comstock House are identical to the 1912 technology. Guns, elevators, turrets, and recorders all have no noticeable change (as that would spoil TheReveal) Likewise, when we see the brief clip of New York being destroyed there are no noticeable signs of improvement to the airships either. Strictly going off what we can see within the narrative, Columbia utterly lacks the ability to successfully wage war on the 1980s world and win. Now, we can give Handwaves that Comstock House is a decrepit ruin using outdated tech and the airships might have advancements we couldn't see, but those are external justifications to explain what, looking only at what we outright see, doesn't make any sense.
274** None of this matters because millions of New Yorkers are still dead. Even if America wins, that won't change the fact that the largest city in the world was burned to the ground. By that logic, Columbia still burned "Sodom".
275** That is exaggerating what we see in that "five-second clip" of the battle. The 1984 attack on New York by Columbia did indeed happen, and there is no doubting that, but all of these supposed outcomes like America losing and New York being reduced to nothing are never explicitly stated to happen. For all intents and purposes, they are effectively fanon. We see the attack, but we never see the outcome. Furthermore, New York and the surrounding infrastructure are surprisingly intact from what we can witness. Heck, the power is still on. The time frame and outcome of the battle are never stated. It could be shortly after the attack began, or it could be later. Also, recall that Columbia might not exactly be under Elizabeth's leadership anymore either. ("As you can see, Booker, the lunatics are running the asylum. They don't even listen to me anymore.") The Star Wars comparison doesn't work well either. Alderaan was destroyed in one shot by a super weapon they couldn't even touch. Columbia's clearly taking much more time to destroy the Big Apple with traditional bombing, and the Cold War United States still has the world's most powerful military to fight back with. Plus, how effectively 1984 Columbia can still use the Tears is questionable with the decaying infrastructure and Elizabeth lacking her powers, which provided much of Columbia's more advanced technology like Vigors. As for not shooting down the airships and their supposed free reign of the skies? While that could be a sign the US has lost, it could also be the shock of a sneak attack still being present or the hesitation by the American military to risk innocent lives by sending large chucks of burning metal to ground. We don't know. In short, other than maybe older Elizabeth's arguably biased opinion (she did spend many decades as nutty as Comstock) and limited perspective on what is happening, nothing ever explicitly says Columbia has won, and nothing ever explicitly says America is destined to lose. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
276** ''The Seed of the Prophet shall sit the throne and drown in flame the mountains of man'' -- that is the prophecy that sets in motion the kidnapping of Anna/Elizabeth and with it the main events of the game. You seem to forget that we're dealing with people who can foresee the future and in this story there are several points where explicitly YouCantFightFate. Comstock brought Anna from Booker's universe, not because she could lead Columbia, but because under her lead Columbia would ''win''. Comstock saw it happening. How? Maybe superior technology, maybe abuse of Tears, maybe tiny gnomes sprouted out of nowhere and gave the Columbians magical powers. Bottom line, no matter how many times you flip the coin, the Seed of the Prophet ''will'' sit the throne and drown in flame the mountains of man.
277** But Comstock can't see ''the'' future, he can just see ''potential'' futures that he thinks are immutable. Rosalind spells it out, he thinks the Tears made by the Lutece machine are prophecy, not probability. Sure, in some worlds Elizabeth was brought back in line and laid waste to the world, but if that were a constant, Booker couldn't have saved his Elizabeth later. Comstock also claims that ''The false shepherd will come and lead the lamb astray'' but the Booker of Columbia-3 dies never seeing Elizabeth. Just because someone can see the future doesn't mean [[YouCantFightFate the future can't be changed]] and making definitive claims about said future requires a more trustworthy source than an absolute madman in the first place.
278* In all honesty, we don't see enough of the future city to make accurate judgements as to its technological strength: Comstock House is falling to pieces and using old technology, but given that this is Elizabeth's private hell, it's not so surprising that it's collapsing given that it's supposedly her only real sphere of influence and she hit the DespairEventHorizon years ago. It's equally possible that the amount of rubble, debris and signs of disrepair are actually due to the battles with the Sodom below, so maybe the US military -- or some other government's air force -- was able to do some damage. In all honesty, it doesn't matter: even if it's destroyed, it's still managed to take a good deal of New York with it. Plus, unless the US government takes the drastic step of using nuclear weapons against Columbia (in which case it'll have taken ''all'' of New York with it) then there's a chance for Columbian survivors to continue fighting. And even if they're wiped out, even if they surrender... there's still the overarching problem of the multiverse: Columbia still exists in millions of worlds, all of them hell-bent on bringing "righteousness" to the various Sodoms Below, and some where its technology doesn't stagnate.
279* It's unlikely Columbia could've won. They might raze New York, but they're still very screwed. Once the rest of NATO figures out what's going on, they're going to be sending all the help they can to make sure their cities don't become the next Columbia versus New York. Maybe even the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact might get in on the act and defend the United States. Not to mention the United States probably possesses the resources to destroy Columbia outright.
280** Or Elizabeth's real plan is to instigate a conflict by torching New York and then maybe Moscow, trying to goad someone into launching a nuclear warhead and inadvertently killing everybody. During the resulting fallout, Columbia will just lazily sail over the salted earth. The only survivors of such a conflict would be Columbia and some very determined survivors, and once those survivors are out of the way and the fallout clears, repopulating the earth with indoctrinated Columbians shouldn't be hard.
281** Or this might be only a fraction of the city. It's very possible that Columbia has expanded since it was first built. More room would be needed for all those people born in the last 70 years.
282** If Columbia can use quantum fields to suspend their city in air, then I don't imagine it would be particularly difficult for them to have it repulse any missiles or projectiles their enemies might utilize.
283** Honestly, the Columbia of 1912 seemed sufficiently armed and manned to take on 1984 New York. Just look at the Vigors, and think how they could turn the tide of battle pretty easily. Stuff enough crows in an F-16's engine and it will go down. Add sky barges filled with suicidally fervent soldiers, and it's a bad day for NYC.
284** Just an idea, but maybe multiple Columbias are being used. Like when one is just about to be completely destroyed, another is warped in to take its place. It would become a battle of attrition, with Columbia victorious because it has (effectively) infinite resources.
285** Because Columbia's "New Hotness" secured air superiority before the old airships showed up to proceed with the bombardment. Compare with current American doctrine; you show up with modern, high-tech air superiority fighters like the F-22 to fight it out with the enemy airplanes, but then what do you do after you own the sky? You bring in the A10 (A piece of 80's hardware deliberately built so primitive that the pilots have to fly with night vision goggles on) to hit enemy ground forces and the B-52 (a plane so old there are documented cases of three generations of a family flying the exact same airplane) to hit strategic targets. The old blimps (and the A10/B52) were never designed for use against fixed-wing aircraft, but that doesn't mean you just throw them away; they can do the ground attack job better than a dedicated air superiority craft, especially when you take into account Columbia's quantum levitation. We don't see what Columbia used to secure air dominance because they did that job before bringing in the city.
286** In addition, Columbia HAS advanced. Note the Boys of Silence, who are not seen elsewhere, and who can control tears and teleport which implies some greater understanding of tears. If this commonplace tear technology is at all weaponized on a bigger scale than the rehabilitating dissenters in a dilapidated asylum, Columbia could probably stand on its own. That's not even accounting for plagiarizing technology from alternate universes or the future, which by 1912 was already being done.
287** As much as Columbia may have advanced, imagine how much the united states has advanced, you have to remember that the Twins are still out there, and as much as they would prefer to alter events through Booker they would eventually give some of Columbia's tech, possibly including tear technology, to the united states. Even if they hadn't, eventually an american spy would have gotten into Columbia and stolen there technology, or a fleeing member of the Vox Populi would have brought some with him/her. At this point Columbia is probably outclassed by 1980s tech and use of Vigor and tears. Its likely that the Columbia we see in that clip isn't a victorious Columbia, or even a Columbia that has just made itself known. Its very likely a Columbia frantically trying to take at least one city with it before its ripped from the sky.
288** Answering the original question and disregarding the entire comment war, It's entirely possible that Coloumbia is delusional in believing that they can cleanse "The Sodom Below", whereas the rest of the world looks through it and swiftly destroys the city after it's short rampage against New York. Bear in mind that many authoritarian dictatorships tend to project their power massively but are ultimately powerless against the might of a superpower. I suspect that alot of Coloumbia by the 80s is a festering cult of extremism and decay, considering Comstock House looks like it's been dilapidated for decades. Even Elizabeth knows this (as she says the "Lunatics" are running the Asylum, but it's far too late for her at this point, which is why she sends Booker for *their* sake.
289** Another thing to note, is that New York doesn't have any military prescense (the exception being Fort Hamilton, though from what I've read it's not really a combat ready base) so, barring the NYPD (who, unless this timeline's version of Reagan decided to give them SAM Batteries, wouldn't have the capablties to counter Columbia's blimps), New York would be practically defenseless for the early stages of the attack. Most likely, what we see in the game is the early minutes of Columbia's attack. Keep in mind, during 9/11, the first fighters wouldn't be over New York until after the towers had collapsed. I'd say at this point, the US Air Force is still scrambling to organize a response to the attack. Whether they are succesful in repelling Columbia or not, we can't say-we never see that. The point is, eventually, the militay will get it's shit together and respond.
290[[/folder]]
291[[folder:Parallels to ''[=BioShock=]'']]
292* Not so much a complaint as much as wondering, but in the ending Elizabeth pretty much says that in every universe there is a man, a city, a girl, and a rescue, pretty much implying that Booker is a parallel to Delta, Elizabeth to Eleanor Lamb, Comstock to Ryan, etc. Who is Jack's parallel in Infinite then?
293** Most likely the collective Little Sisters.
294** I meant which character in ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' is the parallel to Jack, if there is one.
295** Booker is a parallel to both Jack and Delta, as he is the man approaching the lighthouse (Jack) and the man looking for the girl (Delta). Booker also parallels Jack in that both have false memories, and both are directly related in some way to the founder of the city (in Jack's case, father-son; in Booker's case, an alternate reality version of Comstock).
296** Did she really say "a girl and a rescue"? I only remember her saying "a lighthouse, a city, and a man". Since ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' was made by a different group, I'd be surprised if they made any direct, intentional, references to it.
297** It did only say "a lighthouse, a city, and a man" it never said anything about a girl, ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' (Delta's story) isn't a "''VideoGame/BioShock''" story, it is a story in the Rapture universe, like how the "Mind in Revolt" Novel centered around Daisy Fitzroy.
298[[/folder]]
299
300[[folder:Booker's Patrons]]
301* So, wait, if Booker made up the story about having a powerful and sinister patron by rearranging his memories,who killed the dude in the lighthouse, and who left the note saying "THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE" on the front door? And what about his gun, was that just a hallucination?
302** Likely the Luteces arranged it as motivation: given the "this is your last chance" angle, the dead guy is probably another Booker who FUBAR-ed his mission.
303** Just replayed the intro: next to the map in the lighthouse, there's a note reading "Be prepared, he's on his way. You must stop him. -C." Given that the place is essentially a Columbian stronghold, it's almost certain that "C" is Comstock, and the lighthouse's occupant was a Columbian fanatic who was going to assassinate Booker the moment he arrived. Presumably, the Luteces killed the man before he could get a chance, then put his corpse on display to bring the "this is your last chance" angle into sharp relief.
304** There's also [[http://i.stack.imgur.com/Tz7RT.jpg this]], which seems to imply that the lighthouse watchman is the "one obstacle" that the Luteces would need to deal with before Booker could ascend the lighthouse.
305[[/folder]]
306
307[[folder:Booker's Timeline]]
308* Booker's age is a major problem, according to the plot, he is 37-38 by the time of BI, which means that he looks improbably young for the time period. The bigger problem is that apparently, he gave his daughter away 20 years before, at that time, he was 17. First of all, there is no difference in the way Young!Booker and Old!Booker sounds, second (and most importantly), by the age of 17, he had already been a distinguished soldier, a disgraced Pinkerton agent, and gotten a daughter. I know people started earlier back then, but seriously, this is ludicrous.
309** Does it ever state Booker's age in 1912? Also, it is probably safer to assume that he became a Pinkerton ''after'' the messy business with Anna. Gotta kill something other than time for twenty years.
310** Since him and Comstock are the same. We can assume that the birth date of Comstock is the same date Booker was born.
311** Booker was born in 1874 (according to the Hall of Heroes), served in the military at Wounded Knee (1890, age 16) and thus was married and gave Anna away at age 18 (1892). Now I'm not very versed on marriage laws in 1890s America (specifically, the legal age of marriage), but assuming that they were married ''before'' Booker's wife was impregnated (due to the social stigma at the time), this tightens the time frame considerably.
312** Who's to say the Luteces grabbed Booker from 1912? They might've grabbed him from a bit earlier, thus explaining the age difference. Then, his brain filled things in when he found out he was in 1912.
313** "He wasn't caught up with current events."
314** ^ Not exactly, the implication here is that he is surprised of Columbia's existence, because he come from a universe where it doesn't exist.
315** Booker sold Anna in 1893, not 1892. He would have been eighteen when she was conceived, unless she was older than she looked at the time.
316[[/folder]]
317
318[[folder:The Boys of Silence]]
319* Were there some last-minute changes to the Boys of Silence? The Heavy Hitters video said they'd be blind and hunt for you using sound -- which makes sense, seeing as how their helmets have no eyes and giant ear horns. But in the final game, they spot you visually (how?) and ignore sounds.
320** Apparently by blind they meant they don't have any visible eyes, and can only "hear" through their light from their ear trumpets.
321** Except that doesn't make sense because the light comes from their front, not the sides. I was confused too, thinking they would detect me through sound, and it took two failures for me to realize that they worked pretty much like ''VideoGame/BioShock's'' cameras (stay away from the beam and you're okay; you can ''run'' past it and you'll be fine). They're still creepy like hell, but they sure weren't what they promised.
322** According to [[http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Boy_of_Silence their page]] on the ''VideoGame/BioShock'' wiki, they were supposed to have an entirely different mode of detection where they would 'collect' sounds made by the player before attacking them, but it was cut because of the difficulty in removing ambient sounds from the game. It's a pity, unlike the security cameras there's no way to destroy them before they raise the alarm.
323** Forced Stealth Sequence, we have a trope for that one.
324** It's not, though; you CAN just shoot your way through if you're an idiot like me, since that section isn't COMPLETELY lacking in supplies. I thought the guys with the head-trumpets were all one guy, who I'd eventually get to actually kill.
325[[/folder]]
326
327[[folder:The Origin of Elizabeth's power]]
328* In one Voxophone, Rosalind Lutece theorizes that Elizabeth's power came from her (a) being originally from another universe, and "the universe does not like its peas mixed with its porridge", and (b) a small part of her (her little finger) remains in her original universe. So is it the PortalCut that actually gave her the power? And is that why Booker (and Robert before the "accident") didn't develop the same reality-warping power even though they also came from another universes?
329** Yes, it is the fact that her finger is in one universe (peas) and the rest of her in another (porridge). Booker and Lutece don't have such powers because they arrived in the other universe leaving none of themselves behind.
330** That makes no sense, because Booker and Lutece would have left parts of themselves behind in the form of hair, skin cells, etc. Does the universe just not count small parts of you?
331** Either that or it doesn't count parts that weren't removed by PortalCut.
332** Note that the game does establish that Tears do have a cost associated with them (Comstock is dying sooner and is sterile) so it may be that those things ''do'' count but being small bits, they cause small effects.
333** I assumed that losing her finger to the PortalCut meant some part of her was now technically in the place with infinite lighthouses, giving her a special status in the time-space continuum. Theoretically the same could have happened to anyone who went through a Tear, but this was probably the biggest thing.
334** I always interpreted that the portal cut didn't give her powers, but more that it's the quantum mechanics equivalent of sticking your foot in the door before it closes allowing you to open and close said door at will.
335** I got a weird camera angle when I started the end segment of the story, and I couldn't see that Elizabeth had actually produced a key out of nowhere when she was looking for a way through the door just after you leave the Bathysphere. I figured that she was actually referring to her thimble, which made sense. When I saw the key during a second playthrough, I got kinda disappointed; I thought the thimble-as-key was a better explanation.
336** Wait, that's it, isn't it? The portal appears as a two-dimensional hole, but in effect it's actually an alternate dimension branching out two alternate dimensions, much like the portal gun and the dimension of Xen in Half-Life. What if a small portion of the material found in the dimension between tears got into her bloodstream from the cut, material that could only be obtained just as a portal completely closes? Hence the reason the key appears in her hand - it's where she first made contact with the stuff.
337** Also one point is that Booker can see the Tears, but cannot interact with them. When they are first introduced, Elizabeth is shocked that you can see them. Apparently crossing universes lets you interact with the multiverse more, and as Elizabeth crossed over as a baby and had part of her in two universes (with a possible section in the multiverse crossing-area itself), she was able to manipulate it as a PhysicalGod.
338** She's a PhysicalGod? I'm sorry, how exactly? She can warp space as long as she can concentrate, and make things enter another existence? She can't really defend herself from a multitude of threats, and is still capable of getting captured more than a few times, and clearly threatened in ''Burial at Sea''.
339** Hmm, to give my own two cents, I recall a novel with a character who has a similar ability (name escapes me however). In the novel, it’s explained that multiple timelines are not parallel, they spread out like a web and often cross over each other. Thus, the Tears are points where two timelines intersect. Hence, people who have crossed into alternate timelines can perceive them, and Elizabeth, since part of her exists in the ‘hub’ between timelines, can manipulate and pull items/information from one timeline into another.
340[[/folder]]
341
342[[folder:Origins of Vigors]]
343* I may have missed some voice logs, but where exactly do the Vigors came from? And how do they work? (Given the hoops Rapture must jump through to make ADAM/Plasmid work, Vigor seems far too convenient.)
344** Look carefully at Booker's left hand when he's got a Vigor equipped -- Devil's Kiss or Undertow work best for this: the transformation that takes place as an idle animation isn't like the introductory cutscene where he actually grows the octopus flesh or sees his hands burn down to the bone -- it flickers into place, almost like one of the Tears. I know it doesn't answer any questions, but the effect tells me that the Vigors weren't just stolen wholesale from Rapture like the Big Daddy tech that was used to make the Songbird; there's possibly something more complex at work.
345** Its actually revealed later in the gameplay that Vigors are actually derived from Elizabeth's own Tear-creating powers, with the Siphon actually draining her powers to create Vigors. So Vigors are not actually changing your DNA Rapture/Adam-style more like giving you temporary RealityWarping abilities.
346** Meaning that Vigors drag in abilities that Humans (or the main sentient species) that humans don't have in this world.
347** I don't remember it directly saying that Vigors use the powers of Tears. In ''Burial at Sea'', it IS explicitly stated by BAS!Suchong that Fink had broken into his labs via Tears and stolen research on Plasmids. Fink actually made the advancement in Plasmids from injections to drinkable, which Suchong then stole. This is why the plasmids in BAS are exactly like Vigors. Plasmids and Vigors work exactly the same way. They are more regulated in Columbia. As to why the Columbian "Splicers" aren't malformed, Fink refined the Vigors. This can be seen in the Firemen, and POSSIBLY the Crows, as they keep themselves covered like Splicers. They were probably early testers of the Vigors. Slate's men aren't malformed, maybe because they just recently spliced themselves up?
348** It does show that Fink and Suchong were working together, but Fink was having a hard time collecting the necessary ADAM (drinkables requiring 10x as much). One of the last voice logs has him state that he's found a better solution and decides to break ties with Suchong instead of share. It could be possible that both solutions are correct.
349** Early art showed that Vigors actually worked by basically merging yourself with a duplicate from another reality where humans naturally have superpowers. So the Undertow Vigor basically takes your arm and merges it via Tear technology with the arm of a you from a reality where humans were amphibious and had hydrokinesis. Later it was stated that Vigors and Plasmids are literally the same thing, nixing that origin.
350** Maybe both explanations are correct? When Booker or another Columbian uses a Shock Jockey Vigor, they’re ‘overlaying’ their arm with that of another version of themself with an Electro Bolt Plasmid. This may have been the solution Fink devised; no need to procure ADAM or risk nasty mutations/addictions; simply shunt the biological manipulations and crippling side effects to another universe and reap the benefits for your own.
351[[/folder]]
352
353[[folder:Armaments of Columbia]]
354* What exactly was Columbia armed with that gave it its status as a "Death Star"? I know the trailers showed giant turret cannons on the streets, but those weren't in the final game. We never really see anything bigger than the rocket automaton turrets, and most of those you have to call in through tears. Yet during the siege on New York, Columbia was shooting huge fireballs at the city -- where were they coming from?
355** Taking a good look at the siege scene, the fireballs presumably came from the fleet of airships nearby. Plus, I don't think the turret cannons would be enough to attack anything on the ground; presumably, the imposing armaments that were used against the Boxer Rebellion were mounted on the underside of Columbia's platforms.
356** Thirty Columbian men died during the Boxer Rebellion. They simply landed with balloons and used infantry to attack them.
357** I'm pretty sure the Vox fleet that attacks your airship on the way to destroy Monument Island has giant turrets on them. Presumably Columbia has these too, underneath the buildings, only on a much larger scale.
358* Before the rise of powered flight, the entire city is an OutsideContextProblem to the armies of the world; even before the tears, assuming that it was only armed with the weapons tech of the era, it could hit any point on Earth with naval-scale bombardment, brings all its logistics with it so there are no supply lines to disrupt or cut, and retreat to higher altitudes if anything shows up that can actually threaten it. It didn't need a superweapon; you could just park it over any city you want disposed of and then drop artillery on it indefinitely. When tear-based technology acquisition ramps up Post-Boxer Rebellion it gets worse, but until the rest of the world catches up they get to do the military equivalent of holding someone at arm's length while they flail at you ineffectively.
359[[/folder]]
360
361[[folder:Why don't more people use Vigors?]]
362* Why weren't more people using Vigors? In Rapture, everyone spliced themselves despite public knowledge of the downsides. I don't recall any explicitly stated downsides to Vigors, yet both sides of the civil war just stuck to firearms save the occasional Crow or Fireman.
363** In the case of the Fopitalist unders, I imagine that the soldiers and cops were kept on a very tight leash; presumably, they'd only give the Vigors to people they knew would toe the line. Remember, the Crows and the Firemen aren't just average joes -- they're the elite. The Vox, I'm not sure: maybe the Founders seized most of the Vigor supplies before the rebel army could be made into supermen; maybe they disliked relying on Fink's products too much. As for the civilian populace, maybe it was just too expensive for most of them, or maybe it was just too dangerous to go out and buy some.
364** Simple, Andrew Ryan was a Canute, he didn't put any regulation on the selling of his ADAM, allowing the seller of it to sell ADAM like crazy and get people addicted to it. Comstock, being more totalitarian and religiously extreme probably kept the Vigors on a much tighter leash. Also, the game-play shows that Vigors are not addictive, nor do they appear to cause any form of side-effects (ADAM is made of self-reproducing stem cells which cause tumors to form in the brain, causing insanity).
365** There's a meta-explanation, too. In the original pitch for ''Infinite'', Vigors were temporary potions that gave you a limited number of uses. It wasn't until later that they made Vigors more like Plasmids -- permanent with a shared replenish-able resource system. So while Plasmids change a person forever, Vigors were a temporary drug. A lot of the combatants could've been using Vigors, but simply ran out of Vigor juice.
366** You can overhear someone at the fair saying they won't buy it for now because Fink hasn't perfected it yet (can't remember the exact words but the man said something about cleaning out the kinks or something) but most Vigors on Industrial Revolution are manufactured before 1910.
367** I can think of four reasons, two of which are a case of {{Gameplay and Story Segregation}}: 1) Even with all the advertising and samples, people are afraid of using them (see above) for pretty obvious reasons. 2) Some are only/primarily for industrial means (e.g. Shock Jockey is only advertised as a power source). 3) Vigors are temporary for everyone else -- and probably expensive to replenish. 4) Normal people don't have the Salt wells that you do, making their use even more limited.
368[[/folder]]
369
370[[folder:''Infinite'' and ''VideoGame/BioShock'' 1 & 2]]
371* I get that Columbia never happens, Tears are never found etc. after the ending but... shouldn't ''VideoGame/BioShock'' 1/2 still take place? They don't explicitly have the characters of Booker, Comstock, Elizabeth, Songbird and so on, but they do have parallels or spiritual successors (Eleanor and Subject Delta for the last two, at least) so the idea that there's always a lighthouse, a man and a rescue would remain true as a ''Doctor Who'' style "fixed point" in time -- those things always have to be there, regardless of this Columbia saga. Is this completely wrong and Booker and Elizabeth saved all of time from a Columbia whether it's flying or in the ocean? Have they just stopped Columbia happening (with Booker and Anna allowed to live their lives normally), making ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' a prequel to ''VideoGame/BioShock'' 1/2?
372** I think the general idea is that the directly-related versions of Columbia -- as in the flying xenophobic dystopia -- have all been Retgonned through having their creator erased from reality. Rapture shouldn't be effected, given that Booker didn't drown Andrew Ryan, and Rapture and the other "Lighthouses" weren't the real targets of the final sacrifice. Plus, the Tears would probably still be discovered: it's just that, without Comstock around to finance them, the Lutece's experiments wouldn't have had such disastrous results (or didn't happen at all, etc).
373** This also however, is dependent on that Comstock built Columbia. That is never stated in game that he actually created the city. He was given a vision of the city, an was told to lead his followers to it by Archangel. I believe that he founded the floating city as Columbia and joined the Union with it. But I do not believe that he had a hand in making it. If anything I think that he was given money through the government to improve on what was already there. So we may be going back to Columbia still, maybe to deal with this "Archangel".
374** It's explicitly stated in the Hall of Heroes that Uncle Sam footed the bill, but that it was Comstock that lobbied for it. They also say that Comstock was the one who found his Lutece and gave her the funding from Congress. I would say you should take that with a grain of salt since this was the same museum that said Comstock was at the battle of Wounded Knee when those who were there say he wasn't... but he actually was, just under a different name. So if that was actually honest, perhaps the rest was as well?
375** That leads to another question: how can a veteran turned preacher get that much influence over Congress? That's what lead me to believe that he found Columbia and maybe used Congress to improve it.
376** "Hero" of Wounded Knee -- war veterans are popular in politics. I will admit that I'm basically going on ''Series/{{Homeland}}'' logic here, though.
377** Well consider real life politicians. Until recently, a number of them would bring up their military history. And for maybe a more explicit example, Reagan was an actor before becoming a politician and people use to laugh at that possibility.
378** It's explicitly stated in one of Rosalind Lutece's Voxophones that Comstock was the one who funded her research (and that she accepted his money and pursued the creation of gates capable of physically transporting people solely so she could be with her "brother" and for no other reason -- she'd been able to talk to him before then using gates that are just windows and don't let anything through, presumably the red ones we see in play.) This is also how Comstock acquired his reputation as a prophet and, possibly, how he got enough of a following to attract the funding in the first place.
379** But Booker was never lauded or even recognized for his part at Wounded Knee, so it probably wasn't that major (the only people who testify otherwise are Comstock and Slate, who are both deluded at best). The Congressional funding most likely stemmed more from the idea of the city itself. Columbia's original purpose was as an exhibit for the 1893 World's Fair, whose architects were fairly desperate for something that would outdo the Eiffel Tower. The Ferris Wheel filled that position IRL, but a flying city would have been much more attractive. Comstock was the one to present the idea most likely because he found Rosalind, who needed a frontman for her research because having a woman in charge of the primary World's Fair exhibit probably wasn't ideal at the time.
380[[/folder]]
381
382[[folder:What happened to the kid?]]
383* What happened to the kid that got threatened by Fitzroy? He just seems to disappear after you save him.
384** He does disappear. If you follow him, he runs around the corner from where Elizabeth stabs Fitzroy and ends up cowering in the corner. Since you're still technically in a cutscene, you don't have access to your weapons. The only way to get them back is to go back around the corner and comfort Elizabeth, during which the game plucks him out. This is probably in place as a form of VideoGameCrueltyPotential prevention, so that more sadistic players can't just shoot the kid themselves.
385** As for the events of ''Burial at Sea'', if Fitzroy [[spoiler: didn't want to hurt him in the first place and was ''very'' offended by the plan when the Luteces told her,]] she probably devised a plan to [[spoiler: let him escape,]] so it's entirely possible that [[spoiler: some of her Mooks helped the boy escape to somewhere safe.]]
386[[/folder]]
387
388[[folder:The Grandfather Paradox (Part 2)]]
389* Elizabeth drowns Booker/Comstock at the end, thus meaning she never gets born, right? But if she never gets born, then wouldn't that mean that she was never there to drown Booker in the first place? Unless I missed something, the end of the game seems to cause a grandfather paradox.
390** Elizabeth is operating outside of the normal laws of time and space, and cause and effect at that moment. There is no paradox because she is a RealityWarper who doesn't need to follow the rules. Alternatively, you could suppose that there ''is'' a paradox created, and the way the universe sorts it out (just like how Booker receives new memories when he crosses over in Comstock's timeline) is by creating TheStinger: a universe where Booker and Anna both exist, but he never gives her away.
391** I'd go with the latter. Because if she was not truly bound by the rules, she wouldn't have to kill Booker at all.
392** Maybe it's just me, but I didn't take the ending to be quite as literal as it was presented. I mean by that point Elizabeth is literally omnipotent. To me it seemed like the whole thing with the land of infinite lighthouses was her presenting us AFormYouAreComfortableWith, same as why she drowns player-character-Booker. It's a literal presentation of a metaphor. As far as I can see the reason so many people are confused by the ending is because they're taking it as face value, or applying alternate universe laws they learned from Dr.Who which blatantly don't apply, when I kinda viewed it through a more metaphysical lens.
393** Is there a point where she ever indicates she is anywhere near omnipotent? All she says is she can see all the realities. For starters that doesn't indicate omnipotence or ability to break the rules established by this universe (not ''Doctor Who''). And she doesn't even know she has the key to the realities at first even with her powers unlocked.
394** She can see everything that was, is, and will be happening in every reality in existence. I'd say that's pretty omnipotent.
395** I'm being horrendously pedantic, but that sounds more along the lines of ''omniscience.'' Omnipotence means the ability to do literally ''anything'': Elizabeth is capable of an awful lot by the end of the game, but she's still limited in some ways. For example, she's able to open a Tear to Rapture, but she has to actually find the appropriate door and key before she can access the Sea of Lighthouses.
396** Elizabeth did not kill Booker in all timelines. She only killed him in the timelines where he went through with the baptism and became Comstock. The Bookers that rejected the baptism lived on to father Anna.
397** No, they didn't. Elizabeth killed the Booker that even went to the baptism. The only Bookers that survived were the ones that never even WENT.
398** No, she didn't. She killed all the Bookers who '''didn't reject''' the baptism. The only threats were the ones who were 'reborn again'. A Booker who doesn't drop into the drink isn't in danger of becoming Comstock at all.
399** Perhaps she just killed every Booker who went to the Baptism in the first place but spared all the ones who never even considered it? So all the Bookers who showed up at the river, who had a chance of becoming Comstock, drown whether they would have taken it or not. The ones who saw the offer and thought about it but never actually went to the river are still around.
400[[/folder]]
401
402[[folder:Rapture and Columbia]]
403* Does Rapture get built because of Columbia or in spite of Columbia? Or to put it simply, when you Retgone Columbia, did you Retgone Rapture as well, or did you create some ripples through time like in the RedAlert series that caused it to form instead?
404** It sounds like you get Rapture, OR you get Columbia, OR you get another lighthouse, another man, and another city. Those last 3 are "constants" in this multiverse, but the details of where, how, and who are different.
405** It is entirely possible that both are built whether or not the other exists. Some universes may have both or just one or the other. As to the "lighthouse, man, and city", well that's the elephant in the room. Can there only be ONE set of constants or can the constants happen twice in some universes?
406[[/folder]]
407
408[[folder:The Water of Battleship Bay]]
409* Where does Battleship Bay get so much water? Not only do they have a freakin' beach on an airship, but they're pumping tens of thousands of gallons of water '''off the side''' in their own personal Niagara Falls. You can't pull that much from the air without dozens or hundreds of miles worth of rainfall to feed it (like, say, Niagara Falls does).
410** Perhaps there's another part of Columbia below that collecting the water and pumping it back up to be recycled? Or the water is being/created pulled through a Tear?
411** If you go a bit out of your way, you can find a pump room where Elizabeth comments on how it uses a system of pumps and rain catchers to fuel the beach. Most likely the water being dumped off the edge is getting collected and put back just like a backyard water fountain.
412** From Elizabeth's comments, Battleship Bay is basically a large scale version of a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_pool infinity pool]].
413** Clouds are also just condensed water vapor. It's not unlikely that they get all their water from the clouds. An average white fluffy cloud weighs about 216,000 pounds. And that's all water.
414** This troper always thought that Battleship Bay was actually an island on the world's surface, being the only ground-based part of Columbia, and that it would be abandoned whenever Columbia had to go somewhere.
415[[/folder]]
416
417[[folder:Goddamnit, Physics]]
418* [[AWizardDidIt Quantum mechanics did it.]]
419** Quantum mechanics also did not do it.
420** Quantum mechanics also will do it.
421** Quantum mechanics also is doing it.
422** [[TimeTraveltenseTrouble Quantum mechanics also will have had to have done it.]]
423** Quantum mechanics also could have done it, would do it, and [[OverlyLongGag should do it.]]
424** The term "quantum flapdoodle" should be used more often.
425[[/folder]]
426
427[[folder:Amazing Disappearing Handyman]]
428* There's a section where Elizabeth has gotten angry at you and run away, and you have to pursue her through Finkton. You catch up with her as she's captured by the Founders and you have to fight them to free her. At the end of this fight, a Handyman appears to retrieve her and beats the stuffing out of you, tossing you casually over the side to your death. Elizabeth has to conjure a zeppelin to save you, you manage to hang on and float back up... and everything is fine. The story proceeds and Elizabeth and Booker patch things up. Where did the Handyman go?
429** Maybe Elizabeth got rid of him with a Tear offscreen, or maybe he just got bored and left.
430** The "disappearing" Handyman just saw Booker plummet off Columbia. He probably assumed that he was dead for sure and then left thinking his mission was accomplished, so he didn't see the zeppelin appear or Booker get back up. As for where the Handyman went afterwards, maybe he tried to kill Booker again, and was one of the Handymen from later in the game?
431[[/folder]]
432
433[[folder:Elizabeth and Lady Comstock's Dress]]
434* Liz changes into [[http://i.imgur.com/p1ZA6Jp.jpg Lady Comstock's dress]] on the airship. So...why didn't she put on the blue top with the white lacy bits? In the 1900's, a corset served as support underwear like a bra today would, so why does Liz decide to run around shirtless?
435** She says apologetically that they didn't have anything else, so presumably she couldn't find the missing top and decided that the corset was a better option than the bloodied blouse.
436** According to the BS wiki, she was wearing her corset already and you can see it under her damaged sailor outfit. [[http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/File:Screen_shot_2013-03-30_at_10.41.07_AM.png I found a screenshot of the ending, and she is]].
437** Also some fridge logic, since the Vox Populi were on the airship previously and had used it as a medical bay, they might have used some fabric for bandages or given them to other impoverished families. Perhaps it was used only in emergencies because Fitzroy was [[BecauseYouWereNiceToMe treated kindly by Lady Comstock?]]
438[[/folder]]
439
440[[folder:Elizabeth, the Bird and the Cage]]
441* Why does Liz never question it when presented with the necklace choice (bird/cage) by R. Luteces? Her reaction was just "ooh, pretty". You'd think she'd realize they're the same symbols on her cell door and the key Booker gave her and question the twins as to what they know, or shun both as a reminder of her captivity. And when she changes her clothes, she even swaps her shoes but leaves the obvious gaudy choker untouched?
442** The gaudy choker chosen for her by Booker, who's her only real friend in the world? Liz was hopped up on sunshine and freedom. She might not actually care about being reminded of her captivity (cage) or might like it as a reminder of what she's been freed from. The bird might be a symbol of freedom, or remind her of Songbird. It's not like Liz knows whether birds and cages are commonly found on cameos.
443** The symbols found on the key would remind her of her freedom given to her by Booker. She didn't see the symbols until she saw the key and the key is what let her escape the tower. Therefore, in her mind, BOTH symbols represent freedom which she adores.
444[[/folder]]
445
446[[folder:Letting a Prisoner practice lockpicking?]]
447* You'd think allowing a girl locked in a room tales of wonderful far off places (posters of Paris in her room), a way to secretly write things down (codes) and not doing anything about clear indications of wanting to leave (learning how to pick locks, let alone get her hands on one) would be a bad idea. Why didn't they start the indoctrination program at Comstock House earlier? Why not teach her to love daddy Comstock from an early age and school her towards her role as Columbia's leader? As is she's only read about the guy and doesn't even know he's her father, which can't be very conductive to following in his footsteps.
448** Some of these questions can be answered with "Tears", as not every object that she owns was necessarily actually given to her deliberately. But it is a good question why Comstock didn't let Elizabeth know about her heritage and planned future, or stock her library with his own brand of nationalistic and religious propaganda.
449** Elizabeth mentions that Songbird used to bring her books and toys for entertainment when she was younger, so maybe that's where she got them from? I don't think he really knows or cares about the difference between "Les Miserables" and "Duke and Dimwit", but then again who knows...
450** Who knows indeed? Maybe Comstock did try and stock her library with propaganda, but Elizabeth threw them away through a Tear and replaced them with the stuff Songbird gave her. I'd imagine that he was hoping for a good reception when he finally allowed her to leave so she could take up his mantle, which might explain why he was using kid gloves up until the events of Comstock House. And another thing: those aren't posters in Elizabeth's room -- they're paintings that she made herself, based on what she could see through the Tears.
451** All I'm getting is a mental image of Songbird perching outside a Barnes & Noble, tearing the roof off of it, and bringing Elizabeth back a shelf like no one's business. Songbird doesn't seem discrete enough for that.
452** There are all the warning signs about "DO NOT APPROACH THE SPECIMEN" and such, so maybe they designed her prison, stocked it with bookshelves and hidden cameras/one-way glass, and then went "Well crap, she's lockpicking and all we can do is observe her because nobody's allowed to interact with the specimen".
453** Plus it's not like she had any lockpicks to work with and the lock on her door would be too complex to pick. That still leaves the question as to HOW she can pick a lock as quickly as she does. She would mentally know how to pick a lock, but she wouldn't have the physical feel for it that comes with practice.
454** Presumably, the Songbird could bring her locks to practice on if she wanted them, or she could get some of them herself through tears (remembering that they're a form of wish fulfillment for her). Given that Elizabeth's learning to pick locks wouldn't really let her open her door anyway, and given that it wouldn't really help even if she could since the Songbird wouldn't let her leave regardless, it would be both easier and safer just to let her have locked boxes and whatnot to experiment with.
455** If you look into one of Elizabeth's rooms through the one-way glass, you can see several padlocks lying on a table with lockpicks stuck in them. So she definitely had practical experience with locks before she got out of the tower, whether they let her have those or she just grabbed them through Tears.
456[[/folder]]
457
458[[folder:The lockdown of Monument Tower]]
459* If the Luteces have "disappeared" several years prior to the events of the game (as stated by Elizabeth during one of the cutscenes) then why is there still a warning sign in the Monument Tower stating that access requires authorization from Rosalind Lutece?
460** The place looks pretty trashed, most likely by the tears that Elizabeth subconsciously opens or the Siphon accidentally generates. It's possible that no one has actually entered the place since the Luteces' disappearance apart from the Songbird.
461** It's implied in-game that nobody has really been in there, or at least not to work, since the Luteces' "deaths" -- note that on all the equipment, the last age they monitored Elizabeth at was 17, which was her age in 1909 when the Luteces were "killed".
462[[/folder]]
463
464[[folder:Comstock House]]
465* Okay, so what is the general ''deal'' of the Comstock house? Was it Comstock's personal residence? What exactly ''is'' this place? A mental asylum? Hospital? Prison? Why do the inmates wear founder masks? What is Silent Boy doing? Is the whole game section taking place in the alternate 1984? If so why do they still use the same weapon and technology? Why is every room labeled as "Where we [verb]"? This place is one gigantic headscratcher for me, much more so than the ending.
466** Just speculating here, but I think it ''used'' to be Comstock's residence. Then, once he imprisoned Elizabeth there, it became a prison for her. Then, when Elizabeth took over in the BadFuture, it ended up degenerating into her own private insane asylum, with the inmates being people driven crazy by the same kind of Tear sickness suffered by Chen Lin.
467** There's a sign in the BadFuture that states that it has been turned into the "Comstock Rehabilitation Centre". Presumably, this is where BadFuture Elizabeth rounds up any dissenters and "re-educates" them, hence why everyone is wearing those weird masks and react so violently when the Silent Boy orders them to attack.
468** A generally missed detail is in the book "Mind in Revolt" which was released as an add-on to the base game years ago. In it, scientist Francis Pinchot interviews Daisy Fitzroy at Comstock House to find out how to "cleanse sin from the body", which he deems can be done through mental evaluation and Phrenology. However, by the end of the book he realizes the only way to clean the body of sin is through extreme torture and mental conditioning (Which leads to his turning against the founders [[spoiler: before being killed by Fitzroy]]). Ultimately, his research and findings is what leads to Comstock House turning from a residental palace towards a Torture Prison.
469[[/folder]]
470
471[[folder:The Ending & "Better" Universes]]
472* Okay, so at the end, [[spoiler: Comstock is Booker who got baptized]], so in order to prevent Comstock from creating/ruling Columbia, [[spoiler: the Elizabeths from a lot of {{Alternate Universe}}s drown Booker]]. That's fine and all, but, [[spoiler: where are all the Elizabeths who had their lives improve from being kidnapped? What about all of the Good Columbia's that weren't ruled through fear and superhuman soldiers? Or the Comstocks who didn't become racist, insane bigots who somehow found all these wonders of science? As a matter of fact, where are all the Bookers who didn't become drunkards after Wounded Knee? The ending fails when you realize that for every bad AlternateUniverse, there's a dozen or more '''good''' ones! So where are they? And why aren't their opinions voiced over drowning Booker?]]
473** None of those realities are a part of the system. ''Infinite'' doesn't seem to follow the classic "many worlds"-model so much as a variation similar to the one described in Terry Pratchett's ''Literature/NightWatchDiscworld''. It posits that a person can only be considered the same in the universes where they do the same decisions. Booker [=DeWitt=] who has experienced the horrors of Wounded Knee and the loss of his wife only has two main paths before him with the baptism as the turning point, smaller variations notwithstanding. The alternate Bookers who haven't reached the DespairEventHorizon aren't a part of the story; they have lead different lives, so they are outside the equation altogether. They are not the same person as the Booker who has only the two paths to choose from. There are no good Columbias, because Booker will only create the city if he becomes Comstock. Maybe there's a prosperous Booker who will create a benign floating city somewhere out there, but that city is not Columbia and that Booker is not Comstock.
474** To punctuate this fine answer, consider the case of the coin flip during the fair. If the game truly subscribed to the infinite worlds theory, then the results would be a rough 50/50 split. However, the coin result is ''always Heads'': there exists no universe where the coin flip is Tails. This event is here to emphasise the fact that, according to the mechanics of the ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' universe, there are some events that will ''always'' proceed the same way. Booker can choose to throw the baseball at the couple, at the announcer or not at all, but he will ''always'' choose ball 77 (even after explicitly being told not to) and he will always be "outed" as the False Shepherd. In the same way, Columbia will always be a cesspool of racism, Booker will always be a drunkard, Comstock will always be a crazy person, etc, etc.
475** In the story, we have two infinities: an infinite number of worlds where Booker is good (infinity A) and an infinite number of worlds where he is bad (infinity B). Regardless of permutation, that is constant. There are also an infinite number of worlds where he becomes neither the Booker or Comstock we know (infinity C). C does not matter since we're not trying to destroy or create them because the decision involved in their creation are different than A and B (C is in fact larger than A + B since A only differs than B by 1 where as C differs from both by infinity). Thus removing 1 from A + B wouldn't really affect C since C - 1 is still infinity (just slightly smaller). So C remains relatively unaffected while A + B are removed. Alternatively, for the events of the game to happen, you must have a D from which A and B are derived from: A + B must be, at most, equal to D. So there are an infinite number of worlds where Booker and Liz drown Booker and that must happen (or else A + B would be greater than D). Because without D, A + B would not exist anyway. Now, there may be worlds where they do not drown Booker (infinity E)... but Liz brings in other (many) Lizs to enforce it meaning that the infinity that do not drown Booker must be less than the infinity that do. Even if there is only 1 extra Liz to help drown Booker, this must mean that there are at least twice as many infinities where Booker must drown compared to the ones where he does not (because extra-Liz would drown her own plus help another). Therefore, Booker will always drown because that infinity is greater... by an infinity amount. Infinity is funny that way.
476** For a non-game simple explanation on how infinity works: imagine you must board a train. There are, in fact, only two possible outcomes. You miss the train or you board the train. Because missing the train by 5 minutes is the same as missing the train by 10 minutes or being a day late. Likewise, getting on board 5 minutes early is the same as getting on 10 minutes early. These infinities seem equal... however, boarding the train requires that you be at the train station at some point in time. If you are a day early, this is ''not'' the same as being 10 minutes early. It is the same as missing the train. Likewise, if you get killed on the way there, you decide to take the plane, etc, this is also missing the train. Boarding the train has stricter requirements than missing the train (being on time, being at the right station, etc.) -- thus the circumstances for boarding the train must be smaller than those for missing the train. Thus the missing the train infinity must be bigger than the boarding the train infinity. This while both are infinity possibilities, it's also infinity more likely that you miss the train.
477[[/folder]]
478
479[[folder:The First Lady Airship]]
480* Why does Booker seem to think the First Lady Airship is their only ticket out of the city at first? The entire city is built out of airships (hence the schedules you can see when you leave the welcome center at the start), how hard would it have been to hijack some barber's workplace and fly to New York? Now, obviously the real reason they couldn't leave was the Songbird, but Booker didn't know that at first, and what about the First Lady would have kept Songbird from attacking it in his mind?
481** Most of the airships you find are the kind with one switch that only go along a pre-programmed route, or police boats which don't respond to you. It's not clear how the buildings are piloted around -- you never find any controls in anyone's home or shop, and they seem rather slow to make any getaway while the police have gunboats. Booker did meet Songbird before seeing the ship, so he may have chosen it because it looked tough enough and fast enough to deal with the bird. He may have also had fuel requirements in mind -- it looked more long-range than most other airships around.
482** This is made particularly jarring by how impulsive their decision to go for the ''First Lady'' is in the first place -- they literally just decided to steal the first airship whose name they hear, then become outrageously fixated on it to the point where they're willing to go through insanely convoluted quest chains, supply arms to violent revolutionaries, and ''bring back the dead'' just to get their hands on it. It stretches suspension of disbelief that that could be the only airship capable of reaching the ground, especially since when you meet up with Elizabeth again after your first escape attempt fails, you see her trying and failing to stow away on an airship that presumably would get her off of Columbia.
483** This gets sillier when you consider the ''First Lady'' is Comstock's personal airship, so it would be easy to spot and its absence would definitely be noted.
484** It's not a question of their monomaniacal determination, it's that they ''have'' it. Booker finds it more feasible to run what he thinks will be a short errand for Daisy than to go all the way back up to the lanes and steal another airship entirely. He has no idea he's going to end up in the middle of a revolution, and the only reason he does is because he and Elizabeth start screwing around with the flow of time itself.
485** The buildings are probably towed around by some sort of airborne tugboats, rather than being self-propelled.
486** I always assumed that Comstock's personal airship was the only, or one of the few, vehicles allowed to travel freely to and from Columbia. After all, the only way in is a one-way rocket trip, and Comstock seems like the type to heavily regulate travel to and from his city.
487* Strangely, Booker already HAD another airship in the process of trying to get back the ''First Lady'' -- the gigantic airship shooting rockets at him. He decided to destroy it from the inside out rather than commandeer it. That airship also had a number of advantages over the ''First Lady'' -- it was heavily armed, nigh-impossible to shoot down, was larger (and therefore presumably had equal or greater range than the First Lady), and it seemed to be semi-autonomously controlled just like the First Lady was. Maybe Booker and Elizabeth just prefer traveling in style?
488** For all its advantages, that airship also had one glaring flaw -- it looked like it required an entire crew to man it. Even if it could be piloted by just two people, those two people probably don't know how to pilot it anyway (Elizabeth MIGHT, but Booker certainly doesn't). In contrast, the First Lady only requires you to set the coordinates, and the ship seems to do the rest.
489** Also worth noting is that by then, Booker and Elizabeth were caught in the midst of an active war zone, with all the difficulties that would imply.
490* A different question about the First Lady's Airship: How come no one noticed The First Lady's Airship flying near Finkton and just suddenly threw a man out off it? After you stand up, there are a lot of guards there and even two or three Mosquitoes.
491[[/folder]]
492
493[[folder:What is the Songbird?]]
494* What manner of creature is the Songbird, exactly? It doesn't seem to be a mechanical robot like the Patriots, its movements are too fluid and organic. Elizabeth also said it used to bring her books and things when she was younger, suggesting it is a living creature. And it [[spoiler: drowns]] at the end of the game. But on the other hand, it's far bigger than a man and the proportions are all wrong. Its neck is absurdly long and its legs are digitigrade, so it can't just be a dude in a suit. So what is it?
495** Burial at Sea - Episode 2 depicts a blackboard chalk diagram detailing that Songbird is a heavily modified human being within the suit. This also explains how Songbird was shown to be small enough to be inside Elizabeth's tower - he actually grew. Also explains why his exterior is leather, rather than metal. Without going into too many details, it also explains why Songbird is so susceptible to high, or even moderate pressures.
496** Since it wasn't really explored in the game, 2K probably deliberately chose to leave it a mystery -- one of those situations where they say, "Whatever the gamer imagines is probably scarier than what we could come up with." Maybe a lab-grown creature with cybernetic implants? A mutated bird?
497** It's a cybernetic monstrosity created by Mr. Fink, using the Big Daddies of Rapture as inspiration with the aid of the tears. Fink's recording on the subject seems to indicate that there is a human in there, permanently fused with the machinery. What made him behave like a deranged {{Yandere}} bird is anybody's guess. I do like about the WMG which suggests that the Songbird is yet another alternate Booker, though.
498** His behavior is heavily implied to be the result of conditioning and good old fashioned {{Brainwashing}}.
499** It doesn't drown; it sort of implodes from water pressure because it's engineered for the pressure in high altitudes. It is stated that Songbird is mostly leather though, so it could be smaller without the suit.
500** Except it clutches its throat and is clearly in distress before its eyes begin to crack. I'm sure the pressure wasn't comfortable for it, but it looks a lot more like a death by drowning than a death by crushing.
501** It's entirely possible it also drowned (does Songbird even breathe?) but it died of inability to deal with low pressure, it was foreshadowed on the [[http://imgur.com/a/BP5nf chalkboard diagram]] of Songbird in Fink's.
502** Well, either way, the fact that it can die means it must be alive, which means it must be at least partly organic and not a robot.
503** What makes me lean towards "lab created creature", though, is those legs (or more to the point, those feet). And that adds even more confusion to the fact that, even so, they gave it humanoid arms.
504* It's been stated that Fink learned how to make song bird by peeping through a Tear and seeing Big Daddies being built. So it is entirely possible that the creature is part organic.
505[[/folder]]
506
507[[folder:Goal-line, New York]]
508* What would happen had Booker successfully taken Elizabeth back to New York? Would he then remember what he did and broke down in front of her or would the Lutece come and explain everything?
509** It is implied that he ''never'' manages to take her to New York, as Songbird always shows up to stop him. So the question is moot, in a way.
510** Yup. Never getting back to New York is one of the constants, just like the coin coming up heads. ''Why'' he doesn't get to New York is where things deviate from one another.
511** I don't understand why it has to be a constant. The fact that the Luteces have to set up the death of Daisy (as seen in Burial at Sea) to give Liz the emotional strength to kill Comstock makes me guess there was a universe where Elizabeth decided to just escape rather than go after Comstock. With all the variables at play, I think it's possible that Songbird would have been too far away or somehow incapacitated and unable to destroy the First Lady in at least one universe. Either way, any universe where the Siphon isn't destroyed and Liz doesn't destroy Comstock on a quantum level would count the same way to Rosalind and Robert- a failure. Their theory about how it's possible to change one universe, but proving difficult to "turn back the tide" and remove Comstock from all the universes seems to confirm that Booker and Liz have "succeeded" at least once. However, the end goal of the Luteces is to make sure Comstock never exists, not just to reunite Booker and Elizabeth, so a universe where they live peacefully in New York or even Paris after game events would be entirely possible.
512** In addition to the above statement it should be noted that Booker is the one who believes the destination is New York. This is the same Booker who's mind has been inventing false but plausible memories to deal with being dragged to another universe, so presumably he doesn't even know what will happen when they reach New York but his mind is convinced this is where he has to go.
513[[/folder]]
514
515[[folder:The Ending & The Luteces]]
516* So in regards to the ending, wouldn't it have made more sense to kill the Lutece twins instead of Comstock/Booker? I mean it was their research that allowed Columbia to even be a possibility in the first place. Without them, Comstock would probably have been just another nutty right wing fanatic. And surely there are other people who would have worked with them to achieve something similar. Was that just not an option due to their being unstuck in time?
517** They already tried that. Fink's attempts to kill them and make it look like an accident were what caused them to be scattered across all of time and space in the first place. At the beginning, when you get the shield Infusion thing, you can try shooting them and it doesn't work. You can't kill them because they'd still be alive and exist in every other moment and location across the multiverse.
518** They're not even ''alive'' in the first place; Rosalind acknowledges that they ''are'' dead, and there were two bodies at the scene of the accident. They seem to have transcended life itself to become some sort of extra-dimensional entity. It’s likely they couldn't even commit suicide, even if they wanted to. Granted, Rosalind herself seems uncertain as to what exactly happened.
519** If you shoot the "twins" in the room where you get the shield, they'll just say "That won't work" or "We can do this all day, can you?" In other words, they can't die, since they don't really exist.
520* I think you guys don't get it. What about killing the YOUNG Luteces, before all this time-space-whatever happened, before they even met Comstock?
521** There is no logical explanation for that other than: The Luteces are extremely selfish and would rather implement a less-than-ideal solution than let themselves die. Were Booker not being led around by them and Omni-Elizabeth, and had a chance to think, he likely would have come to that realization. But they gave him no time to think, so under the extreme emotional pressure he was experiencing he just decided to go with their, "Drown the bastard" idea.
522[[/folder]]
523
524[[folder:Booker's Amazing Jumping Skills]]
525* What kind of a Superman is Booker that he can leap several times his own height to reach those Sky-Lines?
526** Booker was as surprised as anyone the first time it happened. He brushed it off as "it must be magnetized". Magnets or not, the Sky-Hook probably runs on some kind of Columbian superscience.
527** There is a diagram in one of the Art books of the Sky-Hook connected to the handle by a [[BuffySpeak make-longer sort of]] mechanism.
528** Correct question is, what kind of a Superman is Booker that he can keep his arm and not get it torn off from those jumps and falls? And you know what else? None of his bones break when he lands from quite a way up on the hooks near Comstock House.
529[[/folder]]
530
531[[folder:The Ending & What Happens to the Luteces]]
532* So if the Comstocks are undone by the ending, what about the Luteces? Do they remain smeared across space and time? Or will they be restored to normal and never discover each other? Or worse yet, will the omnipresent versions of them exist alongside their original versions?
533** Hard to say, since the nature of what they have become is left very vague. Logic dictates that if Comstock never came to be then the Luteces never performed their first Tear experiment and thus never met (probably). But with the weird quantum scattering they've undergone, logic goes completely out the window. All of the options may have come true at once.
534[[/folder]]
535
536[[folder:Chen Lin]]
537* So Chen Lin was able to operate his shop due to his wife being related to Fink's chief of security, but she's Chinese like Chen in the original universe. So that means Fink had a Chinese person in a high-ranking position, despite all game being emphasized how Fink is easily the most racist of all the Columbians. Only in the alternate reality is Chen Lin's wife a white person who having a brother be in charge of Fink's security make more sense.
538** Which is why he's killed in the "original" timeline. Fink's racist but that doesn't mean he's completely stupid. He likely recognized Chen's talents but once the interrogation came around figured he'd gotten what use out of him he needed.
539** I am more confused about the alternate reality where Chen Lin is married to a white woman. Comstock's regime is, as we know, extremely racist, and cracks ''hard'' on interracial marriage, as evidenced by the events of the raffle. They don't seem to be any softer in the alternate universe, so how did Lin and his wife avoid a public stoning with baseballs, again?
540** Chen's wife wasn't related to the head of security in the first time line. In the second timeline, Chen married someone else.
541** In Timeline #1, Chen is an independent craftsman who is kidnapped and tortured to death for his ties to the Vox Populi. In Timeline #2, he's the same independent craftsman who happens to be married to a well-connected white woman. That white woman's brother is Fink's head of security, which means she can marry whomever the fuck she wants. The people who'd be sent to arrest her for miscegenation are also the people who work for her brother, which is why Timeline #2 Chen gets his charges dropped.
542** Yet the police still confiscate his tools?
543** Of course they do. He's still a ''gunsmith'' with overt connections to an insurrectionist movement, and even in the timeline where he survives, he was still arrested. He was simply let go unharmed with the charges dropped. They were going to interrogate him right up until word came down not to.
544* Even Hitler let Jews who he thought were useful live (most notably his late mother's doctor), and Himmler was recorded as saying "I decide who is a Jew". These two fanatical racists were able to make concessions, so why should Comstock be any different? My personal guess is that he was an extremely skilled gunsmith and armed most of Fink's personal army, leading to a YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness scenario when it was revealed that he was planning to supply the Vox.
545[[/folder]]
546
547[[folder:Columbia & Non-Whites, Non-Americans]]
548* Speaking of the interracial marriage above, Columbia and its rulers are extreme racists...So what is the point of bringing along other races at all? Wouldn't Comstock think that bringing other races in his White, American Utopia would lead to their downfall, and thus not want them up there? It doesn't make sense he would bring "minorities" with him...
549** Fink took black convicts from a man in Georgia so they could do the lowest jobs. It's explicitly said in a Voxophone from the Town Center.
550** Cheap, easy labour that had been conditioned to think of the white man as their moral and physical superior -- with Fink's technology and the soldiers loyal to Comstock it likely never occurred that the Vox would be able to muster enough resistance. Having a downtrodden people fill in all the "unclean" jobs lets white folk swan around doing the "proper" things, above getting their hands dirty.
551** They probably had no choice. Columbia was originally part of the United States, and under the Privileges and Immunities Clause they could not bar non-whites from moving into Columbia even if they wanted to. Obviously, they could have expelled non-white Columbians after they seceded from the Union, but at that point they had grown dependent on the cheap labor.
552** This is actually explained in one of the earliest Voxophones that you find in the game where Mr. Fink mentions acquiring some black prisoners for forced labor; the people of Columbia consider their home a paradise on Earth, but at the end of the day someone has to take out the trash, keep the machines running and do all sorts of other menial work that doesn't fit together with the heavenly image Comstock is trying to create. What better solution is there than to get some of the "inferiors" aboard to do them and remind the main populace that they are the finer stock? Many even seem to imagine that they are doing them a favor by letting them stay in Columbia, if only as menial labor wage-slaves.
553** From what we see in-game, there are only a small number of "darkies" around, most of the lower-class workers and Vox Populi fighters actually seem to be "palefaces", many of them with Irish accents. It could seem that Comstock and the Founders actually only tolerated a very small number of servants/workers of non-European stock, preferring to use lower-class European Immigrants for menial work. Come to think of it, Columbia was launched at a time when immigration from Central and Eastern Europe was high, which makes it remarkable that there is no sign of "Bohunks", not to mention Jews in the city.
554** Unlike Ryan, Comstock realized he'd need cheap labor to maintain his flying city and scrub the toilets, so perhaps he simply decided to use people he'd consider worthy of those tasks?
555** There are some signs that there might be Jews in the city. One of the vending machines in Shantytown has had the words "yid" and "heeb" (both antisemitic slurs) painted over it. It seems weird to have antisemitic slurs if there aren't any semitic people around. Also, the tie-in game Industrial Revolution sometimes mentions the Vox Populi's legal advisor is a man named John Goldman. That looks like a Jewish name. It's likely that there are indeed at least some Jewish people in Columbia, but that the player simply never meets one.
556** Or that you meet them all the time, but like a lot of real-world Jewish people, they aren't going by their birth names.
557** Remember, part of the downfall of Rapture is that it was stocked only by the best. Which created resentment because ''someone'' had to do the lowliest jobs. Bringing along a lower caste to do these things means that people will know, at a glance, who's labor and who's not.
558** In this troper's interpretation, Columbia's inhabitants were initially no more racist than the rest of 1890s America, but the combination of the city's isolation and Comstock's personal bigotry caused massive social deterioration, resulting in the racial fear-hate that permeates the city.
559[[/folder]]
560
561[[folder:Booker Prime's Memories]]
562* Wait, I'm still confused about why Booker Prime doesn't remember giving Elizabeth away. Where did his new memories come from? And wouldn't it have been better if he knew the truth from the beginning?
563** He does remember. He mentions Anna a few times during the game, he just doesn't know it's Elizabeth.
564** But why not let Booker in on that fact? It would be a hell of a motivator.
565** He actually doesn't remember. Shortly after you meet Elizabeth for the first time, she asks Booker if he's married. He says he was, but his wife died in childbirth, and when Elizabeth asks if he has a child, he simply says "No." As Robert Lutece says in the epigram that begins the game, a person who's brought into an alternate timeline will automatically begin to fashion a set of alternate memories to accommodate the conflict. As far as Booker's concerned, he's a childless, widowed war veteran and ex-Pinkerton who's come to Columbia to discharge a gambling debt by finding a girl. Any time someone tells him things are otherwise, he gets a nosebleed and insists that what he remembers is the gospel truth. It takes Elizabeth at full power to break the conditioning and force him to admit what the truth of the matter really is. The Luteces could tell him the real story until they were blue in the face but it wouldn't do any good.
566** I didn't take that "No" to mean that he forgot about his child, but that he literally didn't have one. Booker gave Anna away to settle the debt and he didn't want to explain that fact (or just didn't want to talk about it) to Elizabeth.
567** No, Booker in-game doesn't remember his baby at all. There's a reason why, any time Booker ends up back in his office in a dream sequence, he's never able to go through the side door into the closet. That's because it's where the cradle is. It's also why he isn't able to tell Elizabeth how she lost her finger in the ending, despite Booker seeing her finger get severed in dramatic slow-motion when he fails to get Anna back. In the version of himself he's manufactured upon stepping into the Columbia timeline, he isn't a father. Remember, the process by which a person makes new memories upon stepping into the new timeline isn't something the Luteces control; it's an automatic survival mechanism that Lutece even comments upon, both in the epigram that starts the game and in dialogue during the ending sequence. If PC!Booker remembers his daughter at all, it's subconsciously.
568** While the fact of going through a Tear scramble normal minds, don't forget that Booker's mind came ''already'' scrambled before the twins takes him through the Tear. Remember, he is a vet, suffering PTSD, who loses his wife in childbirth, before ''his child gets stolen by a flippin' dimension traveler and gets {{Fingore}}d by a {{Portal Cut}}''. Do not ask why is Booker not remembering his child, ask how he managed to be a barely functional individual without an army of badass therapists to back him up. Heck, as far as I can see, the passage through the initial Tear probably ''repaired'' a good deal of his psyche.
569[[/folder]]
570
571[[folder:Future Elizabeth]]
572* Why is Old, Fanatical, Let's-Destroy-New-York-As-Dad-Wanted Elizabeth so anxious to help Booker stop everything? She's been tortured and brainwashed into sharing Comstock's fanaticism. If, after all that torture, she genuinely broke and held The Faith, shouldn't she do everything possible to prevent Booker from going back and stopping these developments? If she was only pretending to break to stop the torture, didn't she take the act a bit far? Maybe cut it out before sparking a holocaust? Like, the second Comstock dies? I know she mentions at one point that she "can't stop what she's started," but that seems a bit of a HandWave.
573** Note: I'm sure I've missed an alternate universe or Elizabeth in there somewhere.
574** There's a long trail of Voxophones in 1984, recorded by Elizabeth, which go into the details of the plan, along with the Tears that Booker finds. When she's first being indoctrinated, she's waiting for Booker to get there and save her, but Songbird always showed up to stop him. By the time she's besieging New York, her powers are shriveling and her faith went with them. That's enough of a break for her to make one last play: bring Booker forward to meet her instead of waiting for him to find her.
575** She wants to stop because even brainwashed and crazy, the horror of what she has become is still clear to her. She's also been conditioned to go along with Comstock's plan to the point where her will to do otherwise is gone. And that point in time might actually be the soonest chance she had to call Booker to her. An invasion was probably keeping the normal security around busy.
576** She says that she's no longer running things. Something along the lines of "the inmates are running the asylum". She may have intended to go through with the plan initially. By the time she regrets it, it's way too late. Not even she can stop it. She says she had to use the last of her power to bring Booker to her.
577** Her conditioning by Comstock's men surrounded causing the invasion to occur. Once it did occur, its purpose was fulfilled and the conditioning no longer had any hold on her.
578[[/folder]]
579
580[[folder:Esther and Annabelle]]
581* There is only one thing I do not understand. Why did Esther, the Founder Police Woman, start calling Elizabeth "Annabelle"? It was pretty much a complete secret that Elizabeth was Annabelle up until TheReveal and there was no reason given as to why she would call her that.
582** I thought that she called her a different name on purpose so Elizabeth would say "No, my name is Elizabeth." That way she would know for certain that she was the girl she needed. I think the fact that "Anna" is in "Annabelle" is just a coincidence.
583** Pretty much exactly this. It was a sting operation so that Esther knew she was talking to the right person. Almost immediately after this encounter, you can find a Voxophone from Esther preparing for her encounter with "the False Shepherd".
584** Another possibility: While it might not have been shown to the player (since it would have been massively spoilery), calling Elizabeth Anna might have caused her to get a nosebleed due to the dimensional-dissonance effect, just like Booker gets a nosebleed whenever he's confronted with contradictory memories from his original world. In that case, Esther could have been instructed to call her that in order to test for that specific reaction. Of course, a bigger FridgeLogic is why on earth Booker didn't tell Elizabeth to use a false name the moment they were alone -- even if the name is common, there's no reason to make it any easier to find her, is there? For that matter, wear some gloves, both of you, seriously. (Again, there would probably be a lot of people expecting the False Shepherd to do that, but it'd be better than wearing the obvious brand all the time.) And maybe change clothes? Honestly, they're not very good at hiding, which might explain why Booker has to murder so many people.
585** One problem with this theory is that nobody other than Elizabeth knows about the memory collision = nosebleed theory, and she only knows that because they went dimension-hopping later down the line. This brings about the second problem: They had not hopped across dimensions yet, and so there are no secondary memories that could cause this nosebleed. Finally, the third problem with this theory is that there is no way for Annabelle to know that Elizabeth's original name was Anna. The "disguising yourself" bit was under-explored, though, maybe to keep the characters identifiable and consistent?
586[[/folder]]
587
588[[folder:The Ending & Elizabeth]]
589* In the ending, what happens to your Elizabeth? The Elizabeth who follows you through the final door is missing her necklace and Booker asks her who she is. Where did yours go?
590** Wherever she wants. She's God at that point; she's every Elizabeth that could be there, there at once.
591** A god whose only solution was to kill Booker rather than send a note or tell past Booker not to do the baptism. So much for seeing all the doors.
592** Technically, she is doing exactly what Booker asked her to do, she even asked him if he was sure. he told her he wanted to go to Comstock's cradle and choke him to death...and since Comstock was born from Booker being baptized... well, you get the picture. That's the big thing, this wasn't just Elisabeth's solution, Booker ASKED for it. he just didn't know WHAT he was asking for at the time.
593** Booker is headstrong, irrational, guilt-ridden, skeptical and prone to fits of rage. A note wouldn't have sufficed.
594** So the now nearly omnipotent Elizabeth can't figure out a way to stop Booker from becoming Comstock without killing him? When does it even say she is anywhere near godlike anyway? She just says she can see everything and Elizabeth is known to be naive. Her own actions show she is nowhere near a god.
595** To be fair, just because she's omnipotent doesn't mean there's another way to stop Booker from becoming Comstock.
596** She's powerful enough that she might as well be a god. What's the problem here? Just because she isn't ''literally'' all-powerful doesn't mean she can't be considered godlike.
597** Except it never defines how strong she really is at all by the end. It never even says if she's any stronger than the Lutece twins who can still arguably see more than she even could since they can literally be at all points in time at will.
598** Yes, this greatly confuses me. People consider Elizabeth a god or godlike even though most she can do is go into other dimensions and open years.
599** Lutece speculates in one Voxophone that as a person continues to travel from Tear to Tear, their essence essentially gets diluted to base elements, or a "ideal self" as it were. It could be that at the final point, your Elizabeth ceases to be, merging into the "original Elizabeth" from which all deviations are measured.
600** Furthermore, as you may well know, Booker [=DeWitt=] (as we know him) was the one who went to the baptism, but rejected it. The one who went to the baptism and accepted it would go on to become Comstock. Both of them are the product of Booker's decision to go ahead with or run away from his baptism: thus, any attempt by Booker to evade his baptism would invariably create the Booker we know, which would still allow the possibility for Comstock to exist. The only way to prevent Comstock's existence would be to ensure that Booker's baptism at that point in time has only one possible conclusion.
601[[/folder]]
602
603[[folder:Vending Machines in Shantytown]]
604* Why are there vending machines in Shantytown (including the rather expensive Minuteman and Vigor machines)? Shantytown is the poorest part of the city, a part where most people can barely even make enough money to feed their children. How can a machine that sells expensive weapon modifications and Vigor upgrades (costing anywhere between several hundred to over a thousand Silver Eagles) make a profit in such a poor part of town?
605** Maybe the vending machines predate the area being Shantytown? Alternatively, if you're a wealthy Columbian and you wind up in Shantytown, you sure as heck are going to want some protection.
606** Nobody sets out to build a slum. It's a place that is created by exterior factors. Its original manufacturers clearly intended for it to be a residential district, but as economic inequality and the class struggle slowly got worse in the years following Columbia's secession, anyone who could afford to move elsewhere did until all who were left were the poor and largely hopeless. The vending machines are thus an artifact of happier times, and are still stocked because nobody there can afford to buy the mostly-nonperishable goods in them.
607** Interesting note: Shantytown wasn't always called as such. There's a large sign atop the door leading there. It once said "Finkton Worker Housing" (I think) before "Shantytown" was painted over it.
608[[/folder]]
609
610[[folder:The Luteces' Plan]]
611* What was the Luteces' plan when they hired Booker and brought him to Columbia in the first place? They clearly didn't need him to get Elizabeth themselves. I assume it was some plan to stop Comstock from existing, but why go through such an elaborate plan? Heck, why not tell Elizabeth about what happens and have her take care of it at the very beginning of the game?
612** They're conducting an experiment. That's the point behind the "he doesn't row" conversation, the telegram, and the coin-flip. Nobody said it was their only experiment, but we can infer from the sandwich board that the player's run as Booker is their [=122nd=] run at Comstock through a proxy.
613** One of the late-game Voxophones tells how Rosalind couldn't really care less about Elizabeth anymore but Robert gave her the ultimatum of getting her back to where she belonged or he was gone so she went along with it. While it's probable that they could interfere and just pull her out of the Tower themselves, that wasn't really his goal. His goal was to reunite father and daughter while depriving Comstock of his person-shaped nuke. One of the last sequences during the ending shows that Booker just manufactured his memories about the twins hiring him when in actuality they simply opened the door for him to get to Columbia and gave him the information he needed to find his daughter.
614[[/folder]]
615
616[[folder:Why clear the Sky-Lines?]]
617* What was the point of clearing the Sky-Lines on the ''Hand of the Prophet''? They look like bombs, have the statues of Comstock in them, and are specifically remarked on as "dropping too slowly". This troper was expecting the twist to be that in trying to reach Comstock, they had been furthering his efforts to burn the Sodom Below, but nothing came of it...
618** I don't think it counts as head scratchers if the only reason you didn't understand it was because you blatantly weren't paying attention. The pods were blocking the Sky-Lines that lead to the next level of the ship. They couldn't use the Sky-Hook to get up there because the pods were in the way. They ''say'' this. Nothing came of it because there was nothing of it to come.
619** I GET that, but the dialogue and appearance implied something more to come. Why comment on the rate of descent if not for the player to notice? Otherwise, why not just have the objects be the generic crates seen earlier?
620** It's not so much as their rate of descent as it is how fast they're being dropped. Booker was expecting "Click, they all drop at once", not "Click, one moves into place, it drops. The next moves into place, it drops, and so on". They're being assaulted by small armies of hostiles and every moment spent waiting around for the bombs to drop is a moment they're spending in ever increasing danger. Much like ''The Mummy's'' hilarious line "Patience is a virtue." "Not right now, it isn't!"
621** There's also a fake-out scare kind of thing going on. By then, the player should expect everything that could go wrong, should go wrong. There were like a hundred Motorized Patriots on that Sky-Line, so it's natural to anticipate a plot twist where they ''all'' get dumped on the deck and start attacking you. It's kind of a mercy on the part of the programmers that didn't happen.
622** It's also a gameplay mechanic meant to force you to fight off a few waves of Vox while the lines clear so you can advance.
623** It could also just be an annoying grammar thing. If the line's "They're dropping too slowly", the poster could have interpreted it as "They're dropping too slowly" compared to how fast they should drop, something is wrong. As opposed to the intended "They're dropping too slowly" and we're REALLY in a hurry.
624[[/folder]]
625
626[[folder:Modified Guns, Different Ammo]]
627* The Burstguns and Repeaters are Vox Populi-modified versions of Carbines and Machine Guns used by the Columbian guards. But why do they use completely different ammunition? When you have a militant underground resistance movement, it would seem like a smart thing to have weapons which can use ammunition that you capture from the regime in power without any further modification.
628** I would assume it's a gameplay decision to make sure those Vox weapons are actually used by the player.
629** For an in-game reason? Most of their weapons are incendiary. You can't just use normal ammo and have it "magically" turn into a fire-wielding round of ammo, so the shells/bullets had to be modified. As to why the Vox went through all that effort...maybe to ensure their more powerful weapons weren't easily used against them? Maybe because they just liked the idea of spreading terror with fire and brimstone? (There's a trope for that, isn't there?)
630** They aren't "modified versions," they're totally different guns. The suggestion when you arrive in the armed-Vox timeline is that Fitzroy's people shot Chen Lin instead of making a deal with him and are making their weapons themselves. Hence, they use different ammunition.
631** But there are already Vox weapons in timelines where the Vox haven't contacted Chen Lin (there's a Vox Repeater near the entrance of the Bull Impound, for instance).
632[[/folder]]
633
634[[folder:Return to Sender]]
635* An upgrade to the Return to Sender Vigor allows you to catch rounds fired at you and add them to your own inventory. All right, you catch bullets... but what about shell casings, gunpowder, firing caps and such?
636** You just magnetically accelerate the rounds through the gun back at the other guy. [[HandWave It's quantum mechanics again!]]
637** Vigors ultimately come from a woman who can manipulate time and reality. It may be that the bullets are reverted to an unfired round or even pulled from another reality.
638[[/folder]]
639
640[[folder:Integrity of the Sky-Lines]]
641* The Sky-Lines are made out of metal, and rests on narrow wheels atop posts that keep them up but don't do anything to keep them attached there. So why don't they tear themselves apart when the buildings where they ARE anchored bob up and down constantly? Or get moved out of the of the small wheels they rest on?
642** Just because something's metal doesn't mean it's not flexible.
643** But flexible Sky-Lines would sag terribly under the weight of the cargo containers and trolleys that travel on them.
644** No, they wouldn't. Flexible is a relative term -- skyscrapers, buildings that weigh hundreds of thousands of tons a piece, sit on top of springs and shift pads and sway dozens of meters, like a giant corn stalk being blown in the wind. A metal beam that could take the force of its anchors moving half a dozen meters without snapping would not necessarily bend under the weight of a few cargo cars.
645** It would if most of the mass of the beam is just swinging freely in the open air with no reinforcement or support of any kind, as we see in the game.
646** Who's to say their atoms aren't suspended the same way ''everything else in Columbia'' is?
647[[/folder]]
648
649[[folder:Sky-Lines and Magnetism]]
650* If the Sky-Hooks are magnetic -- and so magnetic they in fact can yank a fully grown man 15 feet or so towards a metal hook -- how do they not attract everything metallic towards them?
651** Booker guesses they must be magnetic because he doesn't understand the technology of Columbia, that doesn't mean they ''are'' actually magnetic. More than likely, it is somehow related to the rest of the technology making the city work.
652** This troper took it to mean that the Sky-Hook itself was magnetic, and could be activated by the wearer whenever they wanted to utilize the skylines, likely using the same power source that enabled its (blades? wheel? what should it be called?) to rotate.
653[[/folder]]
654
655[[folder:What Happened To The Priest?]]
656* When all the Elizabeths are drowning Booker, what happens to the Preacher Witting? He just vanishes after Booker dies. Isn't he confused by all these identical women turning up around this man? Why doesn't he try to stop them from drowning Booker? Do the Elizabeths drown him as well?
657** He might not have been there at all. At that point, you're deep into metaphor and symbolism, as evidenced by how you're teleporting back and forth in time and space.
658*** [[Main/WildMassGuessing Or the Elizabeths aren't there at all]]. Since none of them are wearing the brooch, none of them are "your" Elizabeth; you can tell from their clothes and appearance that they're all from different points in the timeline (during her stay in the tower, post-escape, after killing Daisy, immediately after getting tortured, from the demo version of the game). It's possible none of them are really there, and Booker is coming to the realization himself with help from the Elizabeth in his head--the same way Elizabeth has Booker in her head in ''Burial at Sea: Part 2''. The "drowning" is Booker holding his own breath and refusing to come up for air.
659** It should also be noted that he is blind (it is unknown if he was born blind or if his vision left him later in life). As such, he would be unable to notice all the Elizabeths if he were present.
660[[/folder]]
661
662[[folder: Outcome of the Vox Rebellion]]
663* In the 1984 BadFuture where Booker failed to rescue Elizabeth, it’s implied that the Founders ultimately won the Columbian Civil War. (The Vox would never accept Comstock's divine mandate for Elizabeth to rule.) However, from what we see in 1912, the Vox Populi are [[CurbstompBattle crushing]] the Founders. The Vox win every skirmish you witness, and are already executing captured troops and civilians. (There is even a massive pyre in front of the bank.) The commercial and industrial districts are firmly under their control, and they have penetrated Founder territory deeply enough to seize the primary bank and raid the burial grounds of their leaders. Furthermore, Vox soldiers are sieging the Founders’ HQ, and the Vox fleet is powerful enough to launch a direct assault on the Founder flagship. ''How in the world did the Founders win the war''?
664** Once Elizabeth's indoctrination takes, she can simply move herself and her backers to a Columbia where the war either didn't happen or the Vox didn't win.
665** There isn't even a need for that. Time is on the Founders' side. After Daisy Fitzroy died, the Vox became a band of aimless marauders. They don't have a long-term plan, any more, so they can only carry on as long as they have supplies. People in Shantytown are already posting signs of how they need food, not guns in the third reality. The Vox revolution whimpers out as the Founders simply wait out the storm; they have been shown repeatedly to be paranoid and distrustful of their servants and the outside world, so they are likely to be well-stocked and fortified in few key locations that the Vox can't penetrate fast enough to make a difference to the outcome. Lots of real-life revolutions have ultimately fallen to poor logistics.
666** Quite true and a good point as well. Even if they don't do that, however, an indoctrinated Elizabeth in their back pocket means the Founders cannot lose. If they do, they can reshuffle the deck until they win.
667** Furthermore, it is possible that in other realities, the remnants of the Vox are simply absorbed into the greater Columbian society, with their descendants forming an equal part of the invasion force as the Founders. By the end of it all, racial or class divisions no longer matter as much as their commonly-shared attributes of blind hatred and fanatical devotion to an all-encompassing ideal.
668** The Vox also have no answer for Songbird. Their entire fleet was crushed by one man and one biomechanical monster. Once Elizabeth was with Comstock, it would have been easy to convince Songbird to come out and kill their main fighting force as a measure to defend her. Then, it would be an organized army with control of the city versus a greatly reduced mob. Retaking the city wouldn't be an inevitable proposition, but it would be much easier.
669[[/folder]]
670
671[[folder:The Songbird's Past]]
672* Is there any indication as to who the Songbird was before his/her modification?
673** There's nothing in the game itself, but Irrational Games have noted the large amount of requests for Songbird backstory, so it's possible this will be explored in the DLC. There's a [[http://bioshockmysteries.com/2013/04/05/the-song-of-constance-field/ fan theory]] it was Constance Field, though. Another fan theory is that Songbird was another AU version of Booker.
674[[/folder]]
675
676[[folder:Columbia, Weapon Vending Machines & Violent Revolutionaries]]
677* Why is Columbia dotted with vending machines that dispense ammunition and weapon modifications when you have a violent anarchist movement causing trouble? Didn't it ever occur to Fink or Comstock that might present a bit of a security hazard? One might consider Fink paying his employees by vouchers only valid in his own stores as a way of limiting this, but when you have people willing to commit mass murder for their cause, expecting them to stick to legal fundraising methods is utterly moronic. What is even more baffling is that the vending machines provide ammunition and modifications also for weapons which are exclusively used by the Vox Populi. The least they could do is put those machines behind locked doors!
678** GameplayAndStorySegregation. MST3KMantra.
679** I figured someone was going to give that handwave. Counterpoint: ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'', from which the ''VideoGame/BioShock'' series borrows heavily. That game gave a solid explanation for the situation: 1) The vending machines are all generic. 2) They can also be reprogrammed to produce a variety of things on account of nanomachine construction. 3) Only one side of the conflict used them.
680** My guess is that Fink is almost comically clueless when it comes to security. The wiki mentions that Fink secretly supplied the Vox Populi with Sky-Hooks, even though the Vox probably causes him to lose more money in damaged property than he'd ever gain from selling to them. He also thinks the best way to screen someone for head of security of a megacorporation/privately-owned city is to have the applicants duel with each other. Any other CEO would probably test their head of security on things like leadership of a large team, counterinsurgency, etc. And he thinks that putting a gigantic golden statue of yourself right next to a Shantytown filled with starving workers is a good idea. Another theory is that Fink thinks he can somehow control the Vox, or somehow pay them to leave him alone. He might think that the Vox will leave him alone if he sells them weapons because they couldn't get any weapons otherwise. Whatever the case, it's pretty obvious that Fink is an overconfident narcissist who is not all that good at assessing potential threats. And I think it's perfectly in-character for Fink to do stupid stuff like that.
681** ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' is not ''VideoGame/SystemShock2''. What applies in ''System Shock'' does not automatically apply in ''VideoGame/BioShock''. There is no in-universe explanation for the discrepancies concerning the vending machines in ''Infinite''. That's just the way it is.
682** I don't believe the troper above was saying any such thing. Quite the opposite, they were saying that ''System Shock'' ''does'' have a consistent in-universe explanation, whereas ''Infinite'' really doesn't. They did indicate that their statement was a counterpoint to (essentially) "just go with it."
683** I could see it as a sort of 2nd Amendment Solution. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. So Comstock wanted to make sure his guys were just as or more heavily armed than the bad guys. Doesn't make PERFECT sense, but it's a start.
684** "Capitalists will sell us all the rope we need to hang them on." -- Attributed to UsefulNotes/VladimirLenin, but oh, so true.
685** Interestingly, you notice that none of the vending machines sell weapons, only ammo and Vigors expensive. With Fink not even paying with real money, only with Fink Tokens, which are only accepted in Fink Stores, you could not even buy them. What use is ammo without a gun? Also, they could easily be relics from time when the area was ''not'' a slum.
686[[/folder]]
687
688[[folder:The Ending & Why Do People Say That Booker...?]]
689* Why do people keep saying that the Booker that rejects the baptism survives? Elizabeth specifically says she's killing him before he even makes the choice, not that she's killing off whenever he accepts it.
690** When you wait past the credits, you get to see a stinger of Booker waking up back in his office and calling for Anna. Fans believe that this is caused by the collapse of a temporal paradox; if Comstock doesn't exist to kidnap Anna to raise her as Elizabeth, Booker never goes through the events of the game and thus can't be brought back in time to be drowned by her. Thus, at least one version of Booker continues to exist separate from all the game's timelines.
691** I've seen the Stinger. The problem is that Elizabeth, who exists outside of time -- not Booker, as he doesn't have her powers -- specifically stated that every single Booker at the baptism needs to be killed. Unless she somehow managed to preserve the Booker we play as, shouldn't this scene actually be of a Booker that never even decided to attend a baptism?
692** It's not a question of having any powers. What happens at the ending is a paradox; when Booker gets drowned in all realities, it actually erases the very scenario in which he has to be drowned, and thus he doesn't get drowned, after all. The entire event erases itself from all the timelines, leaving behind only the Booker(s?) who never had adventure in Columbia and never became Comstock. The drowning is an event which can't exist in a same timeline with itself and is only possible because of Elizabeth's transcendental powers.
693** Actually, the answer's very simple -- just before Elizabeth drowns Booker, the priest asks what Booker's new name will be, implying that this is occurring ''after'' the baptism. This is the Booker that has ''already'' undergone the baptism. So when Elizabeth uses her powers to make the drowning a constant, she only does it to the ones that were already on the path to become Comstock -- the ones on the path to become Booker ran away before the actual baptism was completed.
694** Moreover, there are also all the Bookers who never even considered the baptism, in addition to those who had a change of heart. That "your" Booker doesn't recognize the place at first suggests that he's one of the ones who never bothered. (Or that he blocked it out later.)
695[[/folder]]
696
697[[folder:The Insane ruling the Insane, and Insanity in General]]
698* Alright, so, in the Insane Asylum, people who wear helmets that make it hard for them to see but amplifies sound to the Nth degree, as well as bibs and laces, are the security in an Insane Asylum...No one running Columbia thought "Oh yeah, this is not safe!"? In fact, it's not just the Insane Asylum that's insane. The people are completely oblivious to every problem in society, from the terrorism to the giant mechanical monstrosities, to radical rulers and their insane amounts of Science, to the basic fact that '''Super Potions exist all around them!''' (Though they do know that you are a problem) You think any society would be heavily concerned with the mental health of their people, and I understand this is 1912, but when your citizens don't even '''CARE''' that they're at threat of being killed by terrorists, your society is not stable... Why don't they care?!
699** The Insane Asylum is in the BadFuture where it's implied that everyone is under the influence of Elizabeth, either through slavish devotion (like how everyone literally stops what they do to pray to Comstock) or {{Brainwashing}}.
700** Are the upper class of Columbia ''really'' at so much risk? You're talking about a society where the general store runs on the honor system. In the primary universe, the Vox Populi aren't even that much of a threat. The city is also run like a {{Cult}} that jails and tortures dissenters, which tend not to produce an objective populace.
701** The Vox are a ''very'' serious threat, if their performance in the later part of the game is any indication. (See the ''Outcome Of The Vox Uprising'' folder above.) The Vox uprising in the primary universe failed only because Mr. Lin married the wrong person and lost his tools; dumb luck and random chance are all the Vox needed to tear the city apart, indicating that the Founders' control is tenuous at best.
702** You could ''also'' argue that the Vox's uprising in Universe-3 was due to random chance...it just so happened that in that universe, all of the odds fell in their favor. Remember, the Vox didn't ''just'' have guns in Universe-3, they also had a charismatic voice on their side (Booker, who even manages to convince one of Comstock's primary agents to turn) and a martyr (also Booker) to galvanize the population into action.
703** Is it just me who finds it awesome that the only person who could truly kickstart a revolution to bring down Comstock is an alternate version of himself?
704** I just assumed that, in the Bad Future timeline of the asylum, there are actually very few regular citizens left in Columbia. Future Liz wasn't concerned with maintaining a stable society above, just burning the ones below. It could be that by 1984, there's only Elizabeth, her army/minions/creations, and Songbird.
705** The tooth-to-tail ratio discourages that notion; turning everyone in your city into a full time solider is a terrible idea logistic wise. Even post-industrial armies require ten non-comms maintaining bases and equipment for every one solider that fights on the field. Simply put, Columbia’s army needs a healthy civilian population sustaining it if it intends to last more than a few weeks, whether they fight or not.
706** Columbia under Elizabeth's rule is not a normal human society. Elizabeth strips her subjects of their humanity and individuality, leaving only mindless devotion to the most bare bones of Comstock's ideals. There are no soldiers or civilians there, only gears of a giant machine, solely devoted to destruction or conversion of everything that isn't them.
707** Additionally, Coloumbia in the alternative 80s timeline probably ends up looking more like rapture, where large parts of the city are falling apart and the vast majority of its citizens are either insane spliced up crazies or are subject to Elizabeth's brainwashing. Notable that Slate says that the future of Coloumbia is "Tin Men", which if you take into account the premise of the [[BadFuture]] then it's almost like he knew.
708[[/folder]]
709
710[[folder:It's the False Shepherd... Whatever...]]
711* Why is there not more of an immediate reaction when Booker is revealed as the "False Shepherd"' during the raffle? Some people in the crowd gasp, two cops grab him, and Fink delivers a minor dressing down before one of the cops moves to separate Booker's head from his neck. You'd expect, with all the religious zealotry and paranoia abound in Columbia, mass hysteria would have occurred, and Comstock would have dispatched barges full of soldiers to contain this person who can apparently bring about the destruction of their utopia. Of course, after the raffle, the armed response is wholly appropriate, but the reaction of Fink and the cops at the raffle is more akin to Booker being an undercover Vox Populi member.
712** ... Except they're moving to execute him there and then and only get stopped because Booker mutilates his attackers with a Sky-Hook. What else were you expecting them to do in those few seconds?
713** I was wondering more why no one seemed particularly surprised or worried. Fink and the cops treat Booker just like an ordinary criminal, even though the "False Shepherd" is someone talked about constantly in propaganda as a menace that threatens Columbia.
714** Again, it was a few seconds of interaction they had. People reacted like a normal criminal because ''they thought he was a normal criminal''. The initials on his hand aren't enormous.
715** The impression I got was that Fink didn't think he actually ''was'' the False Shepherd, just someone who happened to have the brand. Fink seems to treat the whole thing as a big joke -- and there's also the bit where he tells the policemen to "Show him what we've got planned" for the False Shepherd. My thought is that it wasn't until after Booker killed those guards that they realized that he might be the real deal.
716** Look at it this way. If you were at a big Christian music festival, even one full of the most fervent true believers, and someone grabbed a guy and said "Hey! It's the Antichrist!" the first reaction would certainly be confusion, and until he started killing people, a panic is unlikely, to say the least.
717** When you turn around after killing the two cops the area is completely clear of bystanders. Given how many people were in the park, its not unlikely that many withdrew to a safe distance from the False Shepard and broke and ran the moment he wasn't held down.
718[[/folder]]
719
720[[folder:You don't really want to go to Paris, do you, Lizzie?]]
721* Elizabeth apparently has the power to open tears that allow her to go to any time and place she wants, and apparently she wants to go to Paris, so why, during her long captivity did she never just open a Tear to Paris and walk through, or anywhere else she feels like going for that matter?
722** As a child, she used to control the Tears perfectly and did go wherever she wanted, but always came back home in the end. But with the Siphon in place, she's only limited to opening unstable Tears with no control over where they go. Most of the Tears don't seem to allow actual travel between them, at all, and Elizabeth may have been too afraid of being stuck somewhere unpleasant or losing control over the Tear to walk into the ones that do; it's only after she gains more self-confidence in Booker's company that she becomes willing to test the limits of her power.
723** That doesn't explain why Elizabeth doesn't open a Tear at some point during the game after she "gains more self-confidence" and just leave Columbia, aside from JustEatGilligan of course.
724** There's no such Tear to be found. There's also the fact that by the time Elizabeth really starts getting a hang of her powers she is also pretty set on stopping Comstock once and for all. She explicitly gives up on the idea of leaving before she's fixed all the terrible things she blames herself for after fiddling around with the timelines.
725** She can't use the tears to teleport until such a time as the Siphon's been destroyed.
726** As I recall, Elizabeth opens a Tear to Paris almost immediately before Booker meets her, and subsequently closes it because a fire truck happens to be barreling towards her at the time.
727** The closing could be simple fear, since anyone would react poorly to a vehicle suddenly speeding straight at you even if you knew that it would just dissipate on impact. There are cracks in the two-way mirror despite the bus not impacting the Tear, implying that the damage came more from the rapid closure destabilizing space-time and causing a shockwave rather than any "remnants of bus" coming out.
728** It just seems rather odd to me that Elizabeth can open and walk through doors to other realities twice in the game and even open a tear to who knows where to summon up a freaking ''tornado'' not to mention all the other random things that she brings in throughout the game apparently with no visible effort whatsoever even prior to the destruction of the Siphon and yet she somehow can't open a Tear to Paris and walk through to go there if she really actually cares to go there at any point during the game.
729** Again: there aren't any Tears leading to Paris to be found. The only one Elizabeth ''could'' find was in her tower, and it was shut after about five seconds; it's not known if Elizabeth would be able to open it again, because thanks to Booker rescuing her, she never got to access it again.
730** From what we see, all Elizabeth needs is to want something badly enough, and she can open a Tear to bring in anything she wants or go anywhere she wants, even before the Siphon is gone. It would easier to say she just didn't think of it.
731** What? By that logic, the moment she discovered that Chen Lin and his wife had been murdered, she would have tried moving on. Plus, it's a quite a while before Elizabeth can actually ''go'' anywhere using the Tears, and as far as bringing in anything she wants and going anywhere she wants, that's not the case: up until the Siphon's destroyed, she's still fundamentally limited -- hence the reason why we don't end up in Rapture and the multiverse beyond until the finale.
732[[/folder]]
733
734[[folder:The 1999 Mode?]]
735* A simple question, but seemingly without an answer: why is the 1999 Mode called such? There is no connection to that date in the story and it doesn't seem to relate to any other use of that number, either. So where does the name come from?
736** Harkens back to FPS games of the 1990s, where health was ridiculous and resources scarce. There's no connection to the game's storyline.
737** Specifically, ''System Shock 2's'' release date, which the ''VideoGame/BioShock'' series is a spiritual successor of.
738** Another possibility, it's a subtle joke. Like "it's so hard that if you started playing it in 1912, it would be 1999 by the time you're done."
739** You can call 2000 as the end of the era of NintendoHard games. Thus, 1999, is the term used for a time period were games were incredibly hard.
740** I don't know if you're old enough to remember or if you were even alive, but a lot of people thought that the world was gonna end the moment we reached the year 2000, or 1999. I think people are afraid of three digits repetition. Some of these predictions were based on passages of the Book of the Revelations, and many said that Jesus would return. Considering how heavy the Christian themes are in this game, this is just another part of it. Basically, surviving this mode should be like surviving the end of the world.
741[[/folder]]
742
743[[folder:The Dog Voxophone]]
744* In a certain Voxophone found in a bathroom, Comstock talks about Bill, his beloved childhood dog. Wouldn't Booker remember having a dog as a kid? I'm pretty sure that would tip him off about Comstock's origins.
745** Possibility number 1: this is one of those other minute differences between dimensions, and Bill had a different name/was female/wasn't owned by Booker/never existed in Booker's native reality. Possibility number 2: Comstock's just lying in order to illustrate a point, and Bill never existed at all. After all, this wouldn't be the first time that Comstock has invented and falsified events to serve his own political ends. Possibility number 3: Booker's memory was so screwed up by crossing realities that he can't even remember his own daughter, so it's safe to say that his recollection of past events is a little dodgy on some points. Option #4 is that Bill is just a common name, so he would see it as coincidental.
746** Option #5 is that Booker's automatic mental conditioning caused by the world jumping makes him ignore the obvious signs that he is actually Comstock. Most importantly, being part Sioux, which is a heck of a lot rarer than naming your dog one of the common names in the English language.
747[[/folder]]
748
749[[folder:The Mystery of the Hand]]
750* How did Comstock know about the "AD" on Booker's hand? One of the first things that lets Booker know he is the "False Shepherd" is the poster showing that an "AD" on the right hand is a sign of their identity. I assumed the Luteces showed him via their machines, but during the ending, you see the Luteces examining Booker just before they take him to the lighthouse, and they talk about the "AD" mark like they've never seen it before.
751** Given that Columbia is still working with Tears ''long'' after the Lutece twins' supposed death, it's likely that Comstock had discovered it independently.
752** Plus, there are 122 other timelines where Booker has gone after Elizabeth and Comstock, so he could easily have forewarning via Tears.
753** Or he has other people that he believes to be less of a liability continuing their work.
754** How does Comstock not have it on his own hand? Since he was sterile, he never had Anna...?
755** Exactly. Comstock is too busy with his rise to power to have a daughter, which is why he needs to acquire Booker's.
756** Not quite. Booker brands "AD" on his own hand ''after'' he sells Anna to Comstock, as way of self-penance. Thus, there is no reason for Comstock to have "AD" on ''his'' hand.
757** Considering he is Booker, he could think through what his actions would be in that situation. Maybe hand brands had significance in his earlier life we just don't see.
758** I agree with this> In ''Burial at Sea'', Booker!Comstock tattooed AD into his own right hand after accidentally killing Anna.
759[[/folder]]
760
761[[folder:Why keep Elizabeth so ignorant?]]
762* Even if Comstock wanted to keep Elizabeth locked in the tower, why did he keep her so ignorant of the world outside, even of the fact that she is his daughter? If Comstock intended her to become his successor, why didn't he start indoctrinating her with his political and religious beliefs from an early age, to ensure she would follow in his footsteps?
763** Given that Booker -- or at least this version of Booker -- derailed whatever original approach Comstock had in mind, we can but guess: maybe he was planning to make a big show of magnanimously releasing her from the tower, "Rejoice, my child, the False Shepherd is slain and you are safe, etc, etc..." and then indoctrinating Elizabeth with grand talk of her destiny and soforth while she was still awestruck and bamboozled by the outside world. And that didn't produce the desired results, Comstock had other methods, as the finale demonstrated.
764** That doesn't really explain why Comstock hadn't started honing Elizabeth for her future role. She ''was'' exposed to some propaganda, considering that she was a fan of Duke & Dimwit as a child and presumably she gained wider knowledge base than expected through the tears, altering some of her books to completely different ones and observing different times and places. But the only reason that I can think of why Comstock kept himself so removed from her education and didn't let her know of her future role as the city's leader is that he may have been afraid of her. With her power she could perhaps see him for what he truly is and he might have been scared of her judgment, especially since he wouldn't be able to eliminate her like he has done with everyone else who might reveal his past of his underhanded dealings. He was only ready to let Elizabeth go once he could ensure that he could keep her under his control.
765** Despite what a complete monster he is, Comstock still does genuinely love Elizabeth like his own daughter, in his own twisted way. He specifically says that he wanted Elizabeth to accept of her own free will, and that indoctrination was a last resort.
766** But Comstock seemed to genuinely believe in his political and religious ideals, so from his point of view educating Elizabeth about those things wouldn't be indoctrination or brainwashing, just telling her the truth. And even if he told her all that stuff, she would still have free will, as an adult she could still choose whether or not to become Comstock's successor. Most parents with extreme ideological and/or religious ideas teach those ideas to their children, since they believe it's the best for them. It doesn't make sense that a fanatic like Comstock wouldn't do this.
767** He probably did try, but it didn't stick. Elizabeth built up quite a bit of animosity against Comstock and her mother for being trapped in the tower all of her life. Plus, Comstock probably saw through a tear that he wouldn't be able to convert Elizabeth until Booker came to Columbia.
768** In fact, it wasn't until Elizabeth gave up on all hope of being rescued that the actual BadFuture takes place.
769[[/folder]]
770
771[[folder:The Handyman's Duds]]
772* All the Handymen you fight wear ripped-up, tattered clothing when you fight them. That's understandable. But why is the first Handyman you see (the one at the tutorial fair where you get the Possession Vigor) wearing such shabby clothes? Wouldn't the guy showing off these new bodies want them to look more presentable?
773** Maybe Booker just arrived a couple of minutes late, and the barker was making a big show of presenting the Handyman's new body to the audience: "No sir, no ma'am, this is no elaborate rubber suit; this man is not wearing a harness under his clothes! Allow me to demonstrate..." *RRRRRIP!* "Behold! His amazing mechanical endoskeleton!"
774** The Handyman shown in the fair may not necessarily be entirely new, having been put through his paces (to test out his capabilities) or otherwise having been put to work, all before being put on display.
775[[/folder]]
776
777[[folder:Comstock's Religious Fervor]]
778* Maybe I missed a Voxophone that explains this, but Comstock acts throughout the game like he really is receiving visions from an angel, even after we know he's been using the tears to gain knowledge. How much exactly does he believe his rhetoric about the divine nature of his plans? Is he burning the world because [[SelfFulfillingProphecy he saw himself burning the world in a Tear,]] or does he genuinely think God wants him to waste the world?
779** Comstock's religious beliefs seem to be just about the only thing that he's totally sincere about. There would be no practical benefit for him to wage war against the entire world, especially since in his vision it'll only come to pass once he's passed away. None of his Voxophones indicate that he would only be using the religious image for personal power. He ruined his own health through the use of the Tears and doesn't seem even slightly regretful that he is going to die soon because of it, as he thinks that God will reward him. In one of Rosalind Lutece's Voxophones, she comments how Comstock doesn't understand that the Tears aren't a door to prophecy but probability, indicating that he really believed them to be caused by divine will, not mere science. And then there's the matter of Archangel Columbia who supposedly gave him inspiration for building the city to begin with, and he somehow gained enough charisma, wealth and political power to pull it off at extremely young age. This would seem to imply that there really was something out there that helped him to achieve his goals, but that is a matter of speculation, at least until some DLC or sequel will explain the matter better -- maybe.
780** Consider the chain of events. 1 - Rosalind devises a window into other dimensions and the future. 2 - Comstock meets Rosalind, mistakes her device for a window of prophecy. 3 - Comstock and Rosalind build Columbia together based on what Comstock saw of the future in the windows, in exchange for the funding Rosalind needs to bring Robert through the dimensions. I thought it was pretty evident that "the Archangel" is Rosalind Lutece, and the gift of prophecy the Archangel bestowed was what Comstock witnessed through her windows.
781* Adding to that, his dedication to religion could be his way of coping with post-Wounded Knee PTSD, the way "our" Booker did with gambling and drinking. By the time we get to Columbia, all the power and followers he's gained have only further confirmed to him that his work as a prophet was right. You get into Columbia by being baptized as a new person. So, this Booker had gone with the baptism since his guilt made him want to wash his sins away, and when he became Comstock, religion was all he had to him and that's what he lost himself in.
782* He's like a fundamentalist version of Handsome Jack - exceptionally deluded egomaniac. Except he's senile from advanced aging. Between the cancer, the PTSD, murdering his own wife and abandoning his daughter, and all the tears that he keeps watching like soap operas, it's pretty obvious that his mind has snapped.
783[[/folder]]
784
785[[folder:The Stinger: Downer Ending?]]
786* In Spoony's recent [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPvUWCs0vHo&feature=em-subs_digest review of this game]] he brought up something about TheStinger that I hadn't considered. When Elizabeth drowned Booker, she erased all timelines where he becomes Comstock and all timelines where Booker becomes a broke sloppy drunk and sells his daughter to pay off his debts... '''BUT''', she doesn't erase any of the events ''prior'' to the baptism that led to Booker becoming either Comstock or a broke sloppy drunk who sells his daughter to pay off his debts. Logically, Booker should still be carrying around the guilt from his atrocities at Wounded Knee, and the guilt from all the horrible things he must have done with the Pinkertons. (Or maybe not. I'm still unclear whether Booker joins the Pinkertons in both the Comstock and non-Comstock timelines, but the Wounded Knee events definitely happen in all timelines.) So by Spoony's reckoning, this makes the Stinger timeline possibly the ''worst'' of all worlds, at least for Booker and Anna/Elizabeth. Booker is now a poor, drunk, single father in [[strike:1910s]] 1890s America who still committed terrible war crimes at Wounded Knee and is ''crippled'' with guilt and probably severe PTSD because of it. There's no indication that Booker seeks any kind of therapy for what he's done, and even if he tried PTSD wasn't really recognized as a legit mental illness until about the 1970s. Before that the standard course of treatment was to send the soldier home for a little while (assuming they didn't just call him a coward). I guess what I'm asking is... can someone make this explanation ''not true?'' Is there a flaw in this theory that renders it invalid and I've just missed it? Because I really would rather believe that Booker and his daughter get a HappyEnding. (Well, a happier ending than what I just described at least.)
787** You can't make it "not true" so much as "not proven". It's a bunch of theories that make sense, but there's no absolute evidence that Booker wouldn't have just managed to get on with his life. It's implied that he only became a serious drunk ''after'' giving up Anna, so maybe by not giving her up, that road was avoided.
788** Well, his desk is still covered in bottles and ticket stubs in TheStinger, indicating that he still has a drinking and gambling problem in the final reality. Maybe he manages to get over them, maybe not, but that's purely speculative, like so much about the ending.
789** The way Booker says Anna's name in the Stinger makes it feel like he's surprised that Anna is in the other room, and that things are back to the way they were before he sold her. I interpreted this as Booker somehow (probably through Elizabeth's powers) knowing about the bad future that had just been erased; as if he'd just woken from a bad dream, which included all the events of the game. It's true that he still has plenty of problems, but if he knows about the future, then he would probably do everything in his power to avoid it. Knowing that you could become a fanatical, murderous dictator, and totally ruin your daughter's life, is hell of a motivation for change.
790** Just a minor correction to the original Headscratcher: The scene in Booker's office takes place in 1893, while most of the game takes place in 1912, when Anna/Elizabeth is around 19 years old.
791** (OP) Corrected.
792** Remember also that when Elizabeth decides to drown Comstock/Booker at the baptism, she has pretty much gained omniscience and sees every pathway and probability in all the alternate timelines. This means she must have had at least a decent idea about what life with her father would be like free of any alternate dimension shenanigans or right wing extremism. There was nothing stopping her from, say, going back and stopping Booker from participating at the Wounded Knee Massacre in the first place, or just outright killing him when he was born to prevent both her suffering and the whole Columbia issue to begin with. But she instead only chose to end him at the point where he became Comstock and no earlier, so she must have foreseen that a normal life with Booker would at least be decent, maybe indicating that he manages his debts and his issues somehow.
793** Additionally: Booker only sold Anna after some extreme pressuring from Comstock. He has numerous flashbacks implying that he refuses to sell Elizabeth or even talk to Robert for a long time, and it's only after he becomes especially desperate that he finally gives in. Even then, has a change of heart and tries to get her back almost immediately afterward. With no Comstock to make him give up Anna or worsen his situation, it's probable that he eventually cleans up his act so he could be a better father for her.
794** I think of it this way: Even if Booker and Anna still have a bad future ahead of them, many, many, many lives have probably still been saved, at the cost of one man and one girl (times in alternate universes). Like it or not, it makes a sad sort of sense if you explain it with [[Film/StarTrekIITheWrathOfKhan The needs of the many...]]
795** I figured it was this: Due to the infinite abilities of Tears, Booker "drowning" was only a symbolic way of killing Comstock and resetting the timelines. Alpha!Booker is taken back to the day where this whole mess started, but with his memories of his travels at least mostly intact. He is the same Booker. I'm getting this from the new ''Burial at Sea'' DLC and its theme of trying to forget and let go of what you've done.
796** Seems it could have been a fabricated "memory" (similar to the other black and white sequences taking place in Booker's office over the course of the game) that Booker gave himself of successfully being with the daughter he loved before he died. DownerEnding, indeed.
797[[/folder]]
798
799[[folder:Uncanny mystery?]]
800* In one Kinetoscope, you find a recording titled "Uncanny Mystery in Columbia", which is about small Tears appearing around the city and people being all puzzled and amazed by this. This city has miraculous powers being sold in bottles at the marketplace. There are people who can turn into a flock of crows and fly around. What's so special about a tiny light show? Wouldn't the logical reaction from the people be that someone's just playing pranks with Vigors?
801** Because Vigors are most likely a recent invention, and their creation certainly wouldn't have been possible without the Tears. Plus, there's no reason to suggest that Tears are common knowledge in Columbia.
802** In addition it's, y'know, a ''mystery''. An ''uncanny'' one at that ("uncanny" meaning "strange or mysterious, esp. in an unsettling way"). Whether Vigors are a new phenomenon or not, so far as the general public of Columbia knows the Tears appear out of nowhere with no apparent cause. You know what a teddy bear is, but if floating teddy bears started appearing out of thin air around town, you'd call it a mystery, too. An ''uncanny'' mystery, even.
803** It's entirely probable that this is an older recording. Remember, Elizabeth says she could previously make Tears at will. Before the siphon was brought online, Elizabeth was probably tearing up Columbia without even realizing. Once Comstock got her powers under control, people would just dismiss it as a one-time thing and get on with their lives.
804[[/folder]]
805
806[[folder:Who thought the Sky-Lines were a good idea?]]
807* Why are there Sky-Lines all over the place and people using them? As fun as they are as a gameplay mechanic, from a practical standpoint they are incredibly hazardous. Let me mention a few things that come to mind: You hold on to them by one hand. What happens if your hold of the Sky-Hook slips? A closer look at the skyhook shows that it includes some kind of brace that goes around the forearm, but even if that latched on so there's no danger of losing hold, that merely downgrades the experience to very painful on a long distance. (And the Sky-Lines are not just used for short distance transport. There are instances in the game where they cover long stretches between buildings with empty skies below them.) Another problem is that there are no designated dropoff points. You just jump down as you please. What if you misjudge your landing and go plummeting down all the way to the ground? The Sky-Lines are also always grouped together so that there is another skyline taking people in the opposite direction with maybe a foot of distance between them. If two people pass each other going into opposite directions, they have to pay close attention and maneuver precisely to avoid crashing into and maiming each other. There are much safer methods of transport on Columbia, such as gondola lifts and flying boats, so why would anyone use the skylines instead? I know OSHA didn't exist back then, but this is still ridiculously dangerous.
808** Civilians probably ''do'' rely on the gondolas and flying boats. The only people we see utilizing the Sky-Lines in the game are Booker, police/military forces, and the Voxx. The Vox use them because it's a way of freely moving around the cities and getting to areas where it's more difficult to pursue them (Booker makes use of them for much the same reason). The police and Comstock's military utilize them because they ''have'' to in order to pursue the Vox, (and Booker) who don't make chasing them convenient by utilizing public transportation.
809** Assuming I have the history right, the skylines were created for the simple purpose of moving cargo around a rather inconveniently laid out city. The Vox, in their ingenuity and desperation, decided to use them for transport and quick strikes. The police are just beginning to adapt when Booker reaches the city (we see a conversation where a cop shows off his new Sky-Hook). It's a case of desperate people adapting an existing technology to a purpose for which it was never designed.
810** Being originally made for cargo transportation explains some aspects of the system, but not all. For one, two Sky-Lines going in opposite directions side by side is even more of a problem with large cargo containers which have no way of maneuvering around each other. The altitudes of the skylines do not make any sense either in that regard. I remember at least one specific skyline in the game which goes around in a small circle, and it goes over one section roughly within an arm's reach of the floor, and another section where it's about two stories above the floor. It's difficult to imagine what could be easily transported with a setup like that. Come to think of it, Sky-Lines going both ways make even less sense when you consider that they mostly are arranged in concise loops. Having one-way traffic there would make for both safer and smoother transportation, and it would still reach all points along the Sky-Line.
811** The Sky-Lines are not two-way for anything except Sky-Hooks. The cargo containers attach to both rails at the same time. The Sky-Hooks switch rails on the fly for the convenience of pointing to the way where you are headed.
812** It's stated in-game that the first people to use the Sky-Lines to transport themselves in this fashion are teenagers, [[SarcasmMode who are universally known for phenomenal decision making.]] As noted above, it became more widely used when the Vox saw strategic potential, forcing the police to follow suit.
813[[/folder]]
814
815[[folder: Crimson cloth everywhere!]]
816* The Vox really like the color red. That's fine -- it's the traditional color of revolutionaries and communists. But how are they getting enough red sheeting to cover most of the buildings and nearly all of the airships in Columbia? Seems like you'd need all the textile mills and dye-plants on the US Eastern seaboard for that. And who has time to hang up all the red sheets from buildings that might be on fire?
817** Maybe Columbia has some kind of...quantum textile machines? Seriously, though, it would be tough for them to do that but not impossible. Especially considering that in each timeline the Vox rebellion is at different states of progression. In the first, it's barely begun and little more than a group of political malcontents. In others, it's clearly been around for a long time; long enough for them to have apparently seized control of entire sections of Columbia along with God knows how much war material. They even have their own Handymen, Firemen and Motorized Patriots on their side. I'd say that's a much bigger achievement than a few bolts of red cloth.
818** This can funnel over into {{Fridged Horror}}: What would be the most available way to dye something red in the middle of a revolution? The blood of the slain.
819** Not really. Blood-soaked fabric turns into a rather ugly brown color once it dries, not the rich crimson of the Vox's fabric.
820** Iron oxide, rust, can be effectively used in making red dyes. Given the Vox workers from the lower class having access to large amounts of rusted metal makes sense.
821[[/folder]]
822
823[[folder: William R. Foreman]]
824* Maybe I'm missing something, but what was the deal with the Kinetoscopes made by William R. Foreman, in particular the one where he seemingly falls to his death? What was their meaning in the context of the game?
825** They're another way help the player learn about the setting and back-story. For Columbia's citizens, they're a form of entertainment, news source, and propaganda. The one where Foreman falls to his death is just a bit of humor. The hummingbird one is kind of the odd man out -- the world's first nature documentary, I guess.
826** Footage such as the hummingbird is based on early experiments and releases that used recorded footage. They were very novel and interesting for most people given they'd never been seen before -- being able to see something such as a hummingbird up close in that context would have been utterly mindblowing.
827** In terms of the game, it's probably just a way to add to the overall creepiness factor of Comstock House. Elsewhere you get jolly music and people in the films; in Comstock House, you just get these odd, context-free, dated-looking (even for the period) silent films of nothing in particular. As for the falling to his death, my guess is black humor on the part of Irrational.
828** Perhaps William didn't fall to his death, rather, the camera did?
829** The end of that film gives his date of birth and death. The date of his death is the same as the date of the film. Cryptic!
830** As for the ones in the Comstock House, I believe that they are all of mundane things because those things no longer exist in the hellish future Elizabeth created, and are now part of the record of things that have gone extinct.
831[[/folder]]
832
833[[folder: Female soldiers with weird-looking glowing eyes]]
834* I noticed early on that the pistol-wielding female political officers (or whatever they are) have weird looking glowing eyes, and found it rather odd. It never came up as a plot point, and no one else in the game seems to have them. Is this a hold-over from an earlier version of the plot (the cut character Saltonstall has similar eyes when he morphs into a communist)? Are they just hopped up on Vigors?
835** They're also wearing masks, don't forget: with that in mind, it's just as likely that the glowing lights are just part of the masks.
836** The weird thing is that I only ever came across two of these: the one with the glowing eyes and the cracked mask face, and the one wearing a Art/LadyLiberty head. And then they never show up again? It kinda feels like they're an enemy type that got cut at the last second, but these two were accidentally left in.
837[[/folder]]
838
839[[folder: So how does being baptized end up making Comstock into an incredible racist?]]
840* The whole religious extremism thing sort of makes sense given him being born again combined with frying his brain abusing the tears. But where did he pick up the racism from? His Voxophone speeches show that it goes ''way'' beyond the casual racism of the day, and Booker himself seems to have a fairly live-and-let-live attitude about race (or at least a leave-me-alone-and-I'll-leave-you-alone attitude). I found the Voxophones indicating that Booker[=/=]Comstock was so brutal during the Indian Wars because he felt disrespected by his peers due to being part Native American himself, but Booker seems to have eventually come to grips with this and even regrets his earlier atrocities, whereas Comstock is fanatically racist, and I don't see how being baptized obviously accounts for the difference.
841** I think it once again stems from Comstock's inability to understand the concept of redemption: Booker was feeling guilty right after Wounded Knee and started looking for a way to find forgiveness or at the very least come to grips with what he'd done. This eventually led him to find religion, though judging by the fact that the same preacher that baptised him ended up joining Comstock's flock, it might have been a bit on the extreme, cultish side already. Not the point, though. Essentially, instead of viewing it as a means of repenting his crimes and gradually becoming a better person, Comstock saw it as a way to just erase his sins and have done with it -- for all intents and purposes, an excuse to say that all the deaths no longer mattered. And then -- here's where the speculation comes in -- once his conscience is clear, he decides that what was done at Wounded Knee was justified, even laudable. Then, by extension, he begins to think that other forms of racism may be justified too...as I said, pure speculation.
842** No, that's it exactly. Comstock's takeaway point from the baptism is that his past sins are now virtues. He's so desperate for a way to deal with his PTSD after Wounded Knee that he latches onto the baptism and twists its meaning. That's one way in which the Hall of Heroes sequence takes on an additional layer of meaning once you've beaten the game; an atrocity that sent Booker into a decades-long spiral of binge drinking and self-loathing is now the world's most racist museum and theme park.
843** It's important to remember that Booker was 16 when he fought at Wounded Knee, and that (as mentioned above) the preacher who baptized him was the same that ended up in his flock in Columbia. Most of his personality differences likely aren't because of "being baptized," but because he was baptized into an extremist cult when he was still an impressionable and emotionally fragile kid.
844** One of my thoughts was that 16-year-old Booker WAS pretty racist. But at the split of the baptism, one washed himself of his responsibility and went extra-racist, while one reflected on his actions and regrets and got less racist.
845** Also of note: Comstock's beliefs are actually not that odd or extreme for the time period. It certainly wasn't a moderate opinion, but it was a fairly popular one at the time.
846[[/folder]]
847
848[[folder: So why isn't Fink a insane, sterile maniac too?]]
849* Fink's been using the Tears to accumulate knowledge and power just like Comstock had been (and given the extent of Fink Industries, it seems he's been using them ''a lot''), however he shows none of the negative side effects seen in Comstock. His health seems fine, he's ''really'' ruthless but not apparently crazy, and he seems to have a kid, so he's not sterile either. Are the negative effects due to the Lutece device rather than the Tears themselves? Did Comstock really contact some sort of extra-dimensional being (the Archangel) and ''that'' is what messed him up?
850** Rosalind Lutece seems to think it was the device that screwed Comstock up, so this is probably the case. Plus, Fink doesn't seem the type to spend hours watching every variation of the Tears; he's a greedy bastard, to be sure, but he's not a fanatic like Comstock. As a company owner, he doesn't ''have'' to do it himself: he could easily be hiring secretaries to take note of what can be seen or heard through the Tears. Equally likely, he could have a film crew record what happens through a Tear and study the footage himself later.
851** Fink was probably smart enough to take precautions when he started really plumbing the depths of tear research. Protective shielding, only observing Tears at a distance (maybe recording them with those new-fangled Kinetoscope whatcha-ma-doodles), or just having other people do the work for him and report back on what they see. As an industrialist Fink would be well aware of the physical hazards of new technology. Though I'm not sure I'd call a man who uses duels to the death in place of job interviews entirely "sane".
852** Fink didn't actually travel through the tears, he simply observed what he saw from a distance. Comstock used the tears indeterminate amount of times to physically travel between them.
853** Firstly, I would hesitate to call Fink sane. He's got an ego problem, seems to have little sympathy for the poor people who work for him, is arrogant enough to assume people will should follow him and be happy about, and is a nasty piece of work who seems to think gladiatorial duels to the death for a job is acceptable. Today, he could be called a maniac and locked up.
854** Secondly, unless there's testing done, there really isn't solid proof that Fink is actually fertile. He may have adopted, his woman may have cheated on him, he may actually be nuts and think random children are his own, etc.
855** Maybe he just had his son prior to working with the Tears enough to become sterile? I think the Voxophones said it was -prolonged- use of the device that caused sterility in Comstock. Fink's kid looks like he could be anywhere from 6 to 12 years old.
856[[/folder]]
857
858[[folder: Crows working with Vox Populi during the "Hunt the Siren" mission.]]
859* In the Comstock Bank, a pair of Crows can be found fighting alongside Vox soldiers, and the "mini-boss" Crow inside the bank is even wearing Vox colors. They're wearing full Order of the Raven regalia, so it looks like they're actual Crows instead of just regular guys who happen to be using Murder of Crows (like Slate's men). The Order of the Raven are essentially a state-sponsored KKK...they'd be the ''first'' people up against the wall when the Revolution comes. What are they doing working with the Vox?
860** I don't remember the enemies you're talking about, but maybe they're not actually members of the Order. Maybe they're just guys intentionally dressing up in similar uniforms for intimidation purposes ("Look at me! I'm a big badass and if you mess with me, I'll shove a dozen flesh-eating crows up your ass!"). After all, it's not like the KKK invented that pointed hat/mask outfit.
861** It's quite possible that they were infiltrators, disguising themselves as Founder supporters and feeding information about the Order to the Vox. When the revolution started, they just didn't bother taking off their uniforms or it was just their way of mocking the Order, similar to how the Vox have apparently stolen Firemen suits and Motorized Patriots and remade them in their image.
862[[/folder]]
863
864[[folder: "Lady Comstock has to be my mother!!"]]
865* Why do Booker and Elizabeth continue to believe Lady Comstock is Elizabeth's mother even after finding her journal that calls Elizabeth a bastard child? Frankly, the whole "7-day pregnancy" idea is almost certainly BS on its own, yet even after they find ironclad proof that Lady Comstock is ''not'' her mother, Elizabeth still holds a massive grudge against her.
866** Well... the grudge is because Lady Comstock demanded that she be removed from Comstock House -- making her at least ''partially'' responsible for Elizabeth's imprisonment on Monument Island. It's got nothing to do with her being Elizabeth's mother, and the only reason why she's referred to as such is because a) technically, she acted as a surrogate mother to Elizabeth, albeit very briefly and at Zachary Comstock's insistence, and b) because Elizabeth has no idea who her ''real'' mother is and Lady Comstock was all she had to call as such.
867** Oh, and the 7-day pregnancy idea ''is'' bullshit. The endgame makes this abundantly clear.
868** Let me clarify. Before entering Finkton, Elizabeth finds Lady Comstock's journal that calls her a bastard. And yet, when you find the tear in the Luteces' lab she says "They weren't my parents" in a horrified tone of voice, suggesting that this was news to her. As for the seven day pregnancy, everyone seems to accept that with no problem. That's understandable for the Columbian citizens, but you'd think the Vox, Booker, and Elizabeth, who dismiss Comstock's religious claims, would realize it's far more likely she was taken from somewhere rather than being born via a miracle.
869** A) She still thought Comstock was her father prior to this. B) The same Tear briefly brought up the possibility of Rosalind Lutece being Elizabeth's mother -- and was immediately refuted. C) I don't know about Elizabeth (other than the fact that she honestly doesn't like thinking about her parentage, judging by how progressively gloomy she gets with every revelation on the subject), but Booker likely accepts it on the grounds that "well, I've seen weirder things today, so it'll do as an explanation until people have stopped shooting at me and my debt's repaid."
870[[/folder]]
871
872[[folder: Where's the Songbird?]]
873* Why is it that up until the finale, Booker and Elizabeth only encounter Songbird when those statues of Comstock play the tune to make him appear? For a creature of his apparent capabilities, you'd think he'd be able to find them more often... is he taking a nap the rest of the time or something?
874** Songbird isn't omniscient. He's one searcher looking for two people in ''an entire city''. He's not exactly subtle and would likely cause mass panic among the populace if he tries searching areas where Booker and Elizabeth are laying low, and he certainly can't be everywhere at once. This certainly isn't helped when Booker and Elizabeth begin hopping between Tears, either.
875[[/folder]]
876
877[[folder: Why didn't anybody question Elizabeth's brainwashing?]]
878* So somebody brings you a girl. Tells you she's the very person you've been told for the past 20 years is the Messiah, and orders you to torture her horribly. Seems to me that sort of thing would lead to some rather strong objections, not to mention moral outrage.
879** Problem: this "somebody" is the prophet who told you all about the Messiah in the first place. He also told you that the False Shepherd would try and lead this Messiah astray, and apparently he has succeeded -- the torture is the only way of curing her; given the prevailing philosophy of cruelty being instructive and the importance of bringing the Sodom Below to righteousness, there's a limit to how much moral outrage can be squeezed from doctors who are loyal to Comstock.
880** Look up the Milgram Experiment. You'd be surprised what people will do if they're told to do it by an authority figure.
881** I'd assumed, from the voiceover with someone saying that "Pavlov made dogs drool, we'll make this one beg", that Comstock had hired an external, particularly unpleasant ForScience type. Just because the rest of the population aren't permitted contact with the outside world doesn't mean Comstock can't. He set up the deal with Booker, for example, and wouldn't be the first hypocritical dictator.
882** There's also the fact that not everyone in Columbia is really all that into Comstock's religion. The Lutteces very intentionally use Comstock's resources to fund their scientific research, and while they're ethical enough to realize that something's wrong with that eventually (after stealing a baby and creating a city full of sky racists, of course), some wouldn't be. While the majority of scientists who ended up in a place like Columbia would probably just be following the resources to a place beyond their wildest imaginings, some of them would be legitimate sadists and crazies who would be very willing to see what they could accomplish using Pavlovian conditioning on a human being, particularly one with an abnormal set of abilities.
883[[/folder]]
884
885[[folder: If Comstock loves America so much...]]
886* ... That he worships Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, then how come in the very same breath he condemns and demonizes it, to the point of seceding, and labeling it to be "Sodom"? Sodom or Eden? Make up your mind!
887** BadFuture Elizabeth spells this out in her very first PA announcement: "We were given Eden, and we turned it into Sodom."
888** People even do that today. Listen to any right-wing speaker, and you're bound to hear about how far America has fallen, and how great the Founders were. "America was founded as a Christian Nation," and "God has lifted His hand of protection" are some of the more common phrases.
889[[/folder]]
890
891[[folder: How long was Elizabeth in Comstock House?]]
892* When you rescue Elizabeth from Comstock House, she says she's been there "a while". But she is wearing exactly the same clothing, has exactly the same length hair, and has perfectly plucked eyebrows and shaved armpits. And it hardly as though puritanical caretakers are going to let her keep something so unwholesome as a short haircut and exposed bustier. Unless this "a while" is half an hour, this makes no sense.
893** The short haircut was alright, since Comstock did have that painted glass mural with a picture of older Elizabeth with short hair. As for her dress, it ''was'' her (not real) mother's. Or perhaps Comstock felt that those were small problems compared to making Elizabeth into his obedient successor. I think it was only an hour or so, but the torture they were putting her through made it feel like much longer.
894** They had to set up that giant Siphon. Given the cables through the ballroom and hallway, it wasn't designed to be there and wasn't there for long. I'd say she was there at least a day, maybe a few.
895** There is a voxophone that states that her surgery happened 6 months after she had been taken. That is a long time to be tortured. As for her clothing and personal hygiene, it could have all been a part of her conditioning.
896[[/folder]]
897
898[[folder: Elizabeth is still kind of a damsel in distress]]
899* The main plot of the game is Booker rescuing Elizabeth and her character development from a wide-eyed innocent locked up all her life to a more mature, worldly young woman who can take care of herself. So the main plot point of the game that culminates in Comstock House is... Elizabeth gets kidnapped and needs to be rescued by Booker as she lies shrieking ineffectually strapped to a table. Her older self and the Voxophones even said she'd basically been waiting for Booker to save her. Yes, that is all ''in-universe'' she could have done, but why was this necessary to write into the plot? Couldn't they have shown her scheming a breakout, escaping from the tear suppressing machine out on her own, and the intervention of Booker there being only needed to deliver the card from her future self that she could not escape Songbird and thus recapture without?
900** Having Booker rescue Elizabeth gives the player a stronger emotional connection to the events. If she was mostly responsible for her own escape, well, what in the hell is the player even there for?
901** Possibly to put Booker's 1984 vision in context? And besides, even the act of opening one tear takes a lot of effort out of her. The very existence of the Siphon hampers whatever daring escape she might have planned. Note that the Siphon's destruction in 1984 ("the leash com[ing] off", as she tells it) is what gives old Elizabeth just enough power to give Booker the message needed to subdue Songbird -- yet another obstacle she couldn't overcome back in 1912. She needed Booker because he could fight off anyone in her way to figuring out exactly how to finally get away from everything, and deal with Comstock as well. Also, remember that one of the very first things they did to Elizabeth was to strap her to a device that would make sure that trying to open a Tear would result in a very painful shock.
902** Booker did NOT rescue Elizabeth from Comstock all by himself. Remember, according to the BadFuture, Booker ''failed'' to rescue Elizabeth when he tried. He only succeeded because future!Elizabeth teleported him right into the building where Elizabeth was being held, bypassing Songbird entirely. Her rescue wasn't an example of her being a damsel in distress, but of her and Booker working together to accomplish a task that either of them would have failed at, alone.
903[[/folder]]
904
905[[folder: Booker's unapplauded arrival]]
906* Why is no big deal made about Booker's arrival? All the priests at the Welcome Center treat him like people coming up from "the Sodom Below" is an ordinary occurrence, even though I doubt Comstock would have let anyone ascend to the city, especially after it seceded from the United States? And before you say, "Comstock knew Booker was coming and therefore told everyone to prepare for his arrival"', I must rebut that. If Comstock knew Booker was coming, then why didn't he leave two dozen guards outside to gun him down? Also, the telegram from the Luteces the boy gives Booker says "Do not alert Comstock to your presence", thus implying that Comstock doesn't know about Booker's arrival. With their dimension-altering powers, I doubt the Luteces would have gotten it wrong.
907** Given that the lighthouse was occupied (key word being ''[[BoomHeadshot was]]'') and the rocket chair was still functioning and still disguised as a lighthouse, I'd say people really ''were'' coming up from "the Sodom Below." I very much doubt anyone would have been using that while Columbia was still within reach of the general public[=/=]a short airship ride. It just doesn't get used very often, being used to shepherd the occasional fundamentalist loonie bin up to "God's Kingdom."
908** Oh, and one other thing: the Luteces ''did'' get it wrong. Several times, in fact. Remember all those tallies? In one case, Comstock really did have a firing squad ready for him; in the case of "our" Booker, though, the only one of Comstock's men that was ready from the word go was -- funnily enough -- the lighthouse keeper. And the Luteces took care of him.
909** If you wander around before the raffle, you'll hear two men talk about how Columbia used to accept all sorts but now someone needs to have connections to get in. Presumably, Comstock restricted the influx of people after seceding, but didn't want to flat out sever Columbia from the Sodom Below just yet.
910** Also, considering the lengths taken to conceal this entrance method, it could very well be used by Comstock's spies on the ground. He'd have to keep agents down there to keep tabs on the Sodom Below, but couldn't have them returning for debriefing in some obvious manner.
911[[/folder]]
912
913[[folder: The Handyman: for the suicidally depressed!]]
914* Who would WANT to become a Handyman? Let me count the ways no one in their right mind would volunteer to become one:
915** It was spelled out bluntly in the first Voxophone from Hattie regarding her husband. It was become a Handyman or die from disease. Some people are willing to do ANYTHING to avoid death. And once you've actually been converted, presumably there is some kind of control to keep them from killing themselves.
916** The process clearly isn't perfected. The Handyman is racked with coughs and seems to experience a large amount of pain in his metal suit.
917** The Handymen clearly aren't happy. They shy from cameras and from people, and are constantly bemoaning their existence, showing the emotional pain forced on them.
918** This is debatable, but do the Handymen even retain their humanity? All the Handymen we see are soldiers (see below point), and they all speak exactly the same, showing no personality. I admit this point is slightly damaged by the presence of a Vox-Handyman, but they could always have possessed or altered his functioning instead of simply convincing him to come around to their point of view.
919** It seems that all Handymen on Columbia are immediately set to work by Comstock. All the Handymen we see are fighting Booker, working for the corporations, or overseeing prisoners. Even the Voxophone from Hattie Gerst about her Handyman husband Samuel implies a gap between them, and her husband is found dead, killed by the Vox while likely working for the Founders.
920** There is complete false advertising. The Handyman exhibit at the fairgrounds at the start of the game shows quaint pictures of a man looking relatively normal and happy, with some mechanical enhancements. What will the people think will they unveil this unpleasant monstrosity?
921** All in all: citizens of Columbia, become a Handyman! Experience a painful life of toiling under Comstock and being submitted to heavy emotional pain, instead of peacefully passing away from whatever ails you! Fink's marketing team needs replacing.
922** Fink's marketing team is already a clear and evident of example of "Robber Baron Has Stopped Giving A Shit About Negative Opinions," given that they give potential Finkton workers a ''really'' good look at the horrendous conditions they'll be forced to live and work in during the commute across town, so that's nothing new. Of course, even they aren't stupid enough to alert the public as to just how much pain and suffering the Handymen are in, which is probably why you only meet one Handyman in the affluent districts of Columbia prior to the Vox Uprising; after all, they can excuse a case of shyness with "He's a gentle giant, folks!" but they can't excuse the screams of pain and the berserk rage. All in all, the shittiness of the deal is kind of the point, however: the only people who would accept the offer of becoming a Handymen are those who have no choice in the matter: either they were ''that'' conned by Fink, their relatives signed them up (as the case may have been with Hattie's husband), or they were literally modified against their will. Remember, as the Nightmare Fuel page noted, there's an element of eugenics to the whole program, and they don't say that all cases were voluntary.
923[[/folder]]
924
925[[folder: "She Can Protect Herself." How, exactly?]]
926* The player is in constant combat situations with men and women physically stronger, taller and larger than Elizabeth herself, assuming we're not even talking about Vigor-users who can teleport and explode fiercely. She could easily have been grabbed from behind and taken away in that case -- that first time in the tram station was that guy underestimating her. Tears take time to open and her concentration. She doesn't carry weapons or an interest in fighting, so I'm to believe that I don't take bullets for her? Hard to believe.
927** So, you would prefer to play a version of the game where the entire thing is one, gigantic and annoying escort mission? [[VideoGame/SilentHill4 We've seen that before. It wasn't pretty.]]
928** I would prefer that the game mechanics relate to the notion of the character. I am supposed to believe, by what the game tells me, that she can protect herself. She doesn't show any way that she could that wouldn't take time and focus to achieve which, in a combat situation, would be difficult to deal with while everyone focuses on [=DeWitt=]. Who is to say that someone wouldn't go after her, by what we're told? Technically, the shield we got from the couple should have protected against that Wrench shot too, of course.
929** The Shield enhancement might only work when Booker is ready for a fight. When he's at a heightened state of alertness and in danger, the Shield comes active and is projected from his body; when he's, for example, trying to think of a way to comfort the girl so she'll shut up and come to New York, he's probably not exactly ready. As for enemies ignoring Elizabeth, I tend to see it as equal parts GameplayAndStorySegregation to avoid the entire "full-game escort mission" scenario, and simple target selection. Who would you go after, a girl in a dress or the dude running around with a shotgun in one hand and a ''freaking fireball'' in the other? Chick can wait, is all I'm saying.
930** She does protect herself. She hides. She's got a very good sense of awareness for what is around her -- hence her ability to find all that stuff she throws to you. When she's not throwing you stuff, she's using that same sense to be where enemies are not.
931** She is the Lamb. You wouldn't want to be the Columbian who put a bullet in the face of the local equivalent of Jesus. That would explain why no one under the command of the Founders would attack her. I have no explanation for the Vox, who would probably jump at the chance to deface such a symbol.
932** They certainly didn't do a good job not hurting her in my playthrough, where I specifically saw her running behind me and take several bullets to her back, blood-splatter and all.
933** I take it as, Liz as a reality warper may not be able to open wide Tears, but small helping ones (as she shows you during the game) so bullets get (subcounciously) transported into another timeline, and resources appear frome nowhere.
934[[/folder]]
935
936[[folder: Why the stand-down order?]]
937* If Comstock wants to stop/kill Booker, why give out such an order?
938** Because Comstock hates Booker so much he wants to throw a giant middle finger up before killing him? Or, if you want an explanation that doesn't rely exclusively on Comstock being an asshole, he already knows that [=DeWitt=] has cut through a whole bunch of soldiers, knows that there's a fanatic in the airship [=DeWitt=] is headed to and calculates that he has a better chance of killing [=DeWitt=] with the suicidal fanatic than with the cannon fodder.
939** Also, it's a nice visual example for the audience to demonstrate the amount of power Comstock wields through his Cult of Personality. These men and women have been getting reports about this one man tearing through their colleagues and friends, leaving bodies and wreckage in his wake, and JUST as they have the opportunity to avenge them, they are told to stand down. And they all do it. Even though Booker's standing there, armed and dangerous, they take a knee and bow their heads, ready to die before disobeying.
940[[/folder]]
941
942[[folder: Why didn't Booker just retake the airship by force?]]
943* Seriously, why bother to do anything for Daisy? By that point in the game, Booker could just demolish her and the Vox with relative ease. He's already done so with ''hundreds'' of Comstock's better armed, better trained, Vigor-empowered men, and he's already been more than willing to take out people who got in his way (e.g. Slate).
944** 1) At the time, Daisy had Booker at a disadvantage and he wasn't in a position to fight back. 2) His first thought was getting Elizabeth back. It's a lot easier to have Elizabeth ''then'' get the airship, then vice-versa. By the time Booker would have been ready to try taking it back, it was out of reach.
945** You're thinking with meta-game logic, not in-universe logic. From a player perspective perspective, fighting through the Vox forces should be no more difficult than fighting through Comstock's goons. But in-universe, the Vox are a formidable power in Columbia and making himself an enemy of both them AND Comstock is definitely something Booker wants to avoid if he can.
946** They are only a formidable power in the third universe where they had the guns. The second one featured them all rounded up and imprisoned in Fink's jail, and nothing in the first indicated they were the powerhouse movement of the third. Just saying, Booker was willing to slog his way through the entire city to get to Elizabeth and then slog through the Hall of Heroes to get the Shock Jockey. I suppose he could have been tired of fighting by then, but he was still willing to fight through Fink's forces to find Chen Lin and later the police to get the tools. If he's willing to do that ("go through an army to get those tools"), why not just turn around the second he has Elizabeth and plow through the much less better armed Vox?
947** Even lightly armed they're still a formidable power compared to Booker, who is just one guy. Booker didn't actually ''intend'' to blast his way through Comstock's forces. He wanted to sneak in or hide in plain sight, but the Founders happened to show up and start shooting at him every time. (Though in hindsight battling the Vox forces in the original universe and stealing the airship back probably would have been a lot easier. I'm sure Booker had an off-screen FacePalm moment when he realized that.) And on some level I think Booker expected the Vox to return the favor if he helped them. EnemyMine and all that.
948** Because he doesn't know where the hell they are: Finkton's men and the cops are very visible and very willing to fight Booker head-on; the Vox ''have an airship'', and one they'd be very much inclined to keep hidden too. It's not an issue of "they're too formidable," but an issue of "I don't know where the hell they are because the airship flew off and I don't know where it's headed."
949** Ok, then how is he supposed to uphold his part of the deal and supply them the weapons? Obviously he's not expected to drag them on his back (even if he knew where to) -- we're talking about arranging some deliveries, making deals, bringing right people together -- how is he supposed to do all that if he doesn't know anyone?
950** I doubt Daisy really expected much from Booker at that point. She probably thought dropping him off at Finkton was some sort of CruelMercy as opposed to killing him outright. And even if Booker was able to commandeer the airship by force, what would he do with it if he didn't even know exactly where Elizabeth was at the time?
951[[/folder]]
952
953[[folder: Passage through baptism]]
954* The baptism scene at the beginning of the game provides some nice symbolism and visuals, but it raises a great many questions about how the sequence works in practice. Does nobody present object to the priest holding Booker underwater until he stops struggling? Is this normal practice for baptism in Columbia? Does someone then drag Booker to where he will wake up? What if he starts waking up on the way? Do they press a hand over his airways until he's out cold again? How did they miss the mark on the back of his hand during this? Finally, they leave him lying unconscious in another pool of water. What if he shifts around so his airways are under the water and he just drowns?
955** Judging by the comments of the people in the garden ("Our Prophet fills our lungs with water so that we may better love the air") it is indeed normal practice. And yes, it's just possible that quite a few people have been accidentally killed as a result, which isn't all that surprising given Comstock's insanity. As for what happens afterwards, I think they just let him float along the passage until he's desposited in the garden.
956** Oh, and the reason nobody noticed the mark on his hand was because the priest handling the baptism is ''blind.''
957** And the reason nobody ''else'' noticed it is...?
958** How often do ''you'' look at the back of people's hands? It's a bit of scarring -- it's not like the mark glows to catch people's eye. Something like that just happening to go unnoticed isn't unreasonable.
959** Not very often, true. But ''I'' haven't been told to be on the lookout for TheAntichrist expy, who is supposed to bear this mark.
960** One of the disadvantages of constant propaganda is that it tends to make [[ApatheticCitizens citizens rather apathetic.]] Theoretically they knew that the Anti-Christ would show up, [[TemptingFate but hey, he hasn't yet, and if he did, it certainly wouldn't be in a holy church, and he certainly wouldn't accept a baptism.]] Likely they just didn't consider it. And just because you've been told to keep an eye out for someone doesn't mean they'll do it to everyone. If a guy breaks out of jail in your neighborhood and the media says he has a butterfly on his arm, are you going to roll up the sleeve of every single guy you meet?
961[[/folder]]
962
963[[folder: Timeline Unique Luteces and Booker's Baptism]]
964* Or in simpler terms, it's the father of Lutece's sperm's fault. In the sequence of events that create Zachary Comstock, Rosalind Lutece is born. In the sequences of events that doesn't create Comstock, Robert Lutece is born. Why? Why is it that there's no explanation for the connection of events to work in the opposite direction? Why is there no discussion of a sequence of events where Rosalind is born and Booker refuses the baptism or a sequence of events where Robert is born and Booker accepts the baptism? Considering that the entirety of the plot hinges upon both Rosalind and Comstock being in the same timeline, I think it's a valid point of confusion: not even by the Luteces or the omniscient finale Elizabeth do we hear anything of what would happen. (If anything, all the ending does is give a third option to Booker's Baptism, and then remove one of the original choices.)
965** My guess is that Rosalind and Robert are the only two possible Luteces that discover the Lutece Field. How Booker and Comstock are apparently as mutually exclusive as they are is merely incidental, since the only important thing to them is that they make their discovery and decide to meet in the same universe. And not even they themselves appear to be interested in asking the question anyway, so why should anyone else wonder?
966** Who says that there's no universe with Rosalind and Booker or Robert and Comstock? We only see a few universes, and there could very well be millions of tiny differences that aren't big enough to matter. There are probably plenty of universes where Comstock funds Robert's research instead of Rosalind's, but it matters little, since the two both end up in Columbia eventually, and all the Comstocks get erased in the end.
967[[/folder]]
968
969[[folder:Corset]]
970* After Elizabeth's InnocenceLost moment with Fitzroy, that led her to give herself a clothing and ExpositoryHairstyleChange, only the most critical of players would have ignored the RuleOfSexy, and questioned how she managed to lace up that corset by herself. At least until the game actually makes you help tie her corset back up after you rescue her from being tortured.
971** She's been wearing the corset under her clothes the whole game. It is, in fact, underwear.
972** A woman who has worn a corset her entire life should have no problem tying her own laces, especially as Elizabeth had no one to help her dress while she was growing up. Booker helps tighten and re-tie the corset later on because Elizabeth has just had a giant electrified needle removed from between her shoulder blades, and it probably hurts too much compress that area by reaching behind her.
973* Related to the above. All of the other clothes in the game are extremely historically accurate. A corset back then was a type of underwear, the precursor to a bra. So, from Booker, Elizabeth and all the other character's 1912 perspectives, Liz is running around shirtless. [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight No one ever comments on this.]] You'd think Booker would offer her his jacket or she'd forage around for a shirt later or something.
974** Considering it is set on the edwardian period, and the fashion at the time; a corset wasnt considered underwear per se, but something like a chemise or a panier would be. It also depended on the social and economic class, since not all the women could afford a corset. The problem is that most edwardian corsets, specially the s bend type that Elizabeth seems to wear, used to be low on the bust, to have that pigeon like figure, and that's why they wore chemises under them. But Elizabeth doesn't wear it like that. Seems weird, considering Rosalind apparently uses the historically accurate clothing, but Elizabeth doesnt, and they actually depicted her wearing correct clothing on the photos on Monument Island. Besides that, most people on Columbia by that point of the game are practically running away from Columbia, and we actually see one complaining about having to leave their belongings, so they probably assumed Elizabeth was running as well, or were too preocuppied to pay attention. On the First Lady ship subject, most museums don't tend to have complete ensembles of clothes, and if they have, they are replicas, so the ship probably only had the skirt and the top part. Making Elizabeth ditch her blouse and skirt, and change them. But then again, is a videogame about a floating city, so don't expect too much realism from it.
975** Elizabeth's change occurs just as Columbia goes completely to Hell. All the civilians you see after that point are either dead or too busy being terrorized by the Vox to demand that she dress more modestly.
976** Booker does make to comment on it, but Elizabeth cuts him off saying that it was all she could find. Since by that time the airship had been used as a field hospital by the Vox, it's entirely possible everything else had already been used as improvised bandaging (or they simply had the skirt and half-coat on display). As for foraging, they had more important things to do than break into a clothing store and stripping the dead for their clothes is pretty distasteful by most standards.
977** There's also the fact that she ''did'' grow up locked in a tower, after all, with her only human contact being the Lutteces. Even if she knew that it was considered socially inappropriate, she wouldn't have had the societal reinforcing effects that real people living at the time would have. With her shirt completely covered in blood and in a state of mind that led to her chopping her own hair off rather than just washing it out, "it's considered inappropriate to run around in just a corset and dress" would have been the last thing on her mind. As for everyone else, the fact that a war was going on and the world was falling completely apart around them would have made someone in a relatively moderate state of undress not look all that unusual.
978[[/folder]]
979
980[[folder:Above clouds]]
981
982* How can anyone ''breathe'' in Columbia? The vast majority of places seem to be located above the cloud layer. Shouldn't the air be far too thin to breathe? Of course, MST3KMantra in full effect.
983** The Lutece's field that keeps the city afloat might have something to do with that.
984** [[BatmanCanBreatheInSpace Booker can breathe in space]]. More seriously, the AnthropicPrinciple applies. If you want a flying city, this is something you just have to ignore.
985** Not just the lack of oxygen, but the cold must be handwaved away here. At any significant altitude it would be utterly freezing, yet you still visit a "beach" area where characters are handing around in bathing suits.
986** Low-level cumulus clouds (the type that Columbia is floating in) generally have their base at around 3,000 feet above the ground. Even giving them a depth of 3,000 feet again, that's just over a mile in altitude.
987** Except that altimeter in the rocket bringing you to Columbia shows 15,000 feet, so MST3KMantra seems to be in effect.
988
989[[/folder]]
990
991[[folder:Vigors]]
992
993* Sadly, the existence of Vigors in Columbia makes absolutely no God damn sense in the context of the story. Aside from possibly being justified by Fink [[spoiler: being inspired by Plasmids by viewing Rapture through a tear]], they seem to exist in a vacuum apart from the setting as a whole. In the original ''VideoGame/BioShock'', Plasmids were an integral part of Rapture, both in construction and its ultimate downfall. Where do Vigors fit into Columbia? I don’t know, and neither does Infinite. There are advertisements for Vigors all over the city, and you can find bottles of the stuff lying around, but very few Columbians use them. In a society that espouses racial purity, you’d think Vigors would be more of an issue. After all, they can turn a person into a demigod, regardless of race. But this never comes up. Instead they merely exist as a hold over from the old games to give an excuse for why Booker can shoot lightning from his finger tips instead of feeling like a very tangible element of the narrative like they were in the original game.
994** Explained in a different Voxophone: [[spoiler:They're derivatives of Elizabeth's own full potential.]]
995** So, in this sense, it's somewhat similar yet different from the Plasmids: like Plasmids, they are another example of the things that a certain technological [=McGuffin=] has produced for the city of the setting, but unlike the Plasmids, they don't take center stage and they don't play a part in its downfall.
996** The issue is not the existence of Vigors themselves. The issue is that the entire population of Columbia seems to ignore their existence. We see them being made by the truck load in Fink's factories, we see them next to dead soldiers' bodies, we see advertisements for them everywhere, but aside from the existence of the Firemen and Zealot enemies, they don't seem to have any significance outside of allowing Booker to use special powers. It's just especially jarring considering what a huge deal Plasmids were in the original game because, well, duh, having some magical goo that would allow you to snap your fingers and light people on fire would have a HUGE impact on the city and its occupants. The fall of Rapture was inevitable due to the psychotic implications and addictive nature of Plasmids. ''Infinite'' has nit comes to Vigors, and it makes even less sense as to why: the whole city is based around racial purity, and how non whites are inherently inferior to whites because God said so, and yet the powers granted by Vigors know no color. Anyone can suddenly be able to light whoever they want on fire, or possess people and make them do their bidding. And yet the idea that maybe Fitzroy or her Vox might take advantage of these and use them to rise above their natural place isn't even brought up! We never see any soldiers who USE Vigors, aside from the Firemen and Crowmen, and that only covers get in the game. This is the ''definition'' of GameplayAndStorySegregation, where something that exists entirely for the sake of the gameplay (letting players use powers) is divorced from the actual story, when you'd think the existence and usage of Vigors would fundamentally change the way Columbia operates, and yet they're entirely ignored as far as the setting and narrative is concerned.
997** The point the story takes place in might partially explain that. When you enter Rapture in ''VideoGame/BioShock'', it's been years since Plasmids were first developed, spread amongst the population, then discovered to drive the user mad over time and repeated use. Columbia hasn't fallen to ruin when Booker arrives, and it is implied they are still introducing Vigors to the populace. Then you have to consider the difference in residents' mindsets. Rapture was led by a man who believed in science, risks, etc. Columbia encouraged fearful worship and following the path of God. So Rapture might be more careless in developing and spreading Vigors than Rapture was.
998** Well, once again, we're going to have to bring up the big difference between Rapture and Columbia: because of Andrew Ryan's objectivist beliefs, Plasmids were sold on the open market, with no regulations or restrictions whatsoever; Columbia is a much more restrictive environment. As has been discussed on the headscratcher page, Comstock and Fink would almost certainly make citizens and soldiers alike jump through a lot more hoops before giving them superpowers; the Firemen and the Crows are elites -- they've proved that they have no rebellious leanings and can be trusted to obey orders -- so they're given a Vigor: ''one'' Vigor, not the small arsenal Booker's wielding by the end of the game. As for citizens, they get a few cheap samplers at the carnival games that wear off in a minute or two, but unless they can pay for the real deal and meet the necessary requirements, that's it. Racial minorities and the other underclasses of Columbia wouldn't be allowed within of a Vigor. This is just speculation, but the reason why nobody in Columbia brings up the fact that Vigors are usable by just about any two at least: 1) advertisers like the fairground barkers simply leave it as the ElephantInTheRoom and allow their audience to think "He said any "man" can do these things with Vigors, so obviously the Blacks and Irish can't get anything useful out of them. After all, they're not really men, are they?" 2)Comstock and/or Fink issues a statement that Vigors only work for "good, wholesome god-fearing white men and women." In the case of Blacks, Irishmen, Jews, etc, they claim that Vigors have negative effects ranging from grievious mutilation to death; thus, Comstock's flock feel so much better about themselves, and the underclasses of Columbia will be hesitant before trying to use vigors of their own.
999** "As for citizens, they get a few cheap samplers at the carnival games that wear off in a minute or two, but unless they can pay for the real deal and meet the necessary requirements, that's it." And yet Possession, arguably the Vigor that would be most concerning to a group of people that are actively oppressing another group of people, is being GIVEN away for free at an open air fair. Granted, the base version only works on machines and it doesn't seem like any non-whites/Irish were allowed in, but it would be easy enough for a revolutionary to sneak a bottle and possess a gun turret or two. Not to mention that several bottles of various kinds of Vigors are found just lying around in-game. They only give Booker salt, but that's because you already have that Vigor. Heck, the only bottle of Charge in the entire game is literally sitting on a pedestal for any of the dozens of revolutionaries running by it to take a quick sip, and only Booker thinks to take advantage of this.
1000** The bottle of Charge was actually locked up securely in the police station; you see it on the way in, before shifting universes for the second time, but can't reach it because it's locked behind bars. You're only able to get it on the way back because the revolutionaries smashed the grate protecting it. (Why they didn't drink it themselves, of course, is another question.)
1001** I actually wondered a bit about Possession: it's ''supposedly'' only being given out as a free sampler - the kind of thing that lasts for a couple of minutes and then wears off - but instead, Booker gets the full-blown version. Why? I personally suspect the Lutece twins of manipulating things from behind the scenes; after all, they're implied to have killed off a few of Comstock's assassins already, so maybe it's not such a leap for them to replace bottles with the real Vigor. As for the reason why no one seem to use the Vigors scattered around willy-nilly...well, in the interests of not repeating myself too many times in a row, I won't bring up the "Vigor Propaganda" thing again; so, maybe some of the rebels ''did'' take advantage, and Booker doesn't run into them. In the Vox Populi Uprising universe, this might (key word being "might") be justifiable by the few rebels with Vigors being sent deep into enemy territory to kill off high-priority targets -- before the events of the endgame, anyway: since the Vox believe that Comstock's aboard the ''Hand of the Prophet'', logically, they'd have no excuse for not sending in their most powerful troops to bust through his defenses.
1002** That doesn't really hold up for me. Before the encounter with Fitzroy and Fink, Booker and Elizabeth go through the factory. They see the conveyer belts of Vigor being produced off the line. There are crates full of the stuff. Even if you could argue the stuff people can actually walk into a store and buy is just a temporary "sample" type deal, which there's nothing really in the game to support that (in fact a lot of what you're suggesting to justify it seems to only exist in your head and not in the game, but it does make sense so I'll give you that), how can you explain the Vox not chugging that shit when they take over the factory? You storm the gates with them, and by the time you get to the top and officially say "Ok, Columbia sucks, lets bail out", the Vox completely ''own'' the factory and basically the entire city. The place where the Vigors are produced and stored is under their control. Why aren't all of them drinking that shit by the bucket load? Brainwashing that it doesn't work on minorities or not, I refuse to believe not a single Vox soldier at least took a sip of that stuff out of curiosity, and when they saw it worked despite the fact he wasn't white, the entire army should have been running around tossing lightning and possessing their enemies to watch them kill themselves for pure amusement. The fact there ARE Vox-aligned Firemen and Zealots to fight for the rest of the game only further goes to show that yes, they know you can use Vigors even if you aren't white as the driven snow. Even if you could make the tenuous claim that Vigors weren't in wide spread use before the uprising, I don't see why they aren't afterwards.
1003** Not really suggesting that the sort of Vigors available in stores are just temporary samples; I'm just suggesting that Columbia's citizens would have to do a lot more than just show up with the money if they wanted the real deal -- proof of loyalty to Columbia and its ideals, or proof of white ancestry, something like that. But I agree, it doesn't really make sense for the Vox not to start powering themselves up; it's either an issue of supply (the Founders bombed the shit out of the factory's store Vigors, and it takes time to manufacture more for the Vox to use) an issue of philosophy (the Vox don't want to rely on Fink's product unless they absolutely have to, although I doubt this is the case) or an issue of game design. You be the judge. Hopefully, though, it'll be explained in the upcoming DLC.
1004** Well, the whole issue of game design angle was kinda what I was going for -_- hence the GameplayAndStorySegregation trope. I just fear putting it on the main page now for fear of it causing an edit war.
1005** There might be an edit war over the general usage of Vigors throughout the game and the plot, but if it's any consolation, we've come to an agreement that it doesn't make much sense for the majority of the Vox Populi to be running around without superpowers now that they're in control of Fink's factory. You could raise the trope on the main page with that point.
1006** There was a point in the game's development when we were told that Vigors would only be good for a limited number of uses, then you'd have to find another bottle. The EVE-like Salts hadn't been conceived yet. The setting makes more sense under those rules -- Vigor bottles would be a rare resource, and once a person used up a Vigor's "charges", he'd be a regular Joe again.
1007** Perhaps Vigors are normally temporary or otherwise more limited when used by ordinary people (with some disadvantage or another that we don't know about), and only work so well for Booker because he's from another timeline? If it's derived from Elizabeth's power, perhaps it only works at full strength on people from her original timeline? Given that she got her powers from being "split" across timelines, it's not too much of a stretch to assume that Vigors would be more powerful when their user and the Vigor itself are likewise split between origin.
1008** The power of a yellow sun?
1009** Confusing things is the fact that while the Possession Vigor was presented as a free sample, yet is permanent, a few feet away at game booths you're given a Bucking Bronco Vigor for the purposes of the game, which nobody ''says'' is temporary, but which lasts for exactly game and no more. At that point it's probably best to just say GameplayAndStorySegregation and move on.
1010** Either that, or the Lutece twins providing another little moments of helpfulness.
1011** Another odd point which might be a topic all by itself: While most of your Vigors are found in a random-seeming fashion, Shock Jockey, once you find you need it, is treated like a rare and incredible treasure, which you have to travel a long distance to find, through a war zone, killing dozens of people and leading up to a massive showdown. (Even though it ''looks'' like it should be common, since there's receptacles for its energy all over the place and ads for it plastered on the walls.) When you get back from all this, as if to mock you, you'll immediately find another Shock Jockey bottle on the counter of the ice cream shop, if you pry the place open and go inside.
1012** But Vigors aren't found in random and arbitrary places, in many occasions. There are numerous rooms with fireplaces in the game...and what's found nearby? Devil's Kiss. There are several maintenance and service rooms. What's in there? Shock Jockey, Bucking Bronco -- things that can aid with power and moving heavy crates or machinery. Where will you find Return to Sender? Abandoned in a crate on the battle-scarred streets of Emporia. Although we don't see many citizens actively using Vigors, we have more than enough evidence in the world that their use is widespread and practical, aside from a few exceptions (such as Charge, which is found only once -- and it's impounded). If you recall, in the first ''VideoGame/BioShock'', offensive Plasmids weren't seen used very often, either, outside of Houdini and Spider Splicers. They weren't seen being used practically. But it was implied! And not nearly as commonly as in ''Infinite''.
1013** Not to mention at Fink's dock, where there's a crashed truck that spilled several bottles of the stuff, including several intact bottles simply lying around.
1014** Another thought is that Vigors ''are'' temporary and require constantly taking more (in addition to Salts) normally...but not for you. Vigors are derived from power siphoned from Elizabeth, yes? Well, you're her father, and a dimension-hopper. While you didn't leave a part of yourself behind in another dimension (thus don't get the whole reality-warper suite of powers), who's to say you don't get SOME minor perks? I'd imagine genetics plays at least SOME role in Elizabeth's SuperpowerLottery. It being dictated solely on leaving part of yourself in another universe seems a bit flimsy (and easy to duplicate) to me.
1015** The reason Elizabeth has her powers is because she's a literal paradox, as far as Quantum Mechanics are concerned. Remember how the entire idea behind UsefulNotes/SchrodingersCat is that the point of the experiment was that it ''is'' in fact ridiculous to think a cat can be both alive and dead at the same time? As far as the universe is concerned, that's what Elizabeth is. You could either argue that the universe is trying to correct this paradox by giving her the powers, or coming into contact with the Lutece portal ridge when it chopped off her finger got some of that quantum energy into her blood stream. Either way, it has nothing to do with genetics. She's not a mutant, she wasn't born with the powers (though there probably is something to be said about her being Booker's daughter considering the mumbo jumbo with an alternate universe version of her father who never conceived her stole her away, but whatever). If you piece together enough of the Luteces' Voxophones talking about the subject, they basically spell it out for you, as much as you can say that of the least... Bottom line, I think the justification that the Vigors work the way they do because proximity to Elizabeth/help from the Lutece's is kinda weak (especially the idea that it's thanks to the Lutece's doing. They're not RealityWarper s like Elizabeth, they just exist in every conceivable point across all of time and space simultaneously. That does not give them sudden access to manipulate matter on a molecular level.)
1016** The help from the Lutece twins wasn't applied to the issue of all Vigors being permanent: it was applied to issue of Booker getting a permanent edition of Possession out of a version that was supposedly given as a temporary sampler edition. In this case, it has nothing to do with them being reality warpers, and everything to do with them being able to replace in the vendor's basket ahead of time. They've already demonstrated a willingness to tweak variables in Booker's favor -- remember the dead lighthouse keeper?
1017** Early in the game, during the fair, you can hear a couple of guys talking about Vigors. the other if he had tried any of the new vigors yet, to which he replied "I'll wait for them to work the kinks out first", which implies that there are unsavory side effects to Vigors that the populace is well aware of. Take a look at the Fireman for example. How are we introduced to him? He's standing in the middle of the street surrounded by flaming rubble (no doubt his own handiwork), sealed up in a red-hot metal suit, and screaming about punishment for one's sins. The Zealot is constantly surrounded by flocks of killer birds and teleports randomly. Slate, although he was already completely nuts regardless of Vigors, still had huge, deforming purple crystals growing out of his head. Add that to the horrible screaming pain that Booker goes through whenever he drinks a new Vigor, and it's pretty clear the Vigors aren't exactly user-friendly.
1018** It's explicitly stated that some, if not most or even all, of the Vigors are "new", and it's pretty obvious that they aren't completely "working out the kinks" as the above troper quoted. The main reason they aren't seen anywhere is because they're new to the market, at a time when "The next big thing" wasn't something that everybe the first to have, but waited to see if it would catch on first THEN went to go get theirs.
1019** "They would have restricted access to the Vigors for non-whites" really doesn't hold up when you remember Booker literally gets his Vigors out of a ''vending machine''. And Booker's implied to be part Native American, so it can't have been a race-detecting vending machine.
1020** And they would have used what, exactly, to purchase anything out of a vending machine? The laborers are paid in company scrip, not in Silver Eagles. Fink makes a point of this in one of his speeches and specifically states that it's so that they don't make frivolous purchases, such as Vigors, one may presume. So you don't need a race detecting machine, just an incredibly corrupt economy.
1021** The point being that anyone could kick the vending machine into bits and steal the contents, use forged money, use stolen money, or intercept supplies from when it gets restocked. The Vigors really would have made more sense purchased over the counter from a human clerk if they were supposed to be regulated.
1022[[/folder]]
1023
1024[[folder:Lutece funding]]
1025
1026* Why did Lutece need Comstock for funding? She explicitly indicates that she was able to create dimensional windows even before she met him, but wasn't able to create ones that would let anything through, and therefore needed his money to fund the development of a gate that would let her bring her brother over. But it also indicates that even those early gates could still ''see the future'' (or, as she more carefully states it, see probability, but it works well enough), and that this is how Comstock got his reputation as a prophet. If she can flawlessly see the most probable outcomes of the future, shouldn't she be able to make more than enough money to fund anything she wants herself?
1027** It's possible that in some universes, she did; however, Rosalind doesn't come across as especially adept at finding her way around politics, or even especially interested in politics to begin with. It's possible that Comstock was simply the politician that found her first and started offering funds -- remembering that he actually knew more or less what he was looking for in order to build his utopia.
1028** After [[spoiler: Comstock is erased from existence and Booker is returned to a "normal" life with Anna]] it's quite plausible that America (or another nation) still bankrolls Rosalind to exploit her discoveries -- none of them are negated by the [[spoiler: Columbia story never having existed.]]
1029** Or, you know, 1912 America was sexist beyond belief and no one wanted to admit that a '''woman''' was smarter than them. As for Robert, he may have gotten funding, but he preferred to move in with his "sister".
1030** Rosalind mentions in one of her voxophones that Comstock's funding is what she needs to make "the Lutece Field" into "the Lutece Tear." Maybe she wasn't able to glean any useful information from other realities at all with her primitive machine, aside from "whispering" with Robert.
1031[[/folder]]
1032
1033[[folder:Selling a way to hack own machines?]]
1034
1035* Another bit of FridgeLogic with Possession -- why would Fink allow onto the market an easy method of ''ripping off his own vending machines?'' Although I suppose you could HandWave this as an unknown side effect they hadn't caught in the lab.
1036** It's heavily implied that Fink is a shortsighted idiot who would sell you the rope you'd use to hang him with. His only concern is immediate profit, hence why he lets the Vox fester rather than at least placating them (which costs him far more in the long run). He didn't think it all the way through.
1037** This is a city where a shop can simply leave out their products and a box asking people to pay for what they take. At least in the upper class parts of Columbia (i.e. the only parts that could afford Vigors), it doesn't matter how easy it is to rob the machines, the fact that it's illegal means people won't do it.
1038
1039[[/folder]]
1040
1041[[folder:Columbian Technology]]
1042* Columbia would stand a good chance of wiping out civilization in an invasion...in 1912. But it attacks New York in 1983, transitioning into 1984. Even with its advanced technology, even with its tear-manipulating abilities, even with Vigors, would Columbia have been able to stand up to a modern (by Cold War standards) military force? Would Comstock's zeppelins have stood much of a chance against carrier-launched attack fighters, or anti-aircraft missiles and batteries? We'll never know for certain, but I'd say it's a longshot, even with Columbia's advancements.
1043** Columbia has devised man-portable, electromagnetic shield projections that can deflect or absorb projectiles. They also have walking combat automata that can take high explosive impacts to the face and keep running, with even tougher, terrifyingly agile cyborgs. This is neglecting the fact that a massive flying city has managed to stay hidden for decades, despite the advent of radar and commercial air travel. The surface would have to resort to chucking nukes around, and even that isn't a surefire solution. All of this is assuming that Columbian technology will cease all progress in the meantime.
1044** I think people keep forgetting just how advanced Columbia already is ''seventy years'' before that attack. We've developed nuclear weapons and automated strike drones in less time -- surely it isn't too much of a stretch that the people with access to what essentially is magic would have developed something far more powerful in seventy years?
1045** Chalk it up to multiverse theory. It is theoretically possible that Columbia could successfully attack and destroy 1984 New York City. Thus there are multiple timelines where it happened. You briefly visit a timeline where it happened. The end.
1046[[/folder]]
1047
1048[[folder:Booker's brand]]
1049* If Comstock knew how to identify the "False Shepherd", then why not station some people at the Church to check the arriving pilgrims? Especially since there was such a convenient ritual that incapacitates the entree. For that matter, how come none of the people involved managed to notice it? It was quite obvious, and Booker didn't try to hide it.
1050** Comstock clearly believes all of his own bullshit. He didn't put a checkpoint in the church because he believed the False Shepherd was ''meant'' to enter Columbia and attempt to lead Elizabeth astray.
1051** And in a way, he's right. The audio recordings from Future!Elizabeth sort of indicate the only way she could be broken was to first be given the hope Booker gives her. If he'd never built her up, she'd never have fallen so low.
1052** Comstock didn't have someone waiting in the church to kill Booker because he had a guy waiting in the Lighthouse to kill Booker, the Lutece's just got to him first. Booker didn't hide his brand because he's kind of used to being able to just kill everyone if things go bad, and as we've seen he's not wrong. On top of that he's got some pretty hefty self destructive issues. So he doesn't overly care
1053** Uhm, ''why'' in the Lighthouse and not in the church? What's the logic? Also, regardless, how could noone in the church see the brand? Booker is grabbing the priest, then people are dragging him out, and at no moment does anyone catches a glimpse of his hand? Hell, with all the posters telling people to be on a lookout for FS, why in the name of Our Prophet wouldn't they actively ''check'' newcomers for the brand?
1054** Because after the guy in the lighthouse kills Booker, Comstock won't need a guy in the church to also kill Booker.
1055
1056[[/folder]]
1057
1058[[folder:Hiding the brand]]
1059
1060* Why DIDN'T Booker try to hide it after he saw the billboard? Even before he got a wind of what Columbia really is, surely being taken for the "False Shepherd", whatever the hell it means, cannot be a good thing, even if it's just a freaky coincidence. If I arrived, say, to the post-WWII Germany and learned even a little about the recent events, certainly I would try to cover my ancestral tattoo of Twin Lightnings, wouldn't I? Yet Booker learns that he bears, basically, the MarkOfTheBeast, and he doesn't even care to find a glove or improvise a bandage. What kind of an agent that is?
1061** I guess he didn't yet realize just how fanatical the people of Columbia were. I mean, imagine if you had a 666 tattoo on your hand and you were transported back to 1912. Would you expect the people to try and murder you on the spot?
1062** Well, not murder, certainly, but if I saw that those people were religious, and especially if I saw some warning signs, like "Beware the Antichrist!", I wouldn't expect a warm welcome.
1063
1064[[/folder]]
1065
1066[[folder:How do they eat?]]
1067* Columbia clearly has a very wide variety of food. It has everything from cake to pineapples, cotton candy, pork, beans, pears etc. My question is: how do they get all that food in a city in the sky? We know that some of them hunt birds for food, but that doesn't explain the sheer variety of it. We don't see any evidence of farms in the game, and it would be next to impossible to smuggle so much food to one place without being noticed. The food doesn't seem to be rationed either. As far as I can see, Columbia should've starved to death long ago.
1068** I know it's kind of a running joke to say "Uh...quantum physics did it?" but in this case I think it might really be the case. Columbia may have unseen farms and hydroponic gardens for basic food staples, but raising livestock would be extremely difficult and wasting space to produce luxury items like cotton candy and pineapples would be very poor judgment, even by Columbia's standards. So where are they getting all this stuff? Possibly...from other universes.
1069** Why would they need to evade notice? I don't think Columbia is supposed to be a secret to the world -- after all, they have seceded from USA, so clearly people on the surface are aware of them. So they simply import all they need.
1070** Considering that they seceded from the USA, relations with the surface probably wouldn't be ideal for trade.
1071** Mr. Fink has some unscrupulous business associates on the surface, willing to trade with Columbia in many goods, including "Negro convicts".
1072** Laputa demanded tribute of food from its subjects below, threatening a ColonyDrop if their demands were not met. I don't see why Columbia would be any different. Though it might involve more trade than threat, still, trade with the surface wouldn't be unreasonable.
1073[[/folder]]
1074
1075[[folder:Pinkertons]]
1076
1077* What in the hell did Booker do to get ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards kicked out of the]] [[HiredGuns Pinkertons?]]''
1078** [[HopeSpot Maybe he's a]] DefectorFromDecadence?
1079** Creator/TroyBaker himself lampshaded the question in an interview. He claims that Booker "Has seen a lot. D." -- and has "a lot to make penance for".
1080** In other words, he has followed Pinkerton orders to the point that he feels guilty while other times he has shown outright insubordination in other times. The ethnic cases most likely gotsay...killing Chinese laborers in cold blood and refusing to fire on them while killing labor unionists without even thinking until afterwards in drink.
1081** Remember that the Pinkertons were in charge of getting striking laborers back to work through any means necessary. Booker isn't the kind of person who breaks a few bones and that's it, he cuts a bloody swath through the enemy. The Pinkertons wanted scared workers, not useless corpses.
1082
1083[[/folder]]
1084
1085[[folder: President William [=McKinley=]]]
1086
1087* Ken Levine has said that part of the game's inspiration was this ludicrously jingoistic [[http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5575/ speech by President William McKinley]]. And yet, while [=McKinley=] was president when the Boxer Rebellion happened, Columbia somehow intervened without his authorization. Given that he likely wouldn't have wholly disapproved of this interventionism, why did ''he'' not intervene when Congress blew up and demanded that Columbia return home? Why were there "tensions", as the Truth From Legend trailers call it, between [=McKinley=] and Columbia? What did they do to piss ''him'' off?
1088** Not as hard as they might've suppressed the Boxers, but the way they did it was barbaric even by [=McKinley's=] standards. On top of the fact that they were acting without authorization but claiming to represent the US, it's easy to see how even a jingoistic moralist like he would've wanted to rein them in.
1089
1090[[/folder]]
1091
1092[[folder:New York Buildings]]
1093
1094* Did you notice how you can recognize the Empire State Building behind Elizabeth in the future sequence, but there's no World Trade Center? In 1984? Did Columbia already knock it down?
1095** The developers probably omitted the appearance of the [=WTC=] Towers because portraying them in such a scene would be in incredibly poor taste.
1096** They actually omitted because the viewpoint of that scene, Booker's apartment, has the World Trade Center behind where the character is standing. Other than being slightly higher than it is in the real world, Booker's apartment exists in the real world as an actual building with the viewpoint lining up with what you'd see if you went there yourself.
1097** Of course, the World Trade Center wasn't blown up until September the 11th, 2001. So it would still exist in 1984.
1098*** Except that 9/11 wouldn't happen in a timeline with Columbia due the lack of the Cold War.
1099
1100[[/folder]]
1101
1102[[folder:Retgone and lives]]
1103
1104* This is more of a point of view thing, but if you erased Columbia from existence, wouldn't that cause hundreds of couples from meeting the person they fell in love with? That would mean you caused hundreds, if not, thousands of people from ever being born which, in essence, makes them DeaderThanDead. However, it could be subverted by the grace that, in theory, everyone has an alternate counterpart in different realities, so that all those people who ceased to exist would simply be different people in the universes that still exist.
1105** Yes, and this even sort of happens in game with Chen Lin; in one universe his wife is Chinese, in another she's a completely different woman.
1106** And besides, not ''all'' possibilities are eliminated anyway; who's to say Booker's the only one with constants and variables in his timeline?
1107** You could say the same thing about any attempt to change the future, one way or the other, because different people are going to be born than in another timeline. At the same time as you're erasing all the people who only exist because of Columbia, you're allowing the existence of all the people who are only born because Columbia never existed. Booker and Elizabeth were more interested in preventing the city from ''waging apocalyptic war on the surface'' than they were in counting which people get born in the new timeline versus the old one.
1108
1109[[/folder]]
1110
1111[[folder: Songbird's invincibility]]
1112
1113* While I understand the choice, from a narrative perspective, to not make a Songbird boss battle (indeed I can think of roughly twenty tropes that rhyme with bad writing if such a fight had happened), I don't quite understand why BadFuture!Elizabeth imply that Songbird is flat out invincible. I mean, between the handheld weapon technology, the Vigors, the personal deflector shields, and the fact that Songbird is specifically said to be made mostly of leather (i.e. not bulletproof), you'd think that Endgame!Booker would have at least a decent chance. But no, apparently, possibilities are Infinite, except when it come to Songbird, then it's auto-lose.
1114** While there are probably plenty of things that Booker could have used to have a decent chance of successfully killing Songbird, he didn't actually have access to any of them -- until he was given the flute, that is. But honestly, what would you use to stop him? The airship fleet didn't do much good, likely because he was too fast for their unwieldy guns. Even if he's not bulletproof, he doesn't have to actually ''survive'', just kill Booker. Elizabeth is largely helpless on her own, and could be captured by normal mooks. However, I had a bit of fridge brilliance as I was writing this: He might have a shield, like Booker. That could be how he survived ramming through giant airships, and why the cooldown existed (he needed to wait for the shield to recharge). In that case, there might be literally nothing in Columbia that could do enough damage to kill him.
1115** ^This. Songbird isn't flat-out invincible in the sense that nothing that exists or ever will exist can kill him, but nothing Booker has access to will do the job before Songbird kills him first.
1116
1117[[/folder]]
1118
1119[[folder: An alternate Ending]]
1120
1121* Couldn't Booker and Elizabeth simply force Booker to not participate in Wounded Knee in the first place? Seems a bit more convenient than suicide.
1122** Then neither would exist. Picking the moment they did stops Comstock and makes sure Anna lives.
1123** What in particular does participating in Wounded Knee allow Booker to have a daughter?
1124** ForWantOfANail. It's better to not mess with more than you have to otherwise it might lead to a Booker that never met Anna's mother. Like, maybe, her mother was a bartender he met while drowning his sorrows or something. If he never went to Wounded Knee he wouldn't have gone to the bar to the drink and never met Anna's mother. That's just an example but I hope it got the point across.
1125[[/folder]]
1126
1127[[folder: The Vox Populi of Universe-3]]
1128
1129* I guess this is something that could just be handwaved with "alternate universe, everything is possible", but it is something that appears really, really unlikely to me and I would really like to know if some of the steps that got us here are ever elaborated upon. Throughout the universes you visit, the higher class Columbian society pretty much remains the same, probably because Booker becoming Comstock if he accepts the baptism is some weird universal constant. With that society comes the repressions of non-whites, the Irish and the Jews.\
1130So how did the Vox Populi of Universe three get so incredibly powerful? How does a poor and repressed minority, led by someone accused of murdering someone akin to a saint, obtain their own fleet of airships? Where have they been converting Handymen? How do they have their own Firemen? How about their own line of Abe Lincoln battlebots? They can't have gotten it from Fink Manufacturing, since they only capture that when Booker arrives, but what else is there? While we're at it, why are some of the Vox Populi suddenly dressing as devils (despite also seeming religious)? Why are there suddenly members of the Order of the Raven in the Vox Populi, despite the cult being dedicated to the oppression of the same minorities that the Vox Populi is made up of?
1131** Firstly, in this universe, they got the armaments they didn't receive in other universes. Plus, the poor and repressed minority is comprised of the entire city's working class, most of whom couldn't give a flying fuck about what happened to Lady Comstock. Gigantic working class in opposition to comparatively miniature upper-class is an incredibly one-sided battle, provided working class is armed and equipped (which they ''weren't'' in other universes). Airships and Motorized Patriots can be stolen here and there, and anyway, most of them you don't see in action until ''after'' the raid on Fink Industries. In regards to them dressing as devils... well, they're ''kind of'' opposed to the ideals of the rabidly fundamentalist Founders; these costumes exist as an insult to their enemies. Finally, the Crows you encounter are likely defectors from the mainstream cult in much the same way that Slate defected from Comstock's army; the same likely applies to Firemen and Handymen.
1132** Logistics aside, remember that Elizabeth's Tears were a form of wish fulfillment. And along with the other factors that empowered the Vox in that universe, one very important point in their favor was Booker, who teamed up with Slate, burned down the Hall of Heroes, and fought and died alongside Fitzroy. Since Elizabeth was no longer a factor in him being there in Columbia, only Slate and the Vox gave him a reason to stay. You, as the one controlling Booker, know exactly how much of a OneManArmy Booker can be; imagine that guy on the side of the Vox.
1133[[/folder]]
1134
1135[[folder: Lutece twins are healthy; Comstock is not?]]
1136
1137* So Comstock became sterile and aged quickly due to using the contraption. But why are the Luteces fine? Presumably they'd use it even more than he did, or at the very least be present when he did.
1138** Two things: One, we don't know that they used it more than they did. They only needed it for one thing: bringing Robert over. The rest was all stuff Comstock wanted, so they could have easily just opened the door, popped over for a minute or two, but not stayed for long enough to do real damage. And two: After their accident, they're universally transcendent beings with no clearly defined limits. For all we know, they were about as bad as Comstock, but they decided to appear younger after their deaths.
1139
1140[[/folder]]
1141
1142[[folder: Booker and Comstock in the same reality]]
1143
1144* How are Booker and Comstock inhabiting the same reality from the start of the game when they originate from different parallel realities? We get no indication that Booker traveled to another reality before arriving in Columbia. That would make the more reasonable option that Comstock arrived in Booker's native reality years earlier and took over Columbia. But from what I can gather, Columbia only came to be through Comstock's influence, and Elizabeth's abduction to a parallel reality happened shortly after the city was launched, so... huh?
1145** We see it in the flashbacks when Booker's real memories start resurfacing. Robert Lutece opened a tear in Booker's office, pulling him straight to the rock with the little rowboat in Comstock's reality. Then Booker underwent tear-sickness, his mind trying to fill in the blanks caused by stepping between universes. He sorts it all out, coming up with the fiction that the Luteces hired him to "bring us the girl and wipe away the debt," and that's when the game starts, as Rosalind and Robert are rowing him to the dock in the rain.
1146** Booker has no clue about Columbia at first. When Elizabeth comments on the strangeness of not knowing about a flying city, he says he hasn't caught up on current events. It's fairly reasonable that he didn't know about Columbia because it didn't exist in his world, and Booker gives a weak HandWave that makes that lack of knowledge plausible in his own mind due to his Tear-sickness mental conditioning.
1147** Player's Booker does not replace Comstock as other characters replace their "alternate-reality" counterparts because, conceptually, Booker and Comstock weren't the same. It can be also because the method to take Booker to Columbia was a Lutece's tear (i.e. physically crossing the tear) instead of merging the two timelines which they do later (and then player!Booker actually remembers martyr!Booker's life).
1148
1149[[/folder]]
1150
1151[[folder: Booker, Tears and Decoy]]
1152* Every now and then, especially during sniper sections, one of Elizabeth's Tears can materialize a Decoy Booker for the enemies to shoot at. Question is, in another universe someone left a Medkit crate, or a Patriot, or whatever, for Elizabeth to phase in, and that's fine... but what the hell does she summon when she brings in a Decoy?
1153** Maybe in an alternate universe Comstock was a lot more depraved and had Booker stuffed and mounted after he killed him one way or another? Sounds pretty horrible, I know, but that's the only way I can think of for a lifeless, immobile, but still convincing enough Booker to exist.
1154** Maybe the Decoy Bookers come from an alternate reality where life-sized Booker robots were built to promote the release of ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite.'' Kind of like our reality, except with better technology. Either that, or an alternate Booker became a nostalgic old rich guy who hired somebody to build a bunch of functioning automatons to remind him of when he was still in his prime.
1155
1156[[/folder]]
1157
1158[[folder: Why doesn't Booker end up with powers?]]
1159* Based on the voxaphone records left behind by the Luteces, the working theory about Elizabeth's powers is that having parts of herself in more than one universe is the root cause of her ability to travel between dimensions. While Booker doesn't lose any body parts during his adventure, all but the most skilled and conservative of play styles will result in a significant quantity of blood being left behind when he goes from Columbia 1 (Chen Lin dead, tools left behind) to Columbia 2 (Chen Lin alive, tools confiscated). Shouldn't he then start exhibiting the kind of dimensional issues that Elizabeth had in her youth?
1160** He's only been dimension hopping for a day. Literally from start to finish the game takes place over roughly 24 hours or so. Presumably it would take time for him to become aware of and develop this ability. He has bigger things to worry about in the short term anyway.
1161** Watsonian answer: Elizabeth gets her powers not from having a body part in another world, but from having the part of her pinky that was sliced through having stayed in the 'portal' dimension. Since Booker never has that happen, he doesn't get any powers. Doylist answer: GameplayAndStorySegregation. Booker never leaves blood behind because he never got shot, as that would prove a serious detriment to his running and gunning feats.
1162** Better answer: he does, just not to the same degree. Elizabeth expresses outright surprise in the Hall of Heroes when Booker is able to see the potential tears. You only develop this after spending several hours cross-dimension (perhaps a few days in-story, they never seem to stop to sleep). Also, the Rapture-Comstock was able to survive the multiversal Bookercide due to having hopped dimensions, leading to Elizabeth hunting him down personally.
1163
1164[[/folder]]
1165
1166[[folder: Elizabeth's learning as a child]]
1167* If Elizabeth was denied human contact her whole life, who taught her to speak, read, use clothes, and ([[{{Squick}} ahem]]) other basics?
1168** Rosalind, presumably. Plus, during her most formative years, she had the power to create new tears and go on multi-dimensional jaunts, so maybe she was socialized through people from other dimensions.
1169** She wasn't denied human contact her whole life, for her early years she was around people enough to learn the basics. It was only after her powers began to really develop that she was shut away from everyone else.
1170[[/folder]]
1171
1172[[folder: The Seed of the Prophet shall sit the throne...]]
1173* If Comstock loves the Founding Fathers so much, then why is he trying to institute a monarchy, the thing that they were fighting ''against'', in Columbia?
1174** Comstock wouldn't be the first person who claims to be supporting an ideal while going against everything it stands for.
1175** Also, Comstock never formally takes the title of king, emperor, or anything like that. He presents himself as a religious prophet and justifies Elizabeth taking his place because it's the will of God/the Archangel, not because he wants to start a new royal line.
1176[[/folder]]
1177
1178[[folder: Comstock's rise to power]]
1179* In realities where [=DeWitt=] goes through with the baptism, he assumes the name Zachary Comstock. Fine. He then goes on to amass wealth and influence in government to bankroll Rosalind Lutece and have Columbia built. All within the span of two of three years. Despite being an apparently uneducated Army corporal. How?
1180** As I mentioned above, maybe Comstock gambled like Booker, but won big instead of losing big.
1181** He could have ridden the war hero wave to get his foot in the door and after that his impressive charisma did the rest.
1182** It's stated in one of Comstock's Voxophone messages that the U.S. Congress "turned to righteousness" and provided the "dollars of Washington" to fund the creation of Columbia. So he used religious-based persuasion to convince them to help.
1183[[/folder]]
1184
1185[[folder: Elizabeth's indoctrination]]
1186* Why wasn't Elizabeth better indoctrinated while she was held captive? She doesn't hold Comstock's racism, xenophobia, or religious fanaticism, doesn't know she's supposed to be his successor, and doesn't even think of him as her father.
1187** Comstock is convinced the False Shepard is coming, why waste time teaching her things the False Shepard would convince her are bunk? More efficient to just start from scratch after he's been dealt with.
1188** Comstock seemed really assured that the singular future he saw through the tears was the only one that was possible, and that Elizabeth would eventually commit to his insane scheme regardless of what happens. He even assumes that she'd be willing to side with him after finding out what Booker had done to her as a baby after he had tried ''torturing'' her into compliance for an unspecified amount of time.
1189[[/folder]]
1190
1191[[folder:Knowing Comstock and Booker]]
1192* So how does Comstock always know about Booker and Elizabeth, no matter what tear they travel through? Fink is enraged that two people he didn't know emerged from his basement; Fitzroy of Booker-Martyr-verse sees him as an impostor or complication. Fink knows of tears, and Fitzroy might have learned of them when her ex-employers chatted around someone they disregarded. Point being, Comstock always reacts with savvy, even in worlds where these two's alter-location is accounted for, in a straightforward linear manner.
1193** Columbia only exists in realities where Comstock successfully stole Elizabeth from Booker. So when they show up, it's not hard for him to figure out who they are.
1194** They are just recognized. Every Columbia we visit has a Lamb, meaning every Comstock we see has bought Anna from Booker and seen him. Fitzroy knows who Booker is, but not knowing about dimensional travel she has no way to reconcile that with him being dead and she cares more about her martyr than the man anyway. Fink does know about dimensional travel, but has never seen Booker in that reality.
1195[[/folder]]
1196
1197[[folder:Do You even physics?!]]
1198* Ok, I know this one is minor compared to everything else but... Booker often drops onto a Sky-Line from 20-30 feet up. With one arm. Shouldn't that ''dislocate his shoulder''?!
1199** Pretty sure someone else mentioned this earlier and it was essentially HandWaved. I don't think we'll ever get a clear answer for this aside from GameplayAndStorySegregation and the fact that if he did dislocate his shoulder the game wouldn't be nearly as much fun as it is.
1200[[/folder]]
1201
1202[[folder: Why is the name Anna/Annabelle used for 3 different characters?]]
1203* I was originally confused by when Esther Mailer called Elizabeth "Annabelle" at the Battleship bay gondola (I still have not heard a reasonable explanation for why she addresses Elizabeth as Annabelle except as a "test" to confirm that the pair are indeed who they are looking for, which seems seems unlikely in my opinion) however, apart from that - We know Elizabeth was born as Anna, and there is indication that she was named after her mother, Anna [=DeWitt=] (Booker's wife who died giving birth to her.) Why have they given Lady Comstock's the name Annabelle also? Is Lady Annabelle Comstock (née Watson) and Anna [=DeWitt=] different versions of the same woman, just from different universes, just like Booker and Comstock's are one and the same?
1204** Yes, Lady Comstock is implied to be an alternate version of Booker's wife. This is the irony of her freaking out over Elizabeth not being hers--she was genetically her daughter, even if she didn't give birth to her. This is also why Comstock renamed the girl: Naming your daughter after your dead wife is one thing, naming her after your living wife is much less common.
1205[[/folder]]
1206
1207[[folder: Does Elizabeth know CPR?]]
1208* Early on, after falling into the water while escaping Elizabeth's tower, Booker "drowns" a little and starts waking up to Elizabeth pounding on his chest. You can clearly see her with her arms straight down as if she's putting her weight on them like you would do in CPR. This is fine, you're supposed to do CPR after someone starts drowning (and in fiction they magically wake up with no injuries because of it, but that's [[CPRCleanPrettyReliable another trope]] entirely). What I'm confused about is that the year in-game is 1912, and CPR wasn't even invented until the late 1950s, and wasn't commonly taught until at least 1960. Is this another anachronism? How does she know how to do CPR?
1209** Google says there's a proto-form of CPR that dates back to the 18th century, where you put pressure on the victim's abdomen and try to blow air into their lungs. (And also use a bellows to blow tobacco smoke up a person's backside, in order to stimulate a reaction. [[SincerityMode No]], [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cardiopulmonary_resuscitation#First_attempts_at_resuscitation_in_the_18th_century seriously]].) Alternatively, Elizabeth or the scientists saw it through a tear and thought it was a good idea.
1210[[/folder]]
1211
1212[[folder:Absolutely zero trauma?]]
1213* How comes Elizabeth, who spent her whole life in a tower, is not the least bit disturbed that she's now doing exactly what her father forbid her to do? Why doesn't she have a brief FreakOut ala ''WesternAnimation/{{Tangled}}''?
1214* Elizabeth has no idea Comstock is her father until roughly a third of the way into the game. From her perspective, she grew up alone in a richly furnished tower, with Songbird bringing her books, food and its company and various scientists running experiments on her. Spying on her through the windows. Filming her and taking pictures of her changing. She's probably more than ready to get the hell out of there by the point Booker shows up.
1215[[/folder]]
1216
1217[[folder:Comstock's Voice]]
1218* Comstock and Booker are the same person, and they have different voices because Comstock is the older version of Booker. But why is Comstock's voice higher-pitched than Booker's when people's voices get lower as they age?
1219** Comstock isn't older; they're the same age. Comstock just appears older because of the long-term effects of playing with the tears; namely, artificial aging and mass cancer. I'd imagine its just a quirk of the tears.
1220*** Comstock is sterile because of his exposure to the tears; maybe it's lowered his testosterone levels, which would also give him a higher-pitched voice.
1221[[/folder]]
1222
1223[[folder:Elizabeth: Comstock and Lady Comstock's Daughter]]
1224* Over the course of their adventure Elizabeth and Booker realize that Comstock and Lady Comstock are not Elizabeth's father and mother as they had originally thought. Elizabeth and Booker repeatedly say this at various points thereafter. Why then, after they reach the ''Hand of the Prophet'' airship, does Elizabeth still refer to Lady Comstock as her mother and does Booker tell Comstock that Elizabeth is his daughter when they finally confront him? Did they just forget?
1225-->'''Elizabeth:''' They weren't my parents.\
1226'''Elizabeth:''' I'm not even his daughter...\
1227'''Elizabeth:''' [speaking through a tear] He is ''not'' my father!\
1228'''[=DeWitt=]:''' She is ''not'' your daughter.\
1229[But after they reach the ''Hand of the Prophet'']\
1230'''Elizabeth:''' ...and then in my mother's (Lady Comstock's) grave there was a smaller one.\
1231'''[=DeWitt=]:''' [To Comstock] She's your daughter, you son of a bitch!
1232** Booker was calling out Comstock for abusing his position as Elizabeth's adoptive/foster father, which was horrifying regardless of whether or not he and Elizabeth were technically related. Elizabeth probably just refers to Lady Comstock as her "mother" out of convenience, as she used to think of LC as her mother and Booker knows who she's talking about.
1233[[/folder]]
1234
1235[[folder:The interracial couple]]
1236* They give you Gear if you tried to throw the baseball at Fink. How do they know? [[https://youtu.be/NyMndWpihTM?t=159 The animation appears identical]].
1237** When Booker throws (or tries to throw) the baseball at Fink, he says aloud, "I've got something for you, you son of a bitch." It's low, but possibly just audible enough for one or both of the couple to hear. We also don't see his face, so it's likely he's looking--and scowling--directly at Fink himself.
1238[[/folder]]
1239
1240[[folder:Booker's final voxophone]]
1241* In the last voxophone you find from Columbia-3 (martyr universe) Booker, the recording has him coughing up blood and getting out: "Fitzroy... you win this fool war, you send this to New York. They ain't gettin' the girl, whoever they are." But why would Columbia-3 Booker care about them getting the girl? ''Our'' Booker would certainly care, but as far as Columbia-3 Booker knows, he was assigned a job, went to Columbia, teamed up with Slate, joined up with the Vox, got himself killed--all without ever once meeting Elizabeth, in person or otherwise. She's never been anything more than a package to him. So what's the deal?
1242** He doesn't care whether they get the girl. He simply realizes at that point that he's going to die of his injuries soon, and wants Fitzroy to let his employers know that he died in action and won't be able to complete the job, because he's a ''professional,'' dammit.
1243[[/folder]]
1244
1245[[folder:Elizabeth's Original Powers (Beta)]]
1246* Back during early game-play trailers in 2010, Elizabeth's powers didn't seem to involve the use of tears at all; she could generate storms, use telekinesis, and could fuse and combine objects into molten constructs. A lot of people have described those powers as either quantum physics or magic. Which is it?
1247** Very likely the former. From the sounds of it, they could be a early version of the Vigors that show up in the final game, which are based on Elizabeth's Tear powers.
1248[[/folder]]
1249
1250[[folder:Eye color]]
1251* If [[spoiler:Booker and Comstock are the same person, more or less]], then why does [[spoiler:Booker]] have green eyes while [[spoiler:Comstock]] has blue eyes?
1252** Probably the closest explanation is the eye colour is one of the minor differences between realities--constants and variables--in the same way that the Lutece twins are functionally the same person but different genders. The variable is eye colour (or voice pitch/depth, for that matter), the constant is that [[spoiler:Booker [=DeWitt=] goes to the water for baptism.]]
1253[[/folder]]
1254
1255[[folder:Possession on vending machines]]
1256* This is probably just a programming quirk, but why does using the possession vigor on vending machines (except in the Fairgrounds before you have any weapons) turn everybody around hostile? It's understandable in the Finkton Worker Induction Center since you're tampering with Fink Manufacturing property, but the patrons of the Graveyard Shift bar in Shantytown shouldn't care, especially since a Kinetoscope shows them beating on a vending machine.
1257** It's possible they want the money for themselves and it's a spontaneous group (attempt at) mugging.
1258[[/folder]]
1259
1260[[folder:Why is Columbia okay with vigors?]]
1261* Rapture being fine with plasmids makes sense as self-improvement and body modification fits better with objectivist views but Columbia is inhabited by hyper-militant fundamentalist christians. Changing your body (as it would be seen as altering God's work) and what are basically magic powers would most certainly not be fine with that crowd. It mostly feels like they added it in just so the gameplay wouldn't be too different from the previous games.
1262** Columbia isn't strictly a fundamentalist Christian theocracy so much as a cult of personality around Comstock. He's definitely happy to use the trappings of Judeo-Christian theology--the lamb and the shepherd, Bible quotations, "the Lord judges, I act"--but it's ultimately to make ''himself'' look better; look around in Columbia and you'll notice there's no crosses, no Jesus, no saints or Biblical figures, only one church if you count the weird baptism reception hall. Any Christian fundamentalism in Columbia has been so mashed up into American jingoism and Comstock's deification that at this point, if Comstock says vigors are good, vigors are good.
1263[[/folder]]
1264
1265[[folder:Booker and Lady Comstock]]
1266* If the theory that Annabelle [=DeWitt=] and Lady Comstock being the same person is true, then why doesn't Booker recognize his own wife? It's not like he can miss her. Her pictures and statues are all over the city.
1267** Different timeline, slightly different appearance? Also, Annabelle has been dead for 19 years, he's been drunk a lot, apparent Elizabeth also looks sorta similar to Lady Comstock, and therefore Annabelle... Also hard to recognize someone you haven't seen in 19 years, just from a statue or a painting?
1268** It's not just pictures and statues. Booker also sees her perfectly preserved corpse at one point. The most likely explanation is that that he doesn't remember what she looks like anymore.
1269*** It's also possible Booker's memory of his wife's appearance is one of the things locked behind the nursery door, so to speak. Annabelle [=DeWitt=] probably died young and would very, ''very'' likely not be down with Booker selling Elizabeth, and his guilt, grief and trauma related to her death would probably play into the Tear amnesia he gets.
1270[[/folder]]
1271
1272!!Burial at Sea
1273
1274[[folder:''Burial at Sea'' makes the original game make no sense!]]
1275* If we're to believe the generally accepted explanation of what the ending of ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' means, it is that Elizabeth, in drowning Booker [=DeWitt=] in the baptism pool before the choice between [=DeWitt's=] path and Comstock's is made, utterly obliterates every timeline which involves Booker [=DeWitt=] becoming Zachary Comstock by killing him at the very point where that choice is made. Thus, we are to believe, Comstock CANNOT exist anywhere in any universe as Booker can never become him, found Columbia, rain holy fire on the world etc. But ''Burial at Sea'' quite clearly proves that to be horseshit, because it now turns out that far from preventing any Comstock from ever existing, he still does in at least some timelines, and Elizabeth (presumably the last one left in the BS:I ending) has to roam around the multiverse to get revenge on his various incarnations individually. WHAT. THE. FUCK. You can either take this one of two ways: either Elizabeth's timeline-reality-warping at the end of BS:I was never going to destroy all the Comstocks, in which case there was no point drowning Booker at all other than RuleOfDrama (and this directly contradicts what Liz herself says about Comstock's still being alive in "a million million worlds" necessitating him being smothered in the crib), or the explanation given for what Elizabeth did makes absolutely no sense and therefore neither does the ending, even as a metaphor. Either way it somehow manages to RetCon ''in'' a plot hole, which seems at best deeply unsatisfying and at worst something that completely ruins the first game entirely...
1276** It's possible that drowning Booker only destroyed Comstock in the worlds where Elizabeth existed. Anna was killed as an infant in Burial!Comstock's universe, thus leading to his guilt and absconding to Rapture. Elizabeth, and by extension Columbia, could not have happened in that universe because Anna died -- therefore, in that universe Booker was not drowned because Elizabeth did not exist to drown him. Alpha!Elizabeth, fresh from the events of Infinite, is coming to fix that error by killing that version of Comstock. It's also possible that by going into another universe, Comstock saved himself from the universes resetting so that he always drowned, and again Alpha!Elizabeth is coming to fix that error. Either way, the DLC is not over yet. All of this will probably be explained come Episode Two...
1277** Another possibility is that this DLC actually takes place before Comstock is erased from the timeline, or perhaps concurrently. Once the Siphon is destroyed, Elizabeth gains total control over time and space. She could have potentially spent millennia wandering around the multiverse before returning to Booker and helping him destroy Comstock and from his perspective it would have seemed completely sequitur. It does raise the question of why she bothered killing Comstock if she's planning to erase him from existence later, but it could be that killing him was not her ultimate goal in that timeline. Instead she was merely using him to find Sally, and once they did she pulled a YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness on him.
1278** But in how the Lutece twins explain time, there is no such thing as BEFORE Comstock being erased, Comstock is erased, will be erased, has been erased. All time is simultaneous. The only explanation is that indeed, ''VideoGame/BioShock'''s ending is BS, or rather Elizabeth and Booker have no idea what they were doing. They thought they erased the timeline, but in fact, it was all futile, because there are always constants, and introducing new constants only introduces new timelines.
1279** I figured it was a Comstock that escaped the event that ended all his counterparts. If you look at Alpha?Elizabeth as she was begging Comstock to let go of Anna, she is still wearing the clothes she had on in Columbia. In the end of the main game, the Elizabeths that drown Alpha!Booker are not her. It can be figured that it was at this moment she left Alpha!Booker to go and try and get Comstock to reconsider in this universe, maybe as a way to alter the infinite timelines without killing him, this being her first try to alter timelines with her abilities, she fails...badly. This Comstock then has the Luteces transport him to the BAS!Rapture where he forgets his past, his mind create memories as to why he is in Rapture and he becomes Booker!Comstock, but this saves him. As he made the journey to a universe where Booker never existed or was still alive elsewhere, before Alpha!Booker erased the Comstock timelines. He saved himself, unwittingly, from never existing. The point, as I understood, of the entire DLC was Alpha!Elizabeth trying to see if Booker!Comstock had truly changed into a Booker, or if deep down he was still Comstock. This is why she set up events so that Booker!Comstock's rescue of Sally would mirror Comstock' stealing Dead!Elizabeth. She was giving him a second chance and once again he failed, showing that in the end, he was still Comstock. She then watched him die to "erase" him, one less Comstock to harm others.
1280** He tried to rescue a little girl from a life of being a genetic abomination, he didn't even want to use the heat up the furnace trick, ''and Elizabeth is judging as an asshole deserving to die''. What. I think Liz, godlike or not, is tottaly blinded by her hatred for Comstock, and that she is trying to pidgeonholed him as an evil bastard, no matter what.
1281** Well... dude did decapitate a baby.
1282** With an infinite amount of parallel universes it's perfectly possible that there's at least one if not countless where Booker refuses the baptism but due to who knows what factors becomes Comstock anyway, as well as Bookers who take the baptism but for whatever reason avoid becoming a power-hungry religious zealot. The drowning only prevents the Comstocks that result from the baptism, it doesn't stop the ones that happen due to other circumstances.
1283** The answer appears obvious that Comstock's cross-universe trip to Rapture delinked him somewhat from the timeline (like Elizabeth and the Lucetes, but to a lesser degree), protecting him from the trans-dimensional Comstockicide. That caused Elizabeth to go back on a more personal level.
1284** it is possible that a booker has a second thought about rejecting babtism and goes back a a later time. this creates a third variation of himself the indecisive!comstock. creating a world paralel to the columbias but a half second to late. since this multiverse runs on voteordie karma indecisive!comstock is given the harshest punishment to live and die as a failure, Compare cocksureamericanazisantaclause!Comsock who gets the martyr death he actually wanted and dies believing everything will happn as he envisions, or the fate of booker not only is rewarded with redemption but enlightment. in the end indecisive!comstock is a benign loose end that some elizibeth decided needed to be tied up in an overly complicated manner, as most revenge plots do, setting in motion consequences that would probably happen anyway
1285
1286
1287[[/folder]]
1288
1289[[folder:What is Elizabeth Doing At the End of ''Burial at Sea''?]]
1290* While I can understand a lot of the plot details regarding the ending, there's one massive issue I still can't get around. If the hypothetical split between the main campaign and the ''Burial at Sea'' campaign is the event where Comstock takes Anna away from Booker in the portal, then the ''Burial at Sea'' story takes place in the one that we see from Comstock's POV, where Anna is decapitated, he suffers from guilt and retreats to Rapture. Question: What is grown-up Elizabeth doing there? I understand that at the end of the main game, she was basically trying to rid out all versions of Comstock after becoming an omniscient PhysicalGod, even the ones that weren't formed by Booker's baptism, but then why is she there? If she's able to jump timelines like the Luteces now, then why doesn't she just deck Comstock in the head rather than just shouting at him with the Luteces for him to give Anna back to Booker? Hell, if she could do that, then why did she have to follow him when he went to Rapture? Couldn't she just have jumped back again and actually did something else at that same situation? I realize this is only Episode One's ending, I do think this warrants some form of explanation.
1291** I think of it as she's trying to redeem him first, see if this Comstock is one of the variables. One of the Comstocks who lets go, or will be the first to let go. And her trailing him throughout the game to see if Rapture has changed him, to see if he's a better man. She's a physical god, she can judge him all she wants, and then when she makes his judgment, determine what to do.
1292** There's one problem with that - When they find Sally in the ducts, Elizabeth is insistent in burning her out of them and Comstock wants no part in potentially killing her, going so far in that he demands Elizabeth hit the thermostat. If Elizabeth were judging his character or looking to redeem him then she wouldn't be putting herself in a position where she could be doing something even more monstrous than what she knows Comstock did.
1293[[/folder]]
1294
1295[[folder:Big Daddies in ''Burial at Sea'']]
1296* For some reason, no one on the Internet is bringing that up. The original ''VideoGame/BioShock'' [[http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Protecting_Little_Ones establishes]] that Big Daddies were created during the Atlas/Ryan civil war in 1959. But they appear in ''Burial at Sea'', which is an anachronism, since this DLC is set shortly before the start of the war, and there isn't yet "a genetic arms race" going on nor a whole lot of corpses lying on the streets. And the Bouncer that fights Booker is clearly shown to be protecting Sally, which means these Big Daddies aren't just maintenance workers who would later be given a new function. It's understandable why the developers wanted to include such an iconic element of Rapture as the Big Daddy, but they didn't quite think this through from the writing standpoint. Of course, the discrepancy could easily be explained by this Rapture not being in the same reality as the one from ''VideoGame/BioShock'', but Ken Levine's words in [[http://www.computerandvideogames.com/432380/interviews/return-to-rapture-ken-levine-on-bioshock-infinite-burial-at-sea/ an interview]] imply that this is, in fact, the Rapture from the first game. So, is this a retcon, or is this Rapture really a different one? [[https://twitter.com/IGLevine Asking]] Ken about it might shed some light on the issue. ''Burial at Sea'' Episode 2 may also provide some answers. There was a similar discrepancy in ''VideoGame/BioShock2'', with Suchong dying at the hands of a Big Daddy before the New Year's Eve, although IG apparently doesn't consider this game canon, and Burial at Sea contradicts it in regard to Big Daddies, already having Bouncers around in Rapture.
1297** It's a bit of a FanWank on my part, maybe some of the information given is unreliable. I mean, we never heard of ''Minerva's Den'' and the Thinker before ''VideoGame/BioShock2''. Maybe some stuff isn't exactly known. Maybe the Big Daddies weren't widely known about. And those that did had ties to Fontaine and Ryan. Like Booker with his cop friend Sullivan, who worked directly for Ryan.
1298** The same Big Daddy issue exists in the ''VideoGame/BioShock'' prequel novel ''[[Literature/BioShockRapture Rapture]]'', but that incorporates characters from the sequel too, so that might not be canon.
1299** Episode 2 shows the how the bonding process came to be - a Little Sister healed a Big Daddy by injecting him with some of her ADAM. Maybe Sally helped out the Bouncer in Episode 1 in a similar fashion offscreen? Or maybe her screaming simply drove him into berserker mode and he attacked the two closest people nearby?
1300** Well, you actually get to know Atlas and his army of heavily spliced pals. The genetic arms race is already happening, just not in your token "Rich people's Mall". Big Daddies and Little Sisters are already happening (as you can see plenty of the first and a few of the latter) and their bonding is just on its primal stage.
1301[[/folder]]
1302
1303[[folder:''Burial at Sea'' and Vigors]]
1304* Why are there Vigors in 1959's Rapture? If they were Plasmids in any other thing except name I'd understand, but they are not only most of the same Vigors you find in Columbia (including "Shock Jockey" instead of Electro Bolt) and they make people crazy, but they are not injected. ([=INB4=] they are using the ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' engine. I'm sure they could have tweaked it a bit if they really meant to.)
1305** An audio log explains how Suchong saw Fink through a Tear stealing his Plasmid designs and tweaking them into drinkable compounds, ie the Vigors. Suchong then stole that idea for essentialy next-gen Plasmids, but there wasn't time enough to distribute them widely before the attack on New Year's Eve, which is mere hours away during the event of ''Burial at Sea'' ep1.
1306** This wouldn't seem make sense though, since there is a chalkboard in Fink's Leisure Room that indicates that drinkable vigors use 10X more Adam than the injected versions, and that he will be changing the vigors to injected versions. Why then, would he tweak the injected version into the drinkable version, and then change back? And why would Suchong use a less efficient version as the "next-gen" version?
1307** Because as the Rapture Civil War wore on, ADAM became less and less common and more difficult to acquire. Drinking it is cool and all and a lot less uncomfortable than needles, but in the end he had to switch to injected to save resources. Presumably Fink would do the same because it would increase the profit margin.
1308[[/folder]]
1309
1310[[folder:No Happy Endings in ''Infinite''?]]
1311* Why do the endings of the main game and ''Burial at Sea'', Episode 1, have something horrible happening to the player?
1312** Maybe Irrational hates happy endings?
1313** I'd consider [[spoiler:Booker reuniting with baby Anna, with Comstock and Columbia retroactively erased from existence]], to be a fairly happy ending, all things considered.
1314** All that ending means is Anna is stuck with a Booker, who we can assume has no memories of his adventures in Columbia, who is a horrible man and the same guy that sold her to settle a debt. Is it really good she's stuck with him?
1315** And given how Burial at Sea ends, there is simply no way out, the [=DeWitts=] are doomed to suffer at the end of the road.
1316** A running theme throughout the main game and both Episodes is that of redemption, namely that [[spoiler:the only way Booker and Elizabeth believe they can redeem themselves is by dying to save one who is almost ruined by their actions]], while on the flip side [[spoiler:Comstock gets his comeuppance for refusing to accept responsibility for the way his actions have ruined others and selfishly pursuing his own ends]]. And in order for that to happen, you have to do terrible things to the PlayerCharacter.
1317[[/folder]]
1318
1319[[folder:In ''Burial at Sea'', does Elizabeth [[spoiler: murder Sally to troll Comstock?]]]]
1320* As mentioned above, once they find out Sally is in the pipe ducts Elizabeth is so insistent in turning the heat up and Comstock repeatedly warns her that it could kill the girl. Eventually he's so pissed that he makes Elizabeth hit the thermostat, and at the point he's almost saved Sally Elizabeth demands he lets her go. When the Big Daddy kills Comstock, it's pretty obvious that the girl's still in the pipe, so what happens then? did Elizabeth just do something much more evil than what she killed Comstock over?
1321** Promotional material for episode 2 shows Elizabeth holding a Little Sister, presumably Sally. Maybe she needs her for something, and decided to make Comstock help her (and then kill him [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness when she didn't need him]]). It's hard to tell until it actually comes out. Furthermore, Little Sisters are basically immortal. Unless those vents are a ''lot'' hotter than they should be (like hot enough to ''incinerate'' things), she'll survive. It will hurt, but she'll survive.
1322** Guessing from the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUQsbEO0bGw trailer]] for Part 2, Sally survived.
1323** As of Episode 2, Sally is indeed alive, and [[spoiler:Elizabeth's treatment of Sally in Part 1 is basically a giant "What have I done?" that drives her events in Part 2]].
1324
1325[[/folder]]
1326
1327[[folder: Cohen's mustache]]
1328* Is it faked, or is it real? Cohen probably had an actual mustache, but in ''Burial at Sea'', it looks like it was drawn on. So do his eyebrows. For reference, see this [[http://i.neoseeker.com/neo_image/81602/news/7/cohen_trailerscreen_web.jpg picture.]] and [[http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/684846174479082699/0738DB5190CAB9B83EF0E74CC9CD9CCB1D44F84E/ this one.]]
1329** Looks pretty fake to me, like he smeared his face with a calligraphy pen. Come to think of it, I don't think he even his mustache in ''VideoGame/BioShock'' was real, looking back at it. But yeah, no facial hair could be that smooth.
1330** You could be right-[[http://cloud-3.steampowered.com/ugc/684846174479077203/B871F4C1DDE05C79BC7D95AFCDD99F76407EBB0E/ This]] picture I posted on the NightmareFuel page shows him without one. But then, Fontaine Futuristics also made lots of other Plasmids that aren't seen in the game. I remember in the ''Literature/BioShockRapture'' book, an angry Brooklyn worker yells that his "New Skills" Plasmid, that he was going to use for a job tomorrow, was stolen. So perhaps Fontaine made a Plasmid that gives you impossibly smooth looking facial hair?
1331[[/folder]]
1332
1333[[folder: How was the first Elizabeth unable to handle a single Big Daddy?]]
1334* Given how easily she was able to dispatch Songbird, how was she unable to deal with a much weaker Big Daddy? Did she not have her god-like powers? Why? There's no Siphon in Rapture like there was in Columbia to limit her abilities to just opening Tears.
1335** She panicked and hesitated a moment too long (her dialog suggests she didn't want to hurt the Bouncer) and got backhanded across the room before she could use her powers.
1336** Unless I'm mistaken, doesn't her dialog later also suggest that she could see the future previously? If so, why didn't she see it coming?
1337** It depends on your perspective, given Part 2. [[spoiler:On one hand, it could be argued that Elizabeth just didn't care. As long as she didn't return to this reality, killing her there would have no real impact. However, it's sorta implied that Elizabeth knew that dying, then incarnating there to become mortal would serve a greater good by freeing the Little Sisters... but that implies a lot more.]]
1338[[/folder]]
1339
1340[[folder: So, why does Atlas let Sally go in the end?]]
1341* This is the one thing I don't get about the ending to ''Burial at Sea part 2''. The DLC goes to great lengths to show what an utter monster Atlas is, so it seems kind of odd for him to let Sally go at the end, especially given how he'd repeatedly stated how valuable Little Sisters and their ADAM were. You'd think he'd just feed her to his Splicers after [[spoiler: murdering Elizabeth]].
1342** All that mattered to Atlas was having the Ace. He got so tied up in ordering his splicers about for the next phase of his master plan that he forgets Sally even exists. Either that, or he decides to let her go in the hopes that Jack will eventually find and kill her to boost his power.
1343[[/folder]]
1344
1345[[folder:''[=BioShock=] 2'' considered noncanon?]]
1346* So ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' implied that Suchong was killed by Delta. However,[[spoiler: we see Suchong killed by a random bouncer, and Suchong never actually succeeded in creating the pair bond.]] Given the alternate universes scheme of Infinite, technically everything and nothing is canon, but it kind of bothers me to see a direct canon conflict like this. What gives?
1347** Delta did not kill Suchong, nor was it ever overtly implied that he did. No canon issues there.
1348** For the Meta reason, ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' was not developed by Ken Levine's team, and in interviews they've mentioned not being particularly fond of it (to say the least). While making ''Burial at Sea'', they pretty much ignored ''VideoGame/BioShock2'', although there's nothing that overtly renders it non-canon.
1349** While Delta is never stated to have killed Suchong, having his death occur on the New Year's Eve of the Kashmir renders the second game non-canon. Suchong's death is never given a specific date, but in the ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' universe, it is explicitly stated that his death occurs prior to the creation of the Alpha series, because while the Big Daddy who killed him imprinted on the little sister, he would only react if she was in trouble or he needed her. He would otherwise wander off and do his own thing. Alexander surmises that this means there must be a stronger bond formed, because otherwise the Big Daddy will wander away and the little sister will be left defenseless. Thus Alpha series, and the conditioning that kills Delta if he's too far from Eleanor comes into play. Sofia Lamb takes Eleanor DURING the Kashmir attack. Eleanor and Delta, the first successful bonded pair of the Alpha series, are already functioning in their roles as a Little Sister and Big Daddy by the time the New Year's party attack happens. If the events of ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' were to take place at all, Suchong has to have died BEFORE the New Year, in order to give time for the Alpha series to be created afterward, when Gil Alexander takes over the project, and for there to be three failed attempts to create the bonded pair before Eleanor and Delta are put together. By placing the death on the New Year, they render the events of the second game void.
1350** [[http://youtu.be/rciyCHa6J4o?t=46s This about sums it up]].
1351** [[MST3KMantra Don't think too much about it.]] I admit it is possible I missed something, but when it comes to the timeline, Burial at Sea can't even seem to get itself consistent, let alone with VideoGame/BioShock2. To wit, Suchong's death in Episode 2 has him complaining about how they can't get the Big Daddies to protect the Sisters, but that's exactly what the one at the end of Episode 1 was doing.
1352[[/folder]]
1353
1354[[folder: No one recognizes famous celebrity Elizabeth?]]
1355* Elizabeth is the hand-picked apprentice of Sander Cohen, who is Andrew Ryan's best pal. She has reached a level of fame such that her face is on advertising posters in the most lavish lounges the city has, and her singing voice is the radio for all to hear. Yet not a single person notices her as anything more than a random brunette woman, including Sander Cohen himself, despite the fact that she apparently hasn't changed her outfit for two months.
1356** Cohen and the splicers are all insane. Andrew and Atlas wouldn't care enough to bring it up.
1357** Cohen is more cunning than he looks. When talking to Elizabeth, he refers to her as "my little Songbird" or something to that effect. Watching that conversation again, it seems he does know Elizabeth but is playing coy in front of Booker because he sees that's what Elizabeth is doing (and having such a joke at Booker's expense is exactly the sort of thing that would give Cohen a buzz). As for why no one else recognizes her, Cohen seems to run through apprentices at a prodigious rate, and also it can be surprisingly difficult to recognize someone standing right in front of you from a poster or from TV.
1358** Coming from that theory, people would only hit themselves when they notice the poster, recall seeing "that girl" somewhere before-then realize they've just seen a famous celebrity.
1359[[/folder]]
1360
1361[[folder: Little Sister torture in ''Burial at Sea'']]
1362* In the second episode of ''Burial at Sea'' Fontaine tortures a Little Sister by giving it a lobotomy while she is fully conscious. Why did this not cause a Big Daddy to come rampaging in? For the rest of the DLC there are Big Daddies all over who will attack just for looking at a Little Sister funny.
1363** Probably because her Daddy is dead, or at the very least occupied. If they can't hear her scream, they can't find her. All those Little Sisters you save/harvest in the other games couldn't call limitless Daddies to their aid, and neither can Sally.
1364** But wasn't the Big Daddy still alive? Or at least alive enough to kill Booker at the end of Episode One? Plus, considering the constant pairbond between the Little Sister and the Big Daddy, one has to wonder how they were separated to begin with.
1365** The Big Daddy was still alive when they kidnapped her. It's gone when Ryan invades, so it's safe to assume it's wandered off or they killed it. As for how they got separated, the Big Daddies summon the Little Sisters by pounding on vents. You spent the first episode making sure Sally was trapped in the vent system. With only one way out and the Daddy occupied elsewhere, they could grab and hide her. After that, it doesn't matter if the Daddy is alive or dead. Sally is in no position to call him, and Atlas is not going to leave her in a position where she could.
1366** Also, the lobotomy was a threat, not actually performed?
1367[[/folder]]
1368
1369[[folder: Out of nowhere....Samurai]]
1370* So most of the tears that Elizabeth creates are reasonable as to how the things could possibly be there. Usually it's crates of health and ammo or putting in a piece of architecture that isn't there, but could easily have been. Or she brings in stuff like the Patriots. They are either "For want of a nail" sort of things that could have been made in rapture, or things stolen wholesale from a different dimension she knows well, namely Columbia. But where the hell do the samurai come from? What even are they? Robots like the Patriots from Columbia? Is this an alternate Rapture where Andrew Ryan was Japanese? Or real people? If the latter, why do they serve you instead of being confused as shit at being randomly transported from feudal Japan? The only possible explanation I can think of is that Elizabeth read them up somewhere (where? I don't see either Columbia or Rapture having historical books on the world's different cultures) and deemed them [[Main/RuleofCool too awesome to not summon.]]
1371[[/folder]]
1372
1373[[folder: Saving Sally]]
1374* If Elizabeth was so intent on saving the little sisters, why didn't she just go back and smother Andrew Ryan in his crib, or something to that effect, to just wipe him out of the multiverse? She could have prevented not only the little sisters from being created, but also the thousands upon thousands of deaths that occur over the course of the Fall of Rapture.
1375** That worked with Booker because all that came from him originated with a single choice late in his life. Is she going to smother every single Ryan in every single universe?
1376** Yeah, that's exactly what she would do, since it's exactly what she did to Comstock before they retconned it to force Infinite to be a prequel to ''VideoGame/BioShock''. It's not too far fetched to imagine that there was an event in Ryan's life that "made" him who he was; why couldn't she kill him at the point where he decided to build rapture?
1377** Also remember that despite how things appear, God!Elizabeth is not literally omnipotent. As the Luteces said: "There are rules, even for one such as you." We don't know precisely what she can't do, but apparently snapping her fingers and teleporting all the bad guys into the middle of the ocean is beyond her abilities. The implication is that she has to work within the bounds of the constants and variables that Booker has to deal with. So the only way to kill off both Ryan and Fontaine and rescue the maximum number of people (including the Sisters) was to [[spoiler:bring Jack to Rapture]].
1378** There's a difference between teleporting all of the bad guys to the middle of the ocean and stepping outside of all the universes to make a change that affects every universe simultaneously, which is literally what she did at the end of Infinite. This also implies that her and Booker are not playing by the same rules since Elizabeth actually eliminates one of the constants (the city) at the end of the main game.
1379** Again: She has rules. We don't know what they are. They probably should have elaborated on the rules more, but saying "We don't know what she can't do, therefore she should be able to do anything" is simply false. We know that one choice was the difference between Comstock and Booker; remove that choice, and Comstock is removed, as well as everything he ever did. We have no evidence to suggest that Ryan, Rapture, and Atlas would be so easy to deal with.
1380** True, but to flip that on its head, we have no evidence to suggest that Ryan, Rapture and Atlas would be at all HARD to deal with. There are justifications to be made, certainly, and many of them make sense... but there's little in the game's narrative to point to them. If the plot and character actions only work because "Magic works like this but not like this because we said so", there's something wrong with the story.
1381** Maybe she can affect Comstock/Booker's existence's because she's such a big part of their story, but she can't affect Ryan or anyone else to that extent because her existence doesn't tie in with theirs as much. Erasing someone in every possible timeline ever is a pretty major thing after all, it's possible she can only have that level of reality-warping power when she's dealing with people and/or events related to her.
1382[[/folder]]
1383
1384[[folder: Elizabeth's Big Omniscient [[spoiler: Suicide]]]]
1385* Okay, this is why writers should never, ever give main characters godlike power: because after that point, they ''cannot be allowed to screw up.'' If Elizabeth was omniscient during operation Troll Bookerstock, she should have been able to see that she would, in fact, die horribly if she went forward with it. Furthermore, she should've been able to see that she'd be BroughtDownToNormal when she came back, get tortured, help a tyrant rise to power and ruin countless peoples' lives, etc. Sure, Human!Elizabeth was pretty much stuck with the choices she had. But Omniscient!Elizabeth should've been able to completely avoid all of that by coming at the problem from a different angle. Because, y'know, godlike powers and stuff.
1386** The only way any of this remotely makes sense is if Omniscient!Elizabeth essentially decided to punish and kill herself for her own loss of innocence, knowing that the Big Daddy would kill her, knowing what her future self would do, knowing the hell she'd be putting Sally through because of her bizarrely convoluted revenge on Comstock. Which is just ''deeply'' unpleasant.
1387** Yes, that is exactly right. Mortal!Elizabeth brings this up a couple times, demanding to know why she came up with such a convoluted plan while in god mode. She doesn't get a direct answer, but the implication is that there's a limited (though large) number of things she can do even at her most powerful, and getting knocked down to mortal, tortured, and helping Atlas bring Jack to Rapture was the best plan. Remember though, that despite fans (and Mortal!Elizabeth) referring to God!Elizabeth as TheOmniscient, she still has a human mind with human desires, which means human mistakes. The entire DLC would have gone much more smoothly if she had been willing to kill Bookerstock outright, but she insisted on making him suffer. "We [=DeWitts=] can never leave well enough alone."
1388[[/folder]]
1389
1390[[folder: So Infinite is really [[spoiler: VideoGame/BioShock's prequel?]]]]
1391* Let me get this straight...everything Booker, Comstock and Elizabeth did in the past year was just to set-up the beginning of the original ''VideoGame/BioShock?
1392** Yep, feel happy knowing that the girl you put so much effort into saving is just an accessory to the success of a faceless man from a game made ''seven years ago''.
1393** I feel more bad that Elizabeth, despite her godlike power, is DEAD.
1394** I was being sarcastic, Elizabeth's death was a gross disrespect to her character, because it reduced her and her entire character development to nothing more than a footnote in the backstory to a game that's been out for years, and killed her off in a way that didn't really make much sense. How is it some great sacrifice that she's dying to save Sally when that same sacrifice is also dooming nearly everyone else in Rapture? Not to mention it could have been easily avoided if she'd just opened up the Ace in the Hole, memorized what was on it, taken it to Atlas, destroyed it in front of him and then told him what was on it over the radio when she was far enough away from him with Sally definitely safe (because she only knew Sally would be safe ''after'' Atlas smashed her face in with the wrench, which doesn't sound like the best idea given how much effort she put into saving the emotionally manipulative little plot device).
1395** I blame the writers for running out of ideas.
1396** I wouldn't call ''setting off the entire events of the plot'' just a footnote, plus it's implied that the good ending of ''VideoGame/BioShock'' 1 is canon here, so by bringing Jack there she saved all of the Little Sisters and made it possible for them to all have normal lives on the surface - which also saves Sally, which makes up for her using the girl as a pawn in her revenge scheme in the first part. Also...maybe some version of her is still alive/omnipotent because of quantum whatsits.
1397** Her role is still reduced from main character to an accessory to the success of a faceless goon. Plus, it's not ''implied'' that the good ending is canon. It's outright stating that the good ending was canon. Which completely invalidates the moral choice aspect of the first game (which was also the only reason Jack didn't have a personality). The DLC seems to believe that Jack was on some moral crusade through Rapture, and that Liz's actions in the DLC are ultimately the right, heroic thing to do. Despite the fact that throughout the first game, it's made very clear that what happened in Rapture was a horrible tragedy (a tragedy that Liz helped cause) and saving the Little Sisters was making the best out of a bad situation.
1398** Elizabeth is still pretty important... In her own game, that is. She also got to be important into another one's story, which is pretty cool.
1399** OP here: I have yet to actually PLAY the DLC, only seen the ending for both episodes...I would play them, but my bank account tells me otherwise.
1400** What about the other Comstocks? Does her death mean she won't be able to get rid of all of them? (especially since the DLC LIED about Booker's death in the main campaign being the end of every Comstock, ever)
1401** Essentially, yes. This DLC dropped that plotline in favour of drooling over the plot of the original game.
1402** A good point was made on the fridge page:
1403--->A lot of criticism has been aimed at the fact that Elizabeth lets herself become mortal [[spoiler: and sacrifices herself]] just so she can save Sally and the rest of the Little Sisters. But was it really just about saving Sally? No; she did everything she did because [[spoiler: it lead to Jack eventually bringing down Fontaine. Remember Fontaine's admitted goals in the first ''VideoGame/BioShock'': he eventually wanted to return to the surface with his new empire. At worst he would have subjugated the world with an army of jacked-up (if mentally unstable) super humans. At best, he would have put ADAM on the market and [[CrapsackWorld turned the surface into a copy of Rapture]]. Much like Booker saw a future where Columbia ended up destroying the surface, Elizabeth likely saw a future where Fontaine brought ADAM to the surface and caused a decline in society like what happened in Rapture]]. The parallels are even more obvious when you compare them to [[spoiler: the revelation that Daisy Fitzroy demonized and sacrificed herself to eventually bring Comstock's end]]: this was bigger than saving just the Little Sisters, [[spoiler: this was about saving the ''entire world'']].
1404** So yeah, Elizabeth is ''still'' important-just posthumously.
1405** However, there's two problems with this: first of all, Columbia didn't just pose a threat to the world, it posed a threat to other dimensions as well; Future!Elizabeth herself claimed that once "the Sodom Below" had fallen, the city would move to another reality and conquer that too, and then onto the next after that, and so on. As horrific as the world under Fontaine's rule or widespread ADAM addiction would be, it doesn't extend to other dimensions just yet - though it might be possible if Fontaine got his hands on some of Suchong's deeper secrets. Secondly, Elizabeth's solution to the Rapture problem isn't as thorough as the solution to Columbia: killing Comstock before he created Columbia and set the ball in motion stopped Columbia's threat by removing all incarnations of it from the multiverse, wiping out all dimensions that stemmed from the baptism... or at least it ''should'' have up until Elizabeth started visiting it for some reason, but that's a gripe for another day. The point is, Rapture exists in other dimensions, and this solution was only enacted in one of them. Now, unless I'm just so upset by this DLC that I've missed some important clue, isn't it somewhat logical to assume that there are dimensions where ADAM and Splicing ended up being transplanted to the surface anyway? Even if Fontaine never could have escaped from the sunken department store without Elizabeth's help, even if Jack harvesting the Little Sisters is ''' '' somehow'' ''' made absolutely impossible (which I still find doubtful at best), surely there would have been others that might have been able and willing to capitalize on it.
1406** In that case, you're all probably just very, very upset. I suggest we leave this section alone before it incites more arguments.
1407[[/folder]]
1408
1409[[folder: So why was [[spoiler: threatening to lobotomize Sally a good idea?]]]]
1410* After Liz dares Atlas to lobotomise her, mentioning that if he does so he'll never get his Ace in the Hole, he switches tactic and goes to lobotomise Sally. Why on earth would that be a good idea, given that Liz was only working with Atlas so he wouldn't hurt Sally. If he hurts her, he has nothing to hold over Liz and she'd never have to give up that information. He won't kill Liz because she has something he wants, and he shouldn't have been able to threaten Sally for that same reason.
1411** He was expecting her to break before Sally did. And she did. The difference here is that if she hadn't broken before he lobotomized Sally, then Atlas could have found something else to threaten her with. But if he lobotomized Elizabeth, well, that's the end of it. You can't interrogate a drooling moron. Besides, as a Little Sister, Sally might have actually been able to recover from it, though it would have hurt a LOT.
1412** I think you're missing the point, Liz had nothing else that could be used against her. Atlas was convinced that she had information that made her too valuable to kill or lobotomize, and threatening the one thing that had guaranteed her cooperation until that point is just utterly stupid. Liz only broke because the story dictated she should, despite the fact that by all rights she should have been able to play Atlas like a fiddle at that point.
1413** Elizabeth is a compassionate young woman who doesn't want to see a little girl get tortured in front of her. Atlas knew that, and decided to torture a little girl in front of her to get her to talk, which worked. This isn't complicated. It would have worked on a ''lot'' of people. It was a risk, yes, in that if Atlas was forced to go through with it he would have had no obvious leverage, but he wasn't, so he didn't.
1414** Elizabeth is compassionate, yes, but she isn't stupid. Quite the opposite, and she proved throughout Episode One that she's a skilled manipulator when she wants to be. If she'd dared Atlas to go through with it he'd have had to stop because he'd lose any leverage he has. If he lobotomises Liz, he loses the best lead he has at getting his Ace in the Hole, if he lobotomises Sally, she has no more reason to cooperate and he loses the best lead he has at getting his Ace in the Hole. Liz, by virtue of Atlas just assuming she knows what his Ace in the Hole is, technically has just as much, if not more, leverage over him than he has over her by that point. It's just that the plot demanded that instead of actually using her brain, her strongest asset, Liz should have a mental breakdown so her mental version of Booker could tell her what to do.
1415** She wasn't exactly in a rational state of mind at that point, because she had just been tortured, and Sally was about to be lobotomized in front of her. This would have worked on very nearly ''anyone'', and Elizabeth is not exactly used to being tortured or anything of the sort. And her mental Booker is just the form the last vestiges of her omniscience takes.
1416** She was holding it fairly well together when she dared him to lobotomise her. But even then, it still raises the question of why Atlas would bother when she was his best lead to finding the Ace. He didn't know her mental state was taking a nosedive and he'd seen how clever Liz is. Why on earth would he put that at risk by threatening her when it could very easily have backfired in his face?
1417** First, we don't know if Atlas would have carried out the threat. What he knows is that Elizabeth was willing to walk through all manner of hell to save Sally, willing to risk her own life for Sally's sake. While lobotomizing Sally might've somehow made Elizabeth even LESS likely to cooperate (...which would be hard, given that Atlas was just torturing Elizabeth for information), its more likely that Atlas figured Elizabeth would give up the info to save Sally... given everything else she's done to save Sally. And, hey, if Elizabeth still isn't fazed... well, the brain's still in there, just need to find another way to get at it.
1418** I guess that's what's confusing me there, because Atlas is Fontaine, who isn't really the type to play such a risk, especially with someone he's only known for a few hours, and has only one known method of controlling. I mean in the first game, he had complete control over Jack and when he lost that he still had his failsafe codephrase (which makes me wonder how he had that when he didn't have Would You Kindly) to shut Jack down, and only lost that because Tenenbaum was smarter and Jack more persistent than he gave them credit for. It doesn't really make sense for him to threaten his only method of ensuring Liz's cooperation when he's aware how smart she is and could very easily ''lose'' that cooperation now that he's revealed how vital she is to his plans.
1419** Elizabeth ''isn't'' cooperating. She was cooperating when she said she'd get them back to Rapture. Now that's done, and Atlas wants the information she supposedly has, information Elizabeth is refusing to divulge. There's no benefit to not harming Sally now. She's only useful as a tool to get Elizabeth to talk. If she talks, then he wins. If she doesn't, no skin off his back. She wasn't talking anyway, so he's lost nothing by torturing Sally.
1420** It's simple: He's taken a young compassionate woman who wanted to save a child, and threatened her to explicitly inflict a whole lot of pain on that child if she didn't cooperate. A pain Sally would actually ''heal from'', so the torture could be repeated. And that's how torture works, you try and break someone's will through pain. Some do, some don't. Elisabeth did.
1421[[/folder]]
1422
1423[[folder: Why was Sally important?]]
1424* There are equally infinite universes in which Sally literally does not exist, and also equally many in which Sally doesn't get turned into a little sister, as well as equally many where Sally does get turned into a little sister and can't be saved. Why does one version of one girl who may or may not exist depending on whatever door Elizabeth arbitrarily walks into matter so much?
1425** Because one ending of a game that came out 7 years ago is more important than the entirety of ''VideoGame/BioShockInfinite'' and its characters, apparently.
1426** It's even worse than that. Sally and the other Little Sisters are more important than everyone alive in Rapture (who were not all terrible people, mind you) and everyone on the plane that Jack hijacked. The problem is that the fate of Rapture is a horrific tragedy, and saving the Little Sisters just a case of salvaging a little good out of the mess. [=Ep2=], for all its good, tries to turn the original ''VideoGame/BioShock'' into a noble adventure. One might be able to argue that this was the only way the Little Sisters could be saved... but that's never implied in [=Ep1=] or 2.
1427** When weighed on a grand scale, yes, it seems Sally's life and those of the other Little Sisters are rather insignificant compared to everyone in Rapture, but then, Elizabeth isn't acting according to that metric. She's fixated on Sally, on saving this one little girl whom she wronged, to the neglect of all else. She's entirely willing to march straight to her own death if it means she can fix the problem she caused. Whether this is ultimately a selfish or selfless motive is subject to interpretation, of course, but it is nonetheless the reason ''why'' Sally is important ''to Elizabeth''.
1428** One theory on the web says that this is the Luteces' doing, that they've seen how one man can topple a dystopian empire by accident, and were stringing Elizabeth along to end Rapture. So they were using reverse psychology to make Elizabeth think that Sally was important, when it was her pursuit of Sally that was the really important thing.
1429[[/folder]]
1430
1431[[folder: The original Elizabeth's fate?]]
1432* Ken Levine made a point of stressing the fact that Burial at Sea - Episode 1's Elizabeth was the Elizabeth we played beside all this time through the original B:I game. Then in episode 2...she dies offscreen, in the first five minutes of the game?
1433** [[spoiler:Elizabeth's a bit godlike in powers at the time of her death, so that doesn't actually kill her. It just kills her form in that world. According to an audiolog you get later in the game, Rosalind Lutece says that if someone like her or Elizabeth incarnates in a reality where they died, they'd become mortal once again, which is what Elizabeth did: Returns to the same universe she and the remaining Comstock died in, so that she would become mortal.]] I think. Honestly, once you get into alternate realities and godlike beings and stuff... it gets a touch confusing.
1434[[/folder]]
1435
1436[[folder: Codes and Ciphers]]
1437* Why would Suchong encode his personal notes, meant solely for his own use and eyes, from broken English instead of fluent Korean?
1438** For the last one, since it was the control code, it would have had to be in English. If he wrote it in Korean and then forgot how precisely it was supposed to be translated, the code would be lost. As for the rest, it's harder to say.
1439** Notes can be stolen, as Elizabeth does. He had to abandon the tear lab, after all. If he doesn't want his work getting out, particularly sensitive work like Jack's conditioning, the encoding it makes sense.
1440** We're not saying the encoding them didn't make sense, we're asking why he encoded most of them, most of which were likely to be personal notes for himself, in broken English instead of his native language.
1441** It doesn't matter who they're for, someone can still find them and discover something he may not want to share. It is going a bit far for Big Daddy drill notes and that other mundane stuff, I'll admit, but it's easier to encode everything in a system you're familiar with than picking and choosing on a per-case basis. As for his choice of code, broken English means less coding. He can jot down simple notes relatively quickly on a paper rather than several for entire paragraphs.
1442** Yes, but he could still do that in coded Korean instead of going the extra effort of writing it down in coded English, which seems rather pointless when a lot of the notes are for his eyes only.
1443** First of all, Suchong is a Chinese name. He spent time in Korea, but he himself was apparently Chinese. In that context, consider that written Chinese isn't alphabetic and isn't inherently phonetic. A Chinese character doesn't represent a sound so much as a meaning, and there can be an awful lot of wildly different characters associated with a single sound. As such, I can only imagine encoding messages in Chinese without the obvious use of other Chinese characters would be absolutely agonizingly difficult. Any fluent Chinese-speaking tropers, feel free to correct me here. Alternative possibility: The code is in written in Chinese, but since Elizabeth is presented as a polymath extraordinaire, she learned how to read Chinese during her captivity. The rest is just TranslationConvention for the player's sake.
1444** Suchong might have personal reasons why he doesn't use his native language. A lot of people in Rapture are trying to distance themselves from their old lives on the surface- maybe this is his way of rejecting his old country. Alternatively, maybe he learned English by taking a "speak English" plasmid that didn't work so well, and now his brain can only operate in broken English.
1445** English, as a phonetic alphabet, is a million times easier to encode than Korean/Chinese/whatever. For English, you can make a relatively simple cipher that can be tough to break due to the fact English only has 26 different letters, whereas Chinese has characters numbering in the hundreds, making them impossible to code efficiently.
1446** Korean is also a phonetic alphabet.
1447[[/folder]]
1448
1449[[folder: Burial at Sea: Tenenbaum?]]
1450* Seriously. What happened to her during the events of the game? You would think that with all of her involvement in the development of both Little Sisters and Jack, she would've played a more prominent role in the DLC.
1451** You only see the one Sister, and by the time you make it past the department store you're under Fontaine's thumb. She's elsewhere, doing her thing.
1452** So, what, you think she never went shopping? Out to restaurants? She never gets even a single audio log, despite being a major player in the resolution of the first game, and barely even gets mentioned over the course of the DLC. Her involvement with the Little Sister program is never even mentioned (despite the Little Sisters ''apparent'' importance to the plot of Burial at Sea).
1453** At this point, Tenenbaum isn't out and about, but in hiding, having quit her work and vowed to save Little Sisters. An informational video mentions that Tenenbaum has been missing and the subject of rumors, before reassuring the viewer that she is only working on her next great advance. Really, she has gone into hiding at this point. She may have already begun rescuing the sisters, one by one.
1454** Tenenbaum gets no audio logs in Episode 2 but a letter: you can find it near the end in what probably used to be her office.
1455[[/folder]]
1456
1457[[folder: The Ace in the Hole]]
1458* If Jack was born in 1956, and Burial at Sea takes place in 1959/1960, how could Fontaine have possibly not known the trigger phrase for almost 4 years?
1459** He was busy. While Fontaine busied himself with his rebellion, he contracted Suchong to make an agent for him. Suchong did the legwork then tried to screw him at the end, so Fontaine never got the trigger until Elizabeth raided Suchong's lab for it.
1460** I'm more interested in how he got the Code Yellow codephrase if he didn't have Would You Kindly.
1461** Atlas probably got that code earlier, before WYK was programmed in and Suchong tried to stiff him.
1462** We don't know when he got that code. It could have been after Jack came to Rapture, or maybe it was simply easier to find. Code Yellow wouldn't have been protected as much as the Ace.
1463** Oh yeah, the code that stops Jack's heart, not gonna hide that. Can't see letting something like that float around ending badly or accidentally ruining any plans I might have.
1464** It was important, but not as important as the one to actually ''control'' him. It was hidden elsewhere.
1465** If the code phrase was meant to be this huge secret no-one knew, how did Andrew Ryan find it out, especially since he's the last man who should have known?
1466** Ryan is a smart man; watching Atlas preface every command to Jack with this phrase would set off some bells. Add on to that the fact that Jack can access the bathysphere network when he shouldn't be able to and Ryan can easily work up a theory.
1467[[/folder]]
1468
1469[[folder: Trusting Atlas]]
1470* At the end of Burial at Sea part 2, Elizabeth hands over the Ace in the Hole to Atlas. She knows and he knows that the moment he gets it he's going to kill her, but she's willing to accept this if it means saving Sally. Except there's a problem with this master plan: it's ''Atlas''. Again and again over the course of the game, he has proven he isn't trustworthy and won't abide by any deals he strikes. Sally is a little sister unprotected by a Big Daddy. Atlas earlier describes her as being 'worth her weight in gold.' Even if she isn't worth quite that much, as a little sister she's still worth something to him and is certainly worth more to him in his hands than wandering the streets. After smashing Elizabeth's head open, why wouldn't he take Sally and let his men extract her Adam anyway? If nothing else, he almost seems like the kind of guy who would do it just to spite her.
1471** Perhaps he didn't really feel it necessary. She's one Little Sister. He also claims to be tired of her, so perhaps he just didn't feel like going through the effort amidst all the chaos.
1472** Then why didn't his splicer minions kill her? They must have been jonesing for some ADAM.
1473** It doesn't matter. Even if Atlas double-crosses her and kills Sally, Elizabeth has seen that bringing Jack to Rapture will end the violence, kill Atlas, and save all the Little Sisters.
1474** She only sees that ''after'' he's smashed her face in. She had no way of knowing that when she was giving it to him.
1475** That's why her built-in Booker told her about the leap of faith. She didn't EXACTLY know why obtaining Ace in the hole is important, but her visions had shown her it WAS somehow important.
1476** There is a plausible answer to this in an above topic ("So, why did Atlas let Sally go at the end?"), but I'll add a bit more to fit the context here. Notice how Elizabeth dares Atlas to kill her before translating the Ace, and he obliges? As soon as he realises it's coded, he starts to panic. In doing so, he completely forgets about Sally and focuses on getting the code out of Elizabeth before she dies. Once she translates the code, Atlas so relieved that he immediately moves up to the next phase of his plan. At this point, Sally is nowhere in sight. She's slipped off into hiding, Atlas has forgotten about her, and the splicer minions were also too focused on the drama before them to stop her. Atlas then orders them to move out, which focuses them on the next phase of the plan and not on finding the Little Sister who ran off somewhere. Elizabeth's ploy works, Sally lives.
1477** And here's another theory from the same answer - Atlas sees through Elizabeth's ploy, but lets Sally run off because he believes that Jack will find and kill her to increase his power. After all, why waste ADAM on his expendable minions when he has to ensure his Ace in the Hole survives Rapture?
1478[[/folder]]
1479
1480[[folder: Songbird's fight]]
1481* So, in Burial at Sea, Songbird and Elizabeth apparently bonded when she repaired his breathing apparatus. The thing is, Elizabeth mentions he crashed into the tower after being in "some sort of fight". What could have been strong enough to beat Songbird like that?
1482** Comstock and Fink engineered the whole "crashing into the tower" thing to force the bond between Liz and Songbird. I think they just sabotaged his breathing tube and chucked him into the tower.
1483** Alternatively, (just guessing here) the Songbird we see in-game could have had his strength and armor upgraded over the years. An earlier Songbird would have been weaker. Weak enough that a rebel with a rocket launcher (or several) could have stunned him enough to lose flight control.
1484[[/folder]]
1485
1486[[folder: Elizabeth's powers]]
1487* If the Rapture version of Elizabeth lost her powers due to returning to a place she had died, couldn't she have simply regained her powers using a another PortalCut through one of the tears between Columbia and Rapture?
1488** Maybe. But then she would have lost them again upon incarnating in a world where she was dead.
1489** Also, remember that Comstock developed cancer due to extensive usage of the tears, and even Robert Lutece was nervous about jumping into a rip in space-time that could have left him stranded in a place that they don't even have words to describe how they don't have words for the anomaly. Elizabeth was on the clock to save Sally, and risking it all with the tear is not a good idea (like trying to use a cheat code and risk crashing the game). You can also treat her powers as a sort of "cursed wealth"; it's possible that some part of her wanted them back and some part didn't.
1490
1491[[/folder]]
1492
1493[[folder: Elizabeth and Rapture]]
1494* Burial at Sea Part 2 informs us that if a being like Elizabeth or the Luteces re-manifest a world in which they have already died, then they become mortal once again. This makes the scene of Songbird's death (via teleporting to Rapture) make little to no sense, knowing what we do about the conclusion of Burial at Sea: There are multiple pieces of evidence that the Entrance Room where Elizabeth, Booker and Songbird arrive that they arrive there AFTER New Years Eve of 1958: The disarray surrounding the two suggesting sustained rebellion against Ryan, the dead Big Daddy across the way with a Little Sister sobbing over it (The pair-bond issue that had been plaguing Suchong was only fixed around the time of his death, roughly January 14th 1959, and is demonstrated pretty fully from these two), and the death cry of Songbird being allegedly heard in ''VideoGame/BioShock'' just before Cohen's student Fitzpatrick is killed (This is circumstantial since I am told the sound is heard at other points in the game, and while I am yet to confirm those instances, I can't disprove the idea it's merely coincidence.) On New Year Eve of 1958, both Comstock and Elizabeth faced down a severely pissed off Big Daddy. Said Daddy went on to kill both of them. Elizabeth survives due to godlike power at this point, but gives all of it up to return to Rapture and save Sally. Her actions then go on to directly influence how Rapture develops. She is responsible for bringing Jack to Rapture. She is then killed a second, permanent time. This means that in any universe where the civil war in Rapture kicked off, there had to been an Elizabeth's death at the cause of it, especially if we go by Word of God telling us that ''Burial at Sea'' and ''VideoGame/BioShock'' take place in "Rapture Prime", making it the constant, rather than the variable. What does this all add up to? Elizabeth cannot re-manifest in Rapture at the time she seemingly does, because doing so would rob her of her powers and the climax of Infinite would no longer be able to happen. Now, I am aware that after a point the ending stops taking place in what we could conceive as "reality", but it was not at this point, as there had to be SOMETHING that killed Songbird not wrapped up in metaphor and poetry. New facts added in Burial at Sea made this fairly poignant scene make little to no sense.
1495** Alpha!Elizabeth taking Booker to Rapture already happened by the time she goes hunting for the Comstock trying to screw up her new cycle and Elizabeth dragging Bookerstock down to find Sally was the second time she had been there. So nothing is wrong with her going there in the main game, returning to Rapture, and then returning the third and final time to become mortal and die.
1496*** It may have been the third time that Elizabeth visited Rapture, but it doesn't change that she had already died in Rapture by the time she arrives there with Booker and Songbird. She even says during the game that they drowned Songbird in 1960, a year after Atlas killed her. It already happened to Elizabeth, but it hasn't happened to Rapture yet. Likewise, when she, Booker and Songbird teleport there in 1960, Elizabeth has already died in Rapture, but it hasn't happened to her yet. That doesn't change the rules that the Luteces explain to her, and it doesn't change that these rules make the ending of Infinite completely unable to happen.
1497** He was able to use Elizabeth's powers to solve the various problems Rapture's [=ADAM=] presented, hence the Vigors being drinkable and not driving people nuts. I think somebody higher on this page hypothesized that Elizabeth's Tears are used to shunt the [=ADAM=]-induced side effects off to an alternate universe counterpart.
1498[[/folder]]
1499
1500[[folder: Columbia still existing in the multiverse]]
1501* Columbia should have been retroactively erased when the existence of any Comstock was prevented, yet in Episode 2 we go there through a Lutece Machine. At first I thought it was a different Columbia that could have survived: the one Comstock!Booker came from, and a Columbia that went on without a Comstock would've been a cool concept. But we quickly learn that it is, indeed, the Columbia wrecked by the Vox revolution we already knew, with even a couple scenes hammering the point. So, why? A possibile explanation is that the multiverse has preserved at least that Columbia because of its direct link to the Rapture universe and their mutual influence; completely erasing Columbia and its influences would have led to a chain effect that would have required huge adjustments. Also, it's the universe where the now godlike Elizabeth acquired her full power, so it has to still exist to not make her existence void. And since that is a Columbia where Elizabeth is saved and all the major players in the city die, it can exist in a StableTimeLoop without being a threat. Still, these reasonings can be quite some stretch, and by the same logic many other Columbias may still exist, which would be another thing that, to create Episode 1 and 2, has robbed Infinite's ending of its weight.
1502** Think about it; is there a rule that says no two alternate universes can be exactly the same? Hence Rosiland's 'Tide' analogy: even if you undo a universe in an infinite number of universes, there's bound to be another universe that is exactly alike. Or, there might be a universe where almost everything in VideoGame/BioShockInfinite happened except the time paradox eraser.
1503** The whole point of the universe wipe was to wipe out ''all'' universes with Comstock - and therefore Columbia - in them. Each choice creates an infinite number of universes, so Elizabeth goes back to when the choice was made and snuffs Comstock in his crib, metaphorically speaking. That at least one Columbia survived directly contradicts the ending and introduces a massive plot hole that is never addressed. ''Theoretically'' it could be a Columbia that was made anyway without Comstock, but there's nothing to indicate that's the case, and it's yet another way Burial at Sea messes with what's already been established.
1504** This is how I interpreted the whole screwed-up scenario: Killing Comstock in the river merely prevented any ''new'' Comstocks from emerging, but the old ones would remain because they have to in order for any Elizabeths to exist at all and kill Comstock in the first place. Her actions allowed the ''possibility'' for new futures based on a reality where Booker didn't have Anna stolen. The idea of 'infinite' versions of Columbia still remain, but now there are new 'infinite possible' versions of a world where Booker keeps Anna. (If we assume Comstock's timeline-screwing has taken away all possible Annas from all possible Bookers, which we have to assume because otherwise TheStinger of the main game makes no sense if there were already worlds where Booker kept Anna. Elizabeth drowning him allowed the new worlds where Booker and Anna are normal to happen.)
1505*** In short: Once there is a possible world for something to happen you can't make it not-possible anymore because it's is already possible and it is already there. But if there is an ever-expanding multiverse, a new choice creates new branches and new possible worlds to explore, but it can't really undo whats already happened because then the choice would not need to have been made. There is already a world where Elizabeth turned evil and rained holy fire down on the Sodom Below, and you can't undo the world that happened in, but you can make it possible to avoid that future ''in other timelines'' by saving Elizabeth before she breaks.
1506* For what it's worth, the [=DLC=] and wikia both state that Elizabeth's drowning of Booker eliminated all possible timelines where Booker became Comstock and created Columbia, erasing them from existence. However, information, items, and individuals that "left" any reality containing Columbia before it vanished from TheMultiverse in 1912 continue to exist as their own entities in their new realities. This is why Bookerstock, Elizabeth, and the Luteces are all able to still exist. Furthermore, as ''Burial At Sea Episode II'' showed us, you can travel back in time like Elizabeth did with the broken Lutece Device to Columbia before it ceased to exist.
1507[[/folder]]
1508
1509[[folder: Infinite Raptures]]
1510* So at the end of Burial at Sea, Elizabeth hasn't just saved Sally, but all the Little Sisters and ensured Fontaine would be brought down. But, as Infinite showed, that's just one Fontaine and one Rapture, and there are infinitely many universes where Jack picked the bad ending. Surely it would have been better for God!Elizabeth to act in those universes first and save the one she personally screwed up and died in for last? It's not like time matters when you're a dimension-hopping god. The only possible solutions are to say that Rapture only existed, for whatever reason, in the universe where Bookerstock took up residence there, or that at least it wouldn't have gone to pot without Bookerstock, the Luteces, and Elizabeth's messing around in it, which seems doubtful. The original makes it clear that Rapture was doomed from the start.\
1511TL;DR: There are presumably infinite Raptures. Why does Elizabeth only save the one where she doesn't have god powers, and not the ones that she can fix with a snap of her fingers?
1512** Think of it as a reality check - Elizabeth coldly abandoned Sally when she thought she was invincible, and could just go to a universe where Sally escaped Rapture. The nightmares made her realize that her powers were slowly turning her into Comstock - willing to kill your family and friends because it's 'easy to bring them back'. So this is basically her ending her life as a human and not a BigBad.
1513** I could be horribly mistaken, but doesn't Elizabeth's collaboration with Atlas/Fontaine result in the rebellion and the collapse of Rapture? If so Elizabeth is indirectly responsible for the deaths of ''thousands'' of people, all for the sake of Sally and the few Little Sisters Jack will be able to rescue. So, are these deaths supposed to be looked on as acceptable losses? If so, this makes Elizabeth sound even more like Comstock, who was perfectly willing to throw away the lives of thousands all for the sake of his delusional beliefs. So, not much of a reality check, more of a reality ''loss.''
1514** In fairness, Rapture was going to fall one way or another. Between the addictive LegoGenetics, unrestrained Objectivist capitalism, mass poverty, and almost complete lack of laws, they were living on borrowed time as it was. Ryan getting rid of Fontaine only staved off the inevitable mass bloodbath for a bit, and Elizabeth bringing him back really didn't do much but ''slightly'' accelerate the oncoming civil war.
1515** Honestly, I read Elizabeth collapsing herself into one person to do this thing as a combination of reasons.
1516*** 1) She felt personally responsible for this iteration of Sally since her actions prevented Bookerstock from (presumably) saving her or attempting to save her.
1517*** 2) She could kick off the events of VideoGame/{{BioShock1}}.
1518*** 3) She could ultimately kill herself. By this point, it's pretty obvious Liz has become something of a DeathSeeker. Remember when she was going after Bookerstock one of her points was that she felt everything from every iteration of herself. Losing her finger, dying, being tortured by Comstock, etc. and it was also pointed out that this took a huge toll on her mind (which was still human, despite her power). Put together I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine the fact that she would die at the end was a part of her plan all along.
1519[[/folder]]
1520
1521[[folder:Big Daddy, the lion with the thorn in its paw]]
1522* The link between the Big Daddies and the Little Sisters being a case of AndroclesLion makes no damn sense. Yes, I know it's supposed to be symbolic or whatever, but it raises so many questions and contradicts everything we know about their relationship. Do they deliberately damage each Big Daddy they construct and get a Little Sister to fix it? What happens to the ones that refuse or are too scared? Do the Big Daddies simply not recognise which Little Sister helped them, so they imprint on all of them? Does that mean that Songbird could imprint on another girl as well? Do the ''Little Sisters'' not recognise which Big Daddy they fixed, and think all of them are the same? What was with the pheromones Tenenbaum sent Jack to collect; is it a placebo, or an added measure, or did they find some way to chemically replicate the imprinting effect (which would make the "science can't explain everything" thing a BrokenAesop)? If it isn't the pheromones, then why do Little Sisters react with fear to ''everyone'' who goes near them that isn't a Big Daddy, regardless of whether that person is hurting them? And if Songbird genuinely cares for and wanted to protect Elizabeth (as opposed to the abusive relationship the original game and WordOfGod established), then why was his first action in the game to tear apart the tower, almost killing her? Whoever came up with this part clearly didn't think it through.
1523** Oh, and it runs completely counter to not only the whistles and the tune to control Songbird that's treated as a big discovery by Elizabeth in the original, but also how Sally calls for "Mister Bubbles" in Episode 1 and he defends her. Plot holes galore!
1524** This is completely WMG, but I almost feel like this addition was made because Ken Levine wanted to give ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' a massive middle finger for daring to continue his story without him being in complete control of everything. He said in interviews around the time it came out that he considered it a worthy conclusion to the first game, but his actions since have heavily contradicted that sentiment. It wouldn't surprise me if he was willing to retcon the whole way the BD/LS dynamic works for the sole purpose of telling 2K to fuck off.
1525[[/folder]]
1526
1527[[folder:Vigors powered by ADAM]]
1528* WordOfGod for the original game is that Vigors are created via Elizabeth's tear-powers, drained by the Siphon (presumably drinking a Vigor slightly merges the user with someone in a different universe that already has that ability, but I don't think that's ever explicitly established). Meanwhile ''Burial at Sea'' states that Vigors are an offshoot of plasmids and powered by the same ADAM-creating sea slugs discovered in Rapture, with Fink dredging the sea floor around the area Rapture will be built. Yet Vigors are being produced literally on a factory assembly line, despite the Little Sisters being created in the first place because the sea slugs produced so little ADAM by themselves, and there's no sign of a similar system in Columbia. And there's no mention whatsoever of Vigor addiction or the physical and mental degradation continual use causes; admittedly Vigors aren't in public use and we never see under the Zealot's or Fireman's uniform, but they're no more insane than the rest of Columbia.
1529** Presumably we'd have seen more effects if Booker arrived in Columbia after Vigors had been widely distributed for some time. It's also possible that Fink was able to improve the Vigor production to nullify or at least minimize unwanted side effects after seeing how Rapture did it.
1530** Problem #1: How can Fink - a 1912 Robber Baron so prone to intellectual theft that he might as well be suffering from CreativeSterility - manage to solve a problem that the brightest minds of Rapture couldn't tackle? Columbia's scientific focus was primarily concerned with engineering and physics; Rapture's scientific crowning glory was in the field of genetics... or at least this was the case before the retcons were established. Problem #2: in the same voxophone where Fink mentions that he's been fishing for sea slugs, he also bitches about the astronomical cost of all these underwater expeditions. To put this in perspective, Fink has enough dosh to casually decorate his building with a giant golden statue of himself, and he complains that the sea slugs are unbelievably expensive; so you'd think that the Vigors would be a special product given only to the ultra-rich or the government, something made by commission, maybe. But no, there's a huge production line of them! Problem #3: From a visual standpoint, Vigors and Plasmids are very very different. In the Raptureverse, when a plasmid is selected, it's effectively on all the time, as you can see by Jack/Subject Delta/Subject Sigma's hand: the heat of Incinerate leaves permanent burns until you change plasmids, the honeycomb blisters of Insect Swarm don't inexplicably vanish, your hand remains frozen by Winter Blast, and the discolourations and deformities caused by Enrage or Hypnotize Big Daddy remain present as long as those powers are selected. The Vigors, on the other "hand", flicker in and out of existence while they're selected: the burns of Devil's Kiss, the cracks of Bucking Bronco, the suckers of Undertow - all of them appear and disappear, many of them with a visual effect similar to that of the tears. If this was derived from Elizabeth's powers, this would make sense, but given that this has been retconned in favour of plasmids, the logic just flies out the window.
1531[[/folder]]
1532
1533[[folder:The Luteces in [=BaS=] Episode 2]]
1534* The Luteces' engineer it so that Elizabeth kills Fitzroy as part of a plan to make her an adult. Leaving aside how that makes no sense, it runs ''completely counter'' to their whole plan in the first place, which was to ''avoid'' the futures where Elizabeth becomes a willing mass murderer. How, exactly, does making her a killer serve that plan? If they were in contact with Fitzroy the entire time (which comes off like a clumsy retcon even by the standards of the rest of the DLC) wouldn't it make more sense to, I don't know, order the Vox to protect Booker and Elizabeth so they could finish their quest? Or something else that doesn't have yet another group gunning to kill their important patsies?
1535** I thought the whole "make her a killer" thing was to ensure Elizabeth would have the emotional strength to eventually kill off ''all the Comstocks''. If Elizabeth was unwilling to kill anyone she likely wouldn't have been able to go through with drowning Booker at the end. It would be a lot easier to make her first kill in the heat of the moment instead of premeditating it, and once she had blood on her hands....well, ItGetsEasier. After she overcomes the shock of killing Fitzroy, she can be ready mentally and emotionally to erase Comstock.
1536[[/folder]]
1537
1538[[folder:Elizabeth Vs Big Daddy]]
1539* ''Infinite'' is filled with instances where Elizabeth, barely understanding what her powers can do, saving herself or Booker from imminent peril, and once she gains full control of her abilities she deals with Songbird with a metaphorical flick of her wrist. Meanwhile the flashback at the start of Episode 2 shows Elizabeth trying to plead with a raging metal juggernaut and doing nothing while it slams her into a wall, not teleporting it or herself away or ''anything'', even though at this point she's omniscient and would have seen this happening before she arrived. What the hell happened?
1540** Pretty sure something kinda similar was asked earlier, and the answer is likely a mix of "She panicked" "She had an insane convoluted plan that required her to become mortal for some reason", and "She didn't initially care if she died in that universe."
1541[[/folder]]
1542
1543[[folder:Quantum Superposition]]
1544* Elizabeth loses her powers because she went back to a universe where she died. But the Luteces died in the universe of VideoGame/BioShockInfinite. You can find a Voxophone of them confronting the man who did their funeral photos. So why didn't they get BroughtDownToNormal then? Or any of the other times they manifested before Booker and Elizabeth?
1545** Given the nature of this game, who's to say that the encounter occurred in the very specific universe that they died in? Furthermore, they were not really "killed", but scattered across space and time.
1546[[/folder]]

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