Characters / BioShock Infinite: Booker DeWitt

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Booker DeWitt

Voiced by: Troy Baker (Main game), Stephen Russell (2009 gameplay demo)

"One thing I've learned; if you don't draw first, you don't get to draw at all."

The Player Character of BioShock Infinite. Booker is a former soldier and Pinkerton Detective who ekes out a meager living as a PI. His newest assignment: a faceless client wishes him to extract Elizabeth from the flying city of Columbia. In exchange, Booker's employer will wipe out all of his outstanding debts.

Booker is world-weary and cynical, having been involved in his fair share of dirty business over the years, but he will do whatever it takes to complete the job, having no problems killing those whom he sees as a threat.

He eventually meets the girl he was sent to escort out of the city and the two gets to know each other for the better and for the worse, as well as discovering the truth about Columbia and its founder, Father Comstock.

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#-H

• 11th-Hour Superpower: Gains the ability to control Songbird just in time for the final battle against the Vox Populi, where he can be put to good use tearing zepplins from the sky and wiping away hoards of enemies with ease.
• Action Dad: He was a father, but not any more. Except he still is; he just doesn't realize the child he gave up is by his side.
• Action Genre Hero Guy: If the game box art is any indication, Booker is your typical badass American veteran who fight dirty, doesn't play by the rules and has lost a close loved one.
• The Alcoholic: If the bottles littering his office are anything to go by, he became this after hawking his daughter to get out of paying the bookies. Comstock chastises his drinking and gambling when he first addresses Booker.
• Alternate Self:
  • He's a youthful version of Zachary Comstock, but only in a universe where he underwent baptism and became a new man.
  • He's able to operate the bathypshere that enters and exits Rapture. Considering this is only possible if one has Andrew Ryan's genetic signature, this implies he's an alternate version of Jack.
• Ambiguous Situation: Does Booker remember the events of the game (and his resulting Character Development) in The Stinger? His panicked calling for Anna, as if he expected her not to be there, plus the fact that we're still playing as him suggest that his is "our" Booker. But, by the game's own (admittedly wonky) internal logic, his memory of the old timeline should be replaced by synthesized new ones. The story never clarifies on this matter one way or the other.
• Amnesiac Hero: All of Booker's memories, up to the Luteces showing up in his office, have been systematically altered or erased. He doesn't even remember having a daughter, or his previous meeting with Comstock and the Luteces 20 years ago. Being as this twist isn't revealed until the end, it is an inversion.
• Anti Anti Christ: In a roundabout way, Booker is both a Christlike and a Satanic figure. As Father Comstock, he is destined to wreak havoc on human civilization, and likely won't stop until the whole world bows at his feet. As Booker DeWitt, it is foretold that he will burn Columbia to the ground and steal away the Prophet's daughter.
• The Antichrist: The Founders, a zealous religious faction, refer to him as the "False Shepherd". Given what ideology the Founders hawk, this should be taken with a grain of salt.
• Anti-Hero: Of the Nominal variety. Booker is a man deeply haunted by his past crimes and even in the present he’s not a particularly nice person who only cares about saving Elizabeth to wipe away his debt and has no qualms with killing anyone who gets in his way (or innocent civilians). That being said he disapproves of Columbia’s racism (which is radically progressive for the time the game is set) and grows to care about Elizabeth as the story goes on, growing into an Unscrupulous Hero.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Yes, sure, a city at the bottom of the sea is ridiculous. Unlike all the other sights Booker has seen by that point, starting with a floating city in the skies and getting more insane from there.
• The Atoner: For his part in the Battle of Wounded Knee and the things he's done as a Pinkerton. Unbeknownst to him, he is also atoning for selling his infant daughter to save his own neck.
  Booker: Sometimes there's a precious need for folks like Fitzroy.
  Elizabeth: How come?
  Booker: 'Cause of folks like me.
• Badass Normal: How he starts the game. On the perimeter of Columbia, he acquires a Broadsider pistol at the raffle and fends off the cops for a while, before getting his first offensive Vigor and Gear (from a Fireman).
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Invoked. Booker does not consider himself a good or even decent guy, and unhesitatingly performs any of the unsavory tasks that Elizabeth is unwilling to do.
• Be All My Sins Remembered: The reason behind him not accepting a baptism after what he did at Wounded Knee, contrasting him entirely with Comstock relinquishing all blame and taking the baptism. This heavily colors his The Atoner Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work mentality.
• Big Eater: As opposed to Rapture, Columbia was a bustling city before Booker arrived, and it's absolutely filled to the brim with food. Booker can eat practically everything in sight if the player makes him.
• Big "NO!": He lets one out when Anna/Elizabeth is being taken from him in the ending.
• Body Horror: Booker experiences this with Vigors. Specifically, Bucking Bronco causes Booker's hands crack as if made of clay, revealing glowing blood beneath the split skin; Devil's Kiss causes magma to come out of Booker's hand, which burns and melts the flesh and chars his fingers to the bone; Murder of Crows causes dark feathers to grow out of Booker's forearm while talons sprout from his fingertips; Old Man Winter causes icy blue frost to cover Booker's forearm as small icicles sprout from the back of his hand; Return to Sender causes his fingers and upper palm to become stripped of their flesh, gaining in its place a black metallic sheen; Shock Jockey causes dark crystals to grow out of Booker's hand as electricity courses through them; and Undertow causes his arm to develop barnacles and octopus suckers.
• Brooklyn Rage: He lives in New York and he's a very violent individual.
• Byronic Hero: Let's just say Booker's life isn't a road of sunshine and happiness, what with taking part in a massacre at a young age, being a thug Pinkerton Agent, alcoholic, and cynical as hell. And that's not even getting into the fact he sold his daughter...
• Charles Atlas Superpower: One of his execution animations has Booker tossing a grown man a fair distance with one arm after hoisting him into the air by his skyhook, and throughout the story he repeatedly endures normally fatal events (such as Fitzroy pushing him off an airship to fall thirty feet onto hard concrete) without any injury.
• Chick Magnet: From when he first arrives in Columbia to later when he shows up in Battleship Bay, several women around the city will voice their interest in him or compliment his looks. Heck, one woman visiting Battleship Bay will even invite him to serve as her, "escort."
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Served as this to Elizabeth for the first half of the game.
• Clothes Make the Legend: The incarnation of Booker who lives in Rapture wears a strikingly similar outfit, with a red necktie in place of the kerchief being the only real update to it.◊
• Combat Pragmatist: The very first in-game fight sees Booker distract his would-be executioners by tossing a baseball into the air, grabbing one by the collar and dragging him to meet his buddy's Sky-Hook face-first, then stealing the Sky-Hook and turning it against its owner (rending flesh and snapping bones like kindling) before putting down another half a dozen police. It's not hard to guess how he might have been deemed too vicious for the Pinkertons — he never hesitates to kill nor is he ever particularly repentant about doing so in the name of protecting himself (or his charge, Elizabeth).
• The Comically Serious: Booker is this trope, which is why many of the things he says are so hilarious even though his sense of humor is almost non-existent. The funniest examples probably being:
  Booker: Elizabeth? Why is your mother a ghost?
  [later]
  Booker: It would appear... [panting] that your mother... [reloading] is raising... [running like hell] the dead!
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
  • Other Bioshock protagonists didn't talk and had no real indication of personality other than how the player chose to treat Little Sisters. Booker is neither of these things. And unlike them, Booker has a more violent fighting style, owing to his past as a soldier.
  • Booker draws similarities to Jack in terms of how they mercilessly kill their game's Big Bad. But while Jack was under the control of Atlas/Fontaine to kill Ryan, Booker kills Comstock out of vengeful rage by himself.
• Cowboy Cop:
  • If how he interprets his 'job' during the game is any indication, being an insanely violent loose cannon with a disregard for rules is probably part of what got him fired.
  • Living in Rapture hasn't smoothed Booker's rough edges, if the conversation in Burial at Sea is any indication. This gumshoe makes Mike Hammer look like Andy Griffith.
    Booker: If Suchong had Sally, I'd know it.
    Elizabeth: How?
    Booker: Because I tied him to a chair and asked him.
    Elizabeth: So?
    Booker: For fifteen hours.
• Dark and Troubled Past: He was told to "bring us the girl" to "wipe away the debt". That's only the tip of a very big, very complex iceberg, which the game (and most of the spoilers on this page) revolve around.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • He is firmly opposed by the very religiously-flavored Founders and Comstock (often characterized by them as a devil, a satanic influence, or The Grim Reaper), and he did a lot of bad things in the past, the specifics of which we're probably better off not knowing. He's still more palatable as an individual than Columbia's collective jingoistic insanity, though, and becomes a better person over the course of the narrative.
  • He also has a fairly progressive attitude racially (in that he treats everyone with an equal amount of indifference). His response to a black man he sees smoking and is afraid of Booker telling anyone: "Hey, smoke 'em if you got 'em, pal. I ain't no gendarme." And if you choose to throw the ball at Fink instead of the mixed-race couple, there's the fact that he even does that, not to mention he sounds quite miffed at the situation. Considering the time period, such an action would be surprising even coming from a non-Columbian ten times nicer than Booker is. Not that there isn't a good reason for him to be more sensitive than most about racism. During the Battle of Wounded Knee (now called the Massacre of Wounded Knee, possibly because of him), he killed countless Native Americans, and burned teepees down with women and children still inside (ostensibly to gain the acceptance of his comrades after a comment about him having some Native ancestry.) Regret and self-loathing over this is largely why he is so fucked up. So opening up that wound by trying to stone a mixed-race couple probably isn't a good idea.
• Dead Man Writing: You find at least two recordings from him in an alternate Columbia where he was killed — including one he recorded as he lay dying.
• Death by Childbirth
  Elizabeth: So, Mr. DeWitt, is there a woman in your life?
  Booker: There was. She died.
  Elizabeth: How?
  Booker: Giving birth.
  Elizabeth: Oh... You have a child?
  Booker: No.
• Death by Irony: The Multiverse exists because he refused (and didn't refuse) his baptism. He dies by being drowned in the waters where he wasn't (and was) baptized.
• Decoy Protagonist: Played With. While Booker is the guy you play as, Elizabeth drives most of the plot more actively than him. She is the one the plot is centered around, from her powers to her Character Development, and hunting down Comstock in the final act is mostly for her sake (She wants revenge on Comstock while Booker wants to just escape Columbia but refuses to leave Elizabeth). However, the ending reveals that Comstock is an alternate version of Booker, and Booker has to die to prevent the game from happening in the first place. So in the end, Booker was the main and most important character after all.
• Demonisation: Columbia's religion, as devised by Comstock, presents Booker as an Antichrist figure called the "False Shepherd" that will corrupt Elizabeth.
• Despair Event Horizon: Going hand-in-hand with his Moral Event Horizon, Booker losing Anna left him a broken man, consumed by alcoholism and gambling addiction to try and ease his pain. At the end of the main game, the realisation that he and Comstock are two versions of the same person is followed by him barely struggling as he allows Elizabeth to drown him.
• Determinator: He can and will weather all the hell Columbia throws at him to get Elizabeth out of Columbia, especially when his motives for doing so shift from business to personal.
• Dying as Yourself: The only way to finish off Comstock for good is to kill himself before he becomes the Reverend.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: One possible interpretation of The Stinger. Through Booker's death at the baptism at the end of the game, the only universe which remained a constant was the one where he refused the baptism and never went through with selling his daughter — an outcome which leads to Comstock never being "born", Columbia never being built, the atrocities of its governance and downfall never being perpetrated, and cities like Beijing and New York never being destroyed. Meanwhile, Booker himself retains his daughter, is not driven even further into depression by her loss, and is free to forge a new life- albeit, still in bad financial straits.^note Even if the Luteces were nice enough to still get rid of his gambling debts in the new timeline, it's shown that his income as a private eye is fairly bad, hence why he lives out of his office. Essentially, he had to kill himself in an infinite number of universes so he and Anna can presumably live happy, normal lives.
• Elemental Powers: Vigors give Booker elemental superpowers like Devil's Kiss, Bucking Bronco, Shock Jockey, Charge, Undertow, Return to Sender, and Old Man Winter.
• Empowered Badass Normal: With Vigors, Infusions and Gear, he can be capable of taking out whole armies of men and machines that stand in his way.
• Even the Guys Want Him: At least four male NPCs around Columbia come at him with thinly-veiled overtures, the earliest one is right after he gets pass Comstock's monument at Town Center, with "Good day, Citizen. You're looking fit." Including one as blatant as "Howdy, sailor..." (as well as "I'm fond of the Greco-Roman style. If you want, I could always teach you," and "If you're willing to go into that booth with me, I'm sure I could find you a set of trunks...").
• Exposition Fairy: A ghostly imitation of Booker Prime in Burial at Sea — the same one who drowned at the end of BioShock Infinite. He briefs Elizabeth (now playable) via the radio, provides instructions on how to navigate Rapture, and lends moral support where needed.
• Extreme Omnivore: You can make him eat food that has been thrown in the trash bin. At one point two oval objects are found in a toilet, they turn out to be potatoes. And yes, before you ask, eating them will give you health just like normal. Given that he'd been struggling with debt, it's probably not a stretch to say that this could be in-character.
• Fair for Its Day: In-Universe. Booker treats minorities with more respect than the average WASP does in Columbia, or even in most of the contemporary United States; however, he still holds some typical views for his time and in one of the mission loading screens refers to Chen Lin as a "chinaman."
• Featureless Protagonist: Averted; unlike the previous protagonists in this series, he has a full name, an established personality, a consistent voice, and a backstory. His face is also seen in two reflections at the beginning of the game, in the Voxophones recorded by an alternate reality version, and is visible on the alternate versions running around the multiverse confluence in the finale.
• First-Person Ghost: Does not cast a shadow or have a reflection, except during some scripted events (e.g. the washbasin at the start of the game, or his reflection in the glass while being rocketed to Columbia). Jumping onto a skyline after the fifteenth wave in a Clash in the Clouds game shows his character model is just a pair of arms.
• First-Person Smartass: Particularly when encountering the Siren. To say nothing of his first impression of Rapture.
  Booker: A city at the bottom of the ocean? Ridiculous.
• Foil: For Father Comstock. Comstock purports himself as a prophet, a savior, and a holy man, while Booker makes no bones about the fact that he's a blood-soaked thug. However, Comstock piety hides his utter moral bankruptcy, while Booker, for all his flaws, has lines he wouldn't cross. In Columbia, Comstock is revered above all, while Booker is reviled as the "False Shepherd". Comstock is a prematurely aged Non-Action Big Bad, while Booker still has his youth and does all of his own heavy lifting. Comstock was Elizabeth's jailer, while Booker comes to Columbia to free her (albeit for his own purposes). Despite these differences, both men are capable of extreme violence, both have an important connection to Elizabeth, and neither are capable of processing guilt in a healthy fashion. Their comparisons and contrasts are deepened by the fact that but for a single choice, they're literally the same man.
• Future Me Scares Me: Booker backed out of his baptism at the last moment, while in an Alternate Timeline he took the baptism, became a religious fanatic. and became Comstock.
• Good Counterpart: In Burial at Sea, Elizabeth leads "Final" Comstock like a lamb to the slaughter inside Rapture's deserted shopping mall, supposedly to rescue a Little Sister. Predictably, this raises the ire of a Big Daddy and Booker is brutally killed. But you can't keep a Pinkerton down: almost as soon as he drops, an auditory hallucination of Booker speaks to Elizabeth on her radio, and Elizabeth guesses that this Booker is her post-homicidal guilt given form. The Siren was said to have been pieced together from Elizabeth's resentment. This suggests that Booker manifested in a similar way, but with a benign purpose.
• Goomba Stomp: When hanging onto a Sky-Line or freight hook, Booker can perform a Sky-Line Strike when an enemy is in range.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam:
  • Agreeing to hawk his infant daughter to the Reverend and his creepy minions — then having a last-minute change of heart and sprinting to undo his mistake. He was too late, and Comstock fled through a tear, slicing off Anna's finger in the process.
  • This applies to Booker in the game's ending. It is ultimately left up to players to decide.
  • Played With in the backstory to Burial at Sea, Elizabeth warps back to her kidnapping 18 years ago and tries persuading Comstock not to pull Anna through the tear. Unfortunately, her distraction merely delays Comstock, causing the baby's head to get caught in the closing iris and decapitated. The Reverend, irrevocably shaken by what he's done, escapes through a tear to get away from his troubles. Elizabeth hounds him to Rapture (where Comstock changes his name back to "Booker" and runs a modest detective office) and finishes him with a Big Daddy drill. It's Played With because this Booker is not the same one as in the main story.
• Heel Realization:
  • Wounded Knee made him come to the conclusion that he was beyond forgiveness, and he simply stopped seeking it by drowning himself in guilt.
  • Finding out that he sold his own daughter to Comstock, and that she became Elizabeth, leaves him staggered and ready to commit suicide.
• Heroic Build: Like Jack. It's not immediately obvious in his clothes, but Booker is very muscular; note the size of his forearms in first person. Even his prematurely aged alternate timeline counterpart Comstock has large shoulders and a very broad build clearly visible despite his suit.
• Heroic Sacrifice: After realizing that Comstock exists because of his own crimes, he declares that he is both Booker DeWitt and Zachary Comstock before his daughters drown him — symbolically cleansing both his own sins and those of his other self.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation:
  • Despite being hailed as an American Hero for his contribution during the Wounded Knee Massacre, Booker hated himself and this hatred only increases during his time as a Pinkerton agent and after selling his baby daughter for money. In fact, he felt that something as simple as baptism can never make him forget about his sins.
  • A particularly bizarre case of this trope happens when Booker strangles Comstock to death. He immediately enters into an enraged rant over Comstock abandoning his own daughter and demanding to know if she "got what he wanted." Booker's yelling at himself in more ways than one.
• Heroic Neutral: Couldn't spare a damn about the corruption of Columbia or the budding revolution. All he cares about is finding the girl, and wiping away the debt, as he was ordered to do by an employer. Everything in between is a means to an end. He does eventually change his mind, though. After a certain point, Booker says "screw the job" and decides to take Elizabeth to Paris, just like she wants. However, by that point, things have gone belly-up, and he has to deal with the fallout of Comstock.
• Historical Rap Sheet: A more mundane version of the trope, but Booker took part in the Wounded Knee massacre, going beyond the demands of his group to perform war crimes such as burning women and children to death. He was then hired by The Pinkertons and ended labor strikes with extreme violence, before being fired for being too violent even for them.

I-Z

• I Did What I Had to Do:
  • Booker's fairly unrepentant about being forced to kill in order to protect Elizabeth and himself, which initially causes her to try to run away, scared out of her wits at witnessing such carnage:
    Elizabeth: You killed all those people! You're a monster!
    Booker: What did you think was going to happen?
  • Ironically, this makes him disturbingly similar to Comstock, who's equally unrepentant in his efforts to secure Elizabeth's legacy, having had dozens of people murdered (including his own wife) in order to achieve his goals. The only major difference being Booker generally only kills in self-defense while on the job these days where as Comstock kills for power and personal gain.
• Improbable Age: In his backstory, he had been a Staff Sergeant in the army, a Pinkerton agent, a private detective and a father of one by the time he was only 19.
• Indy Ploy: When presented with a problem, Booker tends to go in with both guns blasting, and in his case it seems to work really well.
  Elizabeth: You can get us out of here??
  Booker: Yes! I just... (mumbling quickly) need to supply enough weapons to arm an entire uprising.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: It's especially evident near the end of the game that he's become one of these, when he pleads with Elizabeth to go to Paris after dealing with Comstock and just getting away from his dark past. And then there's the event in which he recalls seeing Anna get taken away from him, in which he just starts become so regretful and horrified at what he's done.
  • If you note the Lat/Long coordinates when they finally get the airship underway, they are actually headed to Paris.
• Killing Your Alternate Self: When he and Elizabeth finally confront Comstock, the false prophet's implication that Booker is responsible for Elizabeth's missing finger drives Booker into a fit of uncontrollable rage, leading him to drown Comstock. It's later revealed that Comstock is an alternate version of Booker who had accepted baptism and gone on to found Columbia. At the end of the game, Booker goes a step further, allowing Elizabeth to take him back to the moment he made the choice of whether or not to accept baptism and letting her drown him, averting Comstock's existence entirely.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: 20 years worth of his memories were changed.
• Liar Revealed: At the start of the game, Booker is only motivated to complete his job largely out of self-interest. He later goes as far as to lie to Elizabeth that he's bringing her to Paris just so he can finish his task.
• Lima Syndrome: At the start of the game, he lies to Elizabeth about taking her to Paris. By the end, he genuinely wants to take her there rather than take more unnecessary risks
• Loser Protagonist: Booker at the beginning of the story is an alcoholic, low-class, PTSD-ridden private eye for hire who lives out of the back of his office.
• Made of Iron: He does take a lot of punishment in the game, after all. He gets baptized and almost drowned early on, gets stabbed in his right hand, and in one particular series of scenes, Booker gets hit in the head with a wrench by Elizabeth, wakes up only to get punched in the face by a Vox, and is pushed off an airship from a pretty fair height. What does he do? Gets up like nothing happened and keeps going.
  • And this is to say nothing of getting ‘’picked up and hurled about the length of a football field by Songbird before crashing through a window and landing on a solid wooden floor.’’ While that last one does wind him for a bit, once the cutscene ends he’s right back on his feet and riding Sky Rails like it ain’t no thing.
• Manly Tears: Though we don't see them, we can hear Booker cry when he fails in trying to get Anna back from Comstock.
• Mark of the Beast: The "AD" scarred onto the back of Booker's hand mark him as "The False Shepherd" to any of Comstock's followers that bother to look. It stands for Anna DeWitt, his daughter.
• Mark of Shame: At the very end, it's revealed that the letters scorched into his right hand are self-inflicted: They are actually the initials of his daughter, Anna DeWitt a.k.a, Elizabeth Comstock, whom he sold off to the Reverend in 1893. After trying and failing to back out of the bargain, he branded himself as a reminder of his crime - a "hair shirt," as the Luteces put it.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Booker" - one who makes and binds books. "DeWitt" - the white. A blank book. Appropriate for a video game protagonist. And for the umpteen versions of himself — not just one blank page, but an entire book of them.
  • Also possibly named after physicist Bryce DeWitt, who further developed Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. Given the themes of the story, this is highly appropriate.
• Moral Event Horizon: Deliberately invoked to be Deconstructed, as his story shows what kind of psychological damage an ordinary person can do to themselves after they do something they consider irredeemable. As soon as Booker gave his daughter away to clear his debts, he went mad with grief and regret, chased down the people he sold her to, and tried to fight them to get her back. When that failed, the shame of what he'd done and the self-loathing it brought influenced his reconciliation sickness upon entering Comstock's universe, transforming a desire to get his daughter back into Fake Memories about someone asking for Elizabeth in exchange for his (now non-existent) debts being settled. When Booker realizes this, it breaks his heart so completely that he allows himself to be drowned by his daughter(s) so that his entire life is nullified.
• Morality Chain: In Burial at Sea, "Our" Booker returns to life minutes after his Rapture version bites the dust. This one is actually a figment of Elizabeth's subconscious, sent to remind her of their objectives. He serves as the voice of conscience during Episode 2.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Has this reaction after he remembers that he sold his daughter, Anna a.k.a. Elizabeth.
  • Immediately after the aforementioned deed, Booker was filled with remorse and desperately tried to get Anna back, even trying to wrestle her out of Comstock's hands while screaming that deal was off and begging for the return of his daughter.
• Nice to the Waiter: Whenever he runs across a black janitor or attendant, Booker treats him much more politely and compassionately than the average citizen of Columbia, and often urges them to drop their usual Uncle Tom act around him.
  "Hey, smoke 'em if you got 'em, pal. I ain't no gendarme."
• Nominal Hero: Kills plenty of enemies and only wants to bring Elizabeth out of Columbia to "wipe away the debt", even going as far as to lie to her about going to Paris.
• Noodle Incident: If you know anything about the Pinkertons' usual MO (and if you don't, Google it), then you really have to wonder just how in the Hell someone gets kicked out of them. Especially for "Behavior beyond the Acceptable Bounds of the Agency."
• Not in This for Your Revolution: He temporarily helps out Daisy and the Vox solely for the purpose of securing an airship out of Columbia. However, in one alternate universe where he falls in with the Vox at a much earlier time, he ends up becoming a martyr for their cause without intending to be. He was killed in action, and Daisy Fitzroy decided to enshrine him to give the rebellion the spark she needed. Even then, however, he was only helping the Vox to get Comstock out of the way so that he could get Elizabeth..
• Not So Above It All: He's normally quite stoic, but whenever he is correcting Elizabeth, or trying to get her attention without starting a fight, he comes off rather awkward and introverted.
• One-Man Army:
  • An entire city of crazies with superpowers and guns won't keep him and his objectives apart. Deconstructed; while he single-highhandedly butchers hundreds of enemy soldiers, it's revealed that he was only able to beat the very long odds against him via unintentionally abusing in-universe Save Scumming. It took at least 123 attempts to get a Booker that could 'win'. The other 122 Bookers just died, albeit, after some pretty impressive adventures.
  • In one timeline, he was such a one-man wrecking crew that he almost single-handedly ensured the success of the Vox Populi in the Columbian civil war. In timelines without him, they lose, and Elizabeth succeeds Comstock as leader of the Founders and goes on to lay waste to New York.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Throughout the game, Booker kills scores of enemies and barely bats an eye, rationalising it as I Did What I Had to Do. When he kills Comstock, however, Booker is screaming in an abject, all-consuming rage, and his killing of Comstock is so violent that it shocks Elizabeth, who hates Comstock just as much as Booker does. The game's final revelations make it painfully clear why Booker feels so much anger and hate for Comstock, and why Comstock's implication that Booker was responsible for Elizabeth's missing finger sets him off.
• Papa Wolf: As the game progresses, Booker turns very protective and is willing to tear Columbia apart to get Elizabeth to safety.
  Booker: GIVE ME BACK MY DAUGHTER! NO!
• Parental Substitute: One possible interpretation of his relationship with Elizabeth. Turns out to have been her Disappeared Dad all along once you learn he actually is her father.
• Perma-Stubble: Meanwhile, Comstock grows from this to a Beard of Evil.
• Person of Mass Destruction: As Yahtzee has said, while BioShock and System Shock 2 has the protagonists arrive late to the party and have to piece together what happened, Infinite has Booker arrive just in time for the party, because the party is him. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy or not, Comstock was not wrong about Booker being an Antichrist.
• Pet the Dog: Booker's racial attitudes for the time are fairly enlightened, in that he doesn't treat other races differently (aside from one player choice, of course). This may stem from his experience at Wounded Knee; while Comstock buried his guilt with a veneer of saintly righteousness, Booker instead became more humble and thus less likely to look down on others. He also surprisingly ahead of his time when it comes down to matters of gender, though this is not particularly saying much, as this is the general attitude in Columbia. (The Reverend is grooming his daughter to succeed him as the nation's spiritual leader.)
• Phone Call from the Dead: Elizabeth is nonplussed to hear Booker on her walkie-talkie, taunting her over the killing of his Rapture counterpart. This happens in the second chapter of Burial at Sea.
• Pinkerton Detective: Formerly. He was kicked out for being too brutal even for them.
• Player Character: In both Infinite and episode one of the Burial at Sea DLC. Although the latter is later revealed to be a version of Comstock.
• Psychic Nosebleed: Father Comstock first demonstrate his awesome powers by seeing into Booker's "bloody" past, triggering a nosebleed. The bleeding is actually caused by Booker's suppressed memories of his earlier encounter with Comstock in 1893.
• Red Baron: He has two nicknames, in Columbia, he's the prophecised "False Shepherd". His backstory reveals that he was titled "The White Injun" due to his Native American heritage and for his brutality during the massacre of wounded knee.
• Redemption Equals Death: He allows Elizabeth to kill him so that Comstock is destroyed for good. It's even more pronounced considering how little he struggles as he runs out of air.
• Retgone: Booker kills himself in the dimension where he took the baptism and became Comstock, so all the Comstocks of every universe no longer exist. And seeing how Comstock was responsible for Columbia's creation and Elizabeth's abduction, apparently no Columbia and super-powered Elizabeth, either... which means the whole game's events are erased from existence. Perhaps.
• Retired Monster: Although he's become The Atoner for his Dark and Troubled Past, Booker still nonetheless has very few qualms about having to kill a lot of people during the game, something that initially terrifies Elizabeth.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: At first Booker is only interested in retrieving Elizabeth to do his job and wipe away his debts. However, as the story unfolds, he's willing to tear Columbia apart to get Elizabeth to safety. He goes on a more direct one after she's recaptured late in the game, blasting his way into Comstock House and potentially murdering in cold blood several of the unarmed scientists torturing her to get her back. To be fair though, those scientists may have chosen to turn the generators back on in alternate realities.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: Whenever you touch fire.
• Self-Serving Memory: A rare case where this is a plot point. In the ending, when the Luteces recruit him, they mention that his memories are changing. "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt" thus becomes "rescue Elizabeth" rather than "I sold my daughter."
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong:
  • Booker did not die in the version of reality where he rejected the baptism. He died in the version where he did get baptized and went on to become Comstock. Thus, Comstock / the "Evil" Booker is erased from existence, while the "good" Booker never crosses paths with his inter-dimensional counterpart, thus never selling Anna to him, and allowing father and daughter to finally have a normal life... as long as he can take care of that gambling debt.
  • The Stinger shows Booker waking up in his office, and heading into the room where he keeps Anna's crib. The screen blacks out before we see if she is there. It is possible he remembers what happened during the story, but it's never indicated.
• Shadow Archetype: To Comstock, post-Wounded Knee they diverge in how they cope with the crushing guilt of what they've done. If there's any trait that Comstock and Booker share, it's that they both have incredibly poor ability to handle their own guilt. Booker is crushed under the weight of his own sins, and too full of self-hatred to believe he could be worth any redemption. Comstock, however, constantly runs away from his own guilt, and is completely unable to confront his guilt and deal with the fact that he's a horrible person. As a result, Comstock is always seeking someone else's life as a form of escapism, taking any excuse to not be the murderous, guilt-stricken Booker DeWitt. However, where Comstock chose to dissociate himself from his own guilt, Booker is entirely too aware of what kind of person he is, and is broken by it. Still, at least he displays actual regret and responsibility for his actions, making his method slightly healthier. Slightly. Justified because they're the same person.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: He was traumatized by his own actions in the Battle of Wounded Knee. To put it in perspective, it is now known as The Massacre of Wounded Knee. It's easy to see how a baptism to "wipe away" all his sins would have been appealing; even easier to guess why he decided he didn't deserve it. At least, this version didn't.
• Significant Birthdate: According to his Pinkerton badge, it's April 19. It's less significant for him than it is for Comstock.
• Supporting Protagonist: Booker, the protagonist, is a deep, three dimensional character who gets plenty of development in his own right, but the story isn't about him. The whole game is focused on Elizabeth, from the narrative to her importance in gameplay. Subverted at the end of the game, where the focus shifts to Booker's past and his alternate self. In fact, the sudden revelation at the end and all the foreshadowing in the game make it feel like the story was about Booker all along.
• Teens Are Monsters: He was only sixteen years old when he was at the Battle of Wounded Knee, which nowadays is often referred to as a massacre. It's implied Booker himself might be the reason why. It's revealed that Slate's soldiers gave him the nom de guerre of "The White Injun" because he collected so many grisly trophies from the dead, while Comstock's Voxophone recordings reveal that after he was (correctly) accused of having Native American blood, he decided to prove them wrong by burning tepees down with the inhabitants (women and children) still inside. Since this took place before the point of divergence where Booker and Comstock chose different paths, Booker is guilty of this as well, though unlike Comstock, he never took pride in what he'd done.
• Sword and Gun: Gun in the right hand, Skyhook in the left (though that one can also be used for Vigors, which aside from Charge are all projectiles).
• They Killed Kenny Again: His nigh-invulnerably is eventually subverted in the Vox Populi revolt, when it is revealed that not even his Heroic Resolve can overcome Songbird, and he has died in many realities attempting to do so. The future incarnation of Elizabeth gives him a remote control to tame the Songbird.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Zachary Hale Comstock is actually a Booker DeWitt who takes the baptism and a new name following the events of Wounded Knee. This dynamic is later reversed in Burial at Sea.
• Trapped by Gambling Debts: The reason for his mission: "Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt." Turns out that line actually means he had to sell his daughter Anna to Comstock (via the Luteces) in order to clear his debt. When he's dragged through a tear, his brain made up memories to give him the justification for finding Elizabeth.
• Unreliable Narrator: A rare, non-literary example; after getting his memories scrambled by a tear, Booker's own recollections can't be trusted. He thinks he's retrieving Elizabeth to settle his gambling debts. What's actually happening is almost as much of a surprise to him as it is to the player.
• Unscrupulous Hero: He later starts to care about Elizabeth and genuinely wants to bring her out of Columbia so she can have a good life. That said, he still does kill a lot of people, and he initially isn't very interested in stopping Comstock, only doing so later at the insistence of Elizabeth.
• Unstoppable Rage: In the final confrontation with Comstock, Booker flies into a rage and murders him so brutally that it horrifies Elizabeth, who already wanted Comstock dead. The revelations at the end of the game imply that Booker's unusually violent (even for him) rage is a result of him subconsciously remembering that he had sold Elizabeth to Comstock to cover his own gambling debts, making the homicide an act of both revenge and self-loathing.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: He gives little thought to much of Columbia, a flying city, and the advanced technology within it. This could serve as foreshadowing that he'd been there before, and was used to it by the time he arrived. On that note, he considers Rapture, a city at the bottom of the ocean, to be kitschy.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Subverted for most of them, but for the first third of the game, this is how Booker acquires three of his vigor abilities; in order, he defeats a Fireman for Devil's Kiss, a Zealot of The Lady for Murder of Crows and finally all of Slate's followers for Shock Jockey (though ironically Slate himself is the one with powers in this case, but he is not required to be killed in order to move forward).
• War Hero: Booker received medals for his conduct at Wounded Knee. He was so guilt-shaken by these events it ended causing all sorts of issues across several universes.
• The Watson: He knows enough about physics and combustibles from his time in the army. The higher technology of Columbia confounds him, though. He needs Elizabeth's giant brain to understand it ("Quantum particles suspended in space-time at a fixed height!"), and even then, Booker is often left in her dust ("So... not giant balloons").
• Would Hurt a Child: Among the atrocities he committed during the Wounded Knee Massacre was murdering Native American children. At the end of the game, he plans to smother Comstock when he was an infant in order to kill the infinite numbers of him in the multiverse.
• You Are What You Hate:
  • In a recording of Comstock's, he rages about his fellows looking down on him because they guessed at his Native American ancestry, and did what he did in the Battle of Wounded Knee to put the "lie" to the idea.
  • Also his rant at Comstock about abandoning his daughter, while killing him, is very likely directly just as much at himself — not that he knew that at the time.