The original's "good" ending, in which you grow old with the Little Sisters you saved, and you finally have the one thing you were denied: a family.

In Bioshock 2, sparing Grace Holloway's life, and her amazement after you leave.

Grace: You had me under a gun... and yet you just walk away? No monster alive turns the other cheek. No monster does that. A thinking man does that.

In Bioshock 2, there's a diary whose reader couldn't be more than 5 years old named Billy Parsan. In it, he tells a little sister that he thinks she's cute, her big daddy reminds him of a Comic Book hero, that he bought her a gift and stored it someplace that no one else could get it, and said he'll wave to her next time he sees her. I guarantee you will go "D'awwww!"

• Even more so when you go to where he says he left the gift: It's a rose. Heart: Broke.
  • Your Mileage May Vary once you hear a theory on his somewhat annoying way of speaking. His parents are making him read a message so that they can lure the Little Sister away from her Big Daddy for her ADAM.
    • Considering we also hear from his mother and father, and his mother is a genuinely kind woman and his father is locked away in Persephone, it's possible, but unlikely.
    • Look in the Area with the gift A Big Daddy was next to the present. This Troper came to the conclusion that The Big Daddy was able to recognize that the boy meant no threat and had come to pick up the present possibly meeting with the boy there. I smiled until the horrific realization came in: The Big Daddy was killed in the resulting flood when the ceiling fell on him.

I played as good and the sequence as the Little Sister in Bioshock 2 really got to me, especially one shot in particular. The Little Sister looks up at Eleanor, towering above, and you see a Big Sister with a green porthole (and after playing either Bioshock for a while, light colors become really meaningful) for the first time in the game. Eleanor reaches down to scoop the Little Sister up and remove her Adam slug, and after a whole game of dealing with screeching, vicious nightmares, the Big Sister suit suddenly seems graceful and heroic. All the while Eleanor is speechifying about how she wants to be good like her daddy taught her to. Awwwwww.

All through both games you pretty much see the Big Daddies as monsters. Sure, as you learn more about them you start to see them as victims of Rapture as much as the Little Sisters are, but the best feelings you tend to have for them is pity. Even playing as Delta gives you the feeling of being a sort of Frankenstein's monster. Then near the end of the game you can see the world through the eyes of a Little Sister and one of the first things you see is a two story high golden statue of a Big Daddy in a heroic vein looking something like a knight Templar or a paladin. Also all of the other statues you pass during the mission are of Big Daddies being heroic- protecting people and defeating monsters. It's nice to know you're a hero to someone after all.

• The very FIRST thing you see is Delta, pimped out in gold and white and looking like a comic book superhero. The statues you mentioned are of Delta's actions throughout the game ("Daddy Meets Aunt Gracie", "Daddy Meets Uncle Stanley", "Daddy Meets Dr. Gilbert"). Of course, even if you killed them, the statues depict it as more of a "righteous fury" type of thing (you ARE looking through the eyes of a Little Sister, after all). The entire mission also doubles as Nightmare Fuel for some.

Bio Shock 2's ending, in which Delta lives on through Eleanor.

Heck, there was a Crowning Moment in the very first trailer ever shown for the game. We get a savage battle between a Big Daddy and the player ending with the player getting gored to death by the Big Daddy's drill. Then a camera cut to the Little Sister cowering on the ground. The Big Daddy stomps into view towering over the little girl, it's drill still covered in blood, and reaches out it's huge hand to help her up. That single shot let me know that this game would be different.

Minerva's Den. We FINALLY get a guy, C.M. Milton, who goes to Rapture who 1)Isn't a complete ass. 2)Smart enough to see through Ryan, Fontaine, Atlas, AND Lamb. 3)Resists one of the primal temptations and shuts down the AI construct he made of his departed wife, knowing that it wasn't her or what she would wanted. At the end we see this poor man's grief, and how he refused to let it break him or twist him like so many others in Rapture. And the best part is that HE LIVES!