Characters / BioShock Infinite: Zachary Hale Comstock

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"Father" Zachary Hale Comstock

Voiced by: Kiff Vanden Heuvel, Troy Baker (Burial at Sea)

"The Lord forgives everything, but I'm just a prophet... so I don't have to. Amen."

"'And the Lord saw the wickedness of man was great. And He repented He had made man on the Earth.' Rain! Forty days and forty nights of the stuff. And He left not a thing that walked alive. You see, my friends, even God is entitled to a do-over. And what is Columbia if not another Ark, for another time?"

The leader of the Founders, and an embodiment of their ultra-nationalist, racist, elitist, xenophobic, and hyper-religious beliefs. Comstock is known as "The Prophet", and has turned Columbia and its people into a living shrine to himself. He is obsessed with the concept of cleansing the soul to achieve rebirth, and wishes for Elizabeth to follow in his footsteps.

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A - I

• Abusive Parent: He had Elizabeth locked up in a tower for her entire life, and that's just the start of it. Comstock later brutally tortures Elizabeth by being stabbed with wires and 'drained' to power one of his doomsday machines. It's shown that this treatment eventually leads her to cross the Despair Event Horizon and become another version of him. She didn't even know he was her father for the longest time until she broke out of her tower. Though technically he's still not her father, Comstock still took her as his charge and called her his "miracle child" for the longest time, even to all of Columbia.
• Aesop Amnesia: Despite it being guilt over his atrocities at Wounded Knee that initially drove him to the baptism, afterwards, he started treating them as glorious achievements, played up his involvement and referring to himself as the "Hero of Wounded Knee". This is because he ended up Dramatically Missing the Point of baptism — it's supposed to be a metaphorical cleansing of sin, where you Go and Sin No More with a clean slate. Comstock took it to believe that all his sins were instead made into virtues, and doubled down.
• The Alcoholic: In both Comstock's quarters and the adjacent stateroom on the Hand of the Prophet, there is a fairly considerable amount of booze scattered around. Not terribly surprising, as while both he and Booker both spiraled into addiction after Wounded Knee, Booker eventually squared with his past. Comstock, who didn't, became a religious fanatic in order to justify his actions. Booker's reappearance might have reminded him, at least subconsciously, that he's a fraud and a murderer, and pushed him back Off the Wagon.
• Alternate Self:
  • He seems to be this universe's version of Andrew Ryan, with an ideology similar to Sofia Lamb's. The big twist is that he's really this for Booker DeWitt.
  • In Burial at Sea, it turns out the player character isn't an alternate version of Booker, but rather an alternate version of Comstock, who had the Luteces send him to Rapture to forget the awful things he had done.
• Alternate Universe Reed Richards Is Awesome: He spearheaded the campaign that led to the creation of Columbia, a floating city, which is seven kinds of awesome. The fact he then turned it into a nightmarish, theocratic dictatorship is... somewhat less so. Compared to the alcoholic private eye living out of his office, there's no question who was more accomplished.
• Answers to the Name of God: Comstock's last gasps ("It is finished") are traditionally attributed to Jesus' crucifixion in the Book of John. The phrase is also used in the Book of Revelation after Jesus’s second coming at the end of the Tribulation; fitting for a man who sees himself as a Messianic Archetype.
• Arch-Enemy: By the end of the game, he is this to both Booker and Elizabeth.
  • By the end of the main game, Elizabeth is willing to cross realities and meddle in the multiverse for the sake of ending Comstock for good. For all of Elizabeth's life, Comstock kept her imprisoned in a tower and used the monstrous Songbird as her guard, ultimately intending to groom her into becoming his successor. When that didn't work, Comstock showed himself as being fully willing to torture her into filling the role against her will. Elizabeth's hate for Comstock becomes so intense that even a single iteration of him living is unacceptable to her, leading to the events of Burial at Sea.
  • As far as Booker is concerned, Comstock hated him before they ever met, with Comstock demonising Booker as the evil "False Shepherd" and setting hordes of enemies upon him when Booker comes to Columbia. By the time Booker kills Comstock, he hates the man so much that he screams with uncharacteristic rage as he drowns Comstock. The revelations at the end of the game prove that Booker had more reasons to hate Comstock than even he knew; Comstock literally ripped Booker's only child from his arms, and the nature of the two men make their mutual self-loathing incredibly literal; they're both their own worst enemy.
• Archnemesis Dad: To Elizabeth. Although he isn't really her biological father, he still intended to raise her as his own. Just in a very twisted, warped, and altogether cruel way. His cruelty ends up making him into her Arch-Enemy, to the point that Elizabeth is willing to jump across the mutliverse just to make sure every single instance of Comstock was dead.
• Armchair Military: What drove the wedge between Comstock and his top general, Cornelius Slate. In the Prophet's ongoing biography he emerges, somehow, as a warrior god who foiled the Boxer Rebellion and won the day at Wounded Knee. Slate remembered it slightly differently... Comstock wanted to have his cake and eat it, too, insisting on a falsified service record to replace his old one — the one he redacted when Booker "died" and the Prophet was born. Slate was unaware of this.
• As the Good Book Says...: While he does not use many exact quotes, he does pepper his speech very frequently with allusions to The Bible. Most of the Voxophone memos of him the player can listen to sound like sermons, and given his position and the echo in the recording suggesting a very large enclosed space, they may very well be literally recordings of sermons he made. Voxophone recordings you find from one writer, who gets commissioned to write his biography, reveal that he only has enough material to fill about 30 of the 100 pages authorized to be his biography ("One hundred is enough...because I know how it ends."). The writer at one point just decides "screw it" and stuffs it full of scripture as in-universe Filler.
• Ax-Crazy: While he is a Non-Action Big Bad due to having terminal cancer, Comstock is a very unstable and barbarous man underneath his grandfatherly demeaner. Probably best illustrated in the Voxophone where he recounts burning Native American women and child in teepees at Wounded Knee in response to someone (correctly) accusing him of having Sioux blood.
• Beard of Evil: Cleverly, it keeps the player from noticing that his face is very similar to Booker's. It was way easier to tell in his previous incarnation, where he didn't have the beard and only sported slicked back hair.
• Becoming the Mask: Comstock works tirelessly to keep up his image as a religious leader. He boasts about Wounded Knee, even though Slate and his comrades knew him as DeWitt. He really was at Wounded Knee, but he would rather mark them as traitors than reveal his original identity as Booker. A Voxophone found in the Clash in the Clouds DLC has Rosalind say this of him explicitly.
  Rosalind: But at some point, the man became incapable of distinguishing his performance from his person.
  • When he comes to Rapture and becomes Booker once more to escape the guilt of Elizabeth's death in Burial at Sea, he loses all traces of his "Comstock" persona, so that the ending once more comes as a shock.
• Believing Their Own Lies: As the above quote states, at some point, he started to truly believe the lines he told his followers about being a divine prophet. It's telling that even after it's revealed that his prophetic abilities are mostly derived from the Luteces' machine, he still refers to his visions as having come from an "Archangel".
• Big Bad: Undoubtedly — he's responsible for Columbia existing, and why it turned out the way it did.
• Boomerang Bigot: He has Sioux heritage and yet advocates for a White ethnostate. A Voxophone log reveals that his fellow soldiers at Wounded Knee were aware of this and were bigoted towards him because of it. He overcompensated by burning several Sioux families alive to win their respect. Furthermore, and due to his fundamental misunderstanding of what baptism is, once he assumed the identity of Comstock, he believed that he was incapable of sin. Therefore, all of his previous actions must have been good. This allowed to rationalize his own racist war crimes and the crimes of his allies as acts of God, which and led to him adopting the view that Whites are superior to all other races. Since, if all races were equal then he committed an atrocity, but because he's incapable of sin then they can't be and must be subhuman. Yikes.
• Cast as a Mask: Doesn't share Booker's voice actor, despite being the same person as him. Flipped on its head in Burial at Sea - still being (seemingly) younger and unaware of his past, he's voiced by Troy Baker again.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Just ask the Lutece twins about it. He had both of them killed because they knew the truth about Elizabeth. And he also killed his wife when she threatened to go public with that same truth. Too bad for Comstock that in the case of the former, "dead" and "gone" aren't the same thing to people who can exist in multiple realities at the same time.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Andrew Ryan. Ryan created his own hidden Utopia because he lost faith in America and wanted to start something new, had zero market regulation and allowed his people to do whatever they wanted, and was a firm atheist with intense hatred of a central governmental body. Comstock took control of Columbia because he felt he could have better job safeguarding American values than the actual country, tightly controls the market and day-to-day life in his city, and is a Christian with a near-totalitarian hold on Columbia. In keeping with the Franchise's message against Extremism though, they both have telling similarities. They're both Hypocrites who betray their own ideals to pursue their goals, both use their world-views to justify the exploitation and suffering of others, and both ultimately have their Utopias crumble all around them.
• Crusading Widower: He took a hard crusade against the Vox Populi after their leader, Daisy Fitzroy, killed his wife. Except Comstock killed his wife himself. Daisy Fitzroy was just the patsy.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The brand of Christianity he enforces on the people of Columbia has been so thoroughly twisted in a self-serving manner that it barely resembles Christianity. Of special note is him being the primary object of worship (when idolatry is considered a sin to most Christians) and Jesus is never so much as mentioned, which is implied to be due to Comstock not liking the idea of someone worshiping a prophet that isn’t him.
• Cult of Personality: The entire city of Columbia is essentially a cult revolving around Comstock and his twisted bastardization of Christianity. It gets even more exaggerated in the Bad Future where dissenters are sealed in masks bearing his likeness and the likeness other Founding Fathers.
• Cutscene Boss: Booker wrenches him away from Elizabeth, strangles him, hits his head against the baptismal font, and then drowns him in the water, all the while in a state of abject and frothing rage.
• Dark Lord on Life Support: It's revealed fairly early on that Comstock has been diagnosed with cancer, and does not expect to live to see Columbia conquer "the Sodom Below" — hence the reason why he needs Elizabeth to take up his mantle. Later entries reveal that he is also sterile and prematurely aged, all three conditions being a side-effect of his overexposure to the Luteces' machine.
• Dark Messiah: By naming his political party the "Founders", Comstock established a clear connection between himself and the founding fathers. His chicanery was convincing enough for Congress to loan him the money for Columbia's construction. His ego spiraling out of control, Comstock decided that the U.S. didn't deserve him and anointed Columbia as the "true" America; hence the grandiose flag sporting a single star.
• Deader than Dead:
  • To prevent the bad future from occurring, it would require removing the possibility that it could ever occur, and thus require the death of Comstock at the very moment he is born. As Comstock is a new identity created by Booker accepting his baptism, eliminating Comstock requires that Booker must die at that very moment. The Stinger implies, though, that only Comstock was essentially excised from the possible Bookers.
  • In Burial at Sea, the Comstock in Rapture basically has to meet this fate for Elizabeth to get what she wants. Due to Elizabeth's interference in 1893, Comstock changed his name back to DeWitt to pick up where he left off, drowning in alcohol and IOUs. He manages to give Elizabeth the slip, but she eventually traces him back to Rapture and murders him in Fontaine's toy store. It's comfirmed that this was the last Comstock in the multiverse, and his death means he's permanently gone. Also, to make absolutely sure he's dead, Elizabeth has him drilled through the chest by a Big Daddy, which nobody could survive.
• Death by Irony: Comstock's beginning as a villain was a baptism, and he forced all newcomers to Columbia to be baptized as a sign of loyalty to him. Fittingly, Booker drowns him in a baptismal font.
• Dramatic Wind: Pretty much every statue of him in the game is carved to make his beard be blowing noticeably to his right.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: He missed the point of what a baptism is supposed to do, and everybody paid for it. Baptism is supposed to metaphorically make you into a new person, so the sins you have committed don't apply to you anymore; it's wiping the slate clean and givin you a chance to live a new and virtuous life. Comstock adopted a new identity after his baptism and came away believing that it had retroactively justified his sins into not sins, and therefore they were actually admirable deeds. He would go on to take his initial sins to horrifying lengths following this line of thinking.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Played With in regards to Lady Comstock. In his rise to power, Comstock genuinely loved Lady Comstock and she meant a whole bunch to him. But as he become more megalomaniacal and monstrous, Lady Comstock couldn't take it anymore and was about to tell the truth about Elizabeth. Comstock then subsequently murdered Lady Comstock in a fit of panic.
  • His relationship with Elizabeth is a subversion. He claims that everything he does to and for her is for love, but it all falls flat. And then there's getting into details to what he does to her in the Bad Future...
  • In Burial at Sea he does seem genuinely concerned for Sally, a little orphan he adopted. He tortured Suchong for fifteen hours to find her and objects to a plan to flush her out by potentially burning her. However, when she refuses to come with him, he shows a darker side.
• Evil Old Folks: The one time Booker and Elizabeth meet him face-to-face, he's quite polite and talks to Elizabeth like a kindly old grandfather. Subverted in that Comstock is actually pushing forty. His wizened appearance is the result of abusing dimensional travel.
• Evil Is Sterile: Literally. He kidnapped Anna because overexposure to the Lutece's machines rendering him incapable of producing an heir of his own.
• Evil Overlord: Of Columbia. There's a cult of personality around him, and everything he says is treated as law by the Columbians who live there. Even lightly questioning the Prophet is enough to get people thrown in jail, at best.
• Evil Twin: Of Booker — well, a twin in (almost) the same sense as Rosalind and Robert.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Whenever he addresses you using the city's speakers, his voice has this effect on top of Voice of the Legion.
• Fallen Hero: Booker DeWitt with a baptism who no longer accepted the responsibility of his actions while basically considering himself God's most holy prophet.
• False Prophet: He passes himself as a prophet, using the Lutece twins' research about using tears in the space-time to predict the future and create advanced technology from other universes.
• Faux Affably Evil: He behaves like a calm, loving and caring father-figure. In truth, he's an utterly ruthless megalomaniac with one hell of a god complex. He even says that forgiveness is the Lord's duty, and therefore, he doesn't have to forgive anyone, which means that he's free to kill anyone who has "wronged" him.
• Foreshadowing: Much of it at the start, beginning with pointing out the initials on Booker's hand to mark him as the "False Shepherd", even knowing about Booker's past along with his supposed "deal". It's because he is Booker and he knows everything about him, including that he would be coming to Columbia sooner or later to reclaim his daughter.
• Four Is Death: The Founders are major evangelists of the Big Three: Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson—all rather lionized, idealized versions that look and sound nothing like the originals. Comstock himself, or sometimes the angel Columbia, tops the pantheon.
• The Fundamentalist: Both religiously and nationalistically.
  Comstock: Go back to the Sodom from whence you came!
• A God Am I: Well, he at least claims himself to just be following the will of God, but he's not very humble in general past that...
• Gone Horribly Right: He considers his true "birth" to have been his Baptism after Wounded Knee. To wit, this is to say he wanted to be granted forgiveness from the things that he did previously. It was supposed to make him understand that he had done wrong and could become better for it, but instead he became even worse and was convinced that he could do no wrong.
• Heel–Faith Turn: He claims that his discovery of faith saved his soul. In reality, it only provided him with the belief that he could do no wrong, which leads to a lot of suffering.
• Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Whatever moves Booker makes against Comstock, Comstock will still remain alive in at least one of his "tears" in the universes; the Luteces have already tried to enlist Booker numerous times to end the cycle — 122 times, to be exact, judging by Robert Lutece's coin-flip tally. Oblivious Booker is content to go back in time and strangle Comstock in his crib if necessary. Elizabeth and her alternates gang up on Booker and drown him to prevent him from ever becoming the Prophet.
  • In Burial at Sea, Elizabeth exposes "Booker" as yet another Comstock. This version killed the Elizabeth of his universe by mistake, undoing all of his plans and ruining his self-image as a changed man. As penance, he fled to Rapture and retook the name of "Booker DeWitt", which spared him from the erasure.
• Hypocrite: He gives Andrew Ryan and Sofia Lamb serious competition in not practicing what they preach.
  • "The Lord forgives everything, but I'm just a prophet... so I don't have to."
  • He parades himself around as a prophet chosen by God Himself yet he not only breaks several of the Ten Commandments with his various atrocities but, as Jesus is not so much as mentioned, likely since it would take attention away from him, along with the entire city of Columbia being one huge Cult of Personality around himself (i.e. Idolatry), his religious beliefs would be seen as extremely blasphemous by most Christians.
  • Also the fact that he accepts a baptism and changes his name and identity to try to free himself from the guilt of what he did at Wounded Knee, but he takes credit FOR THE VERY SAME DEEDS.
  • Like Booker, he is half-Sioux and not fully white. Not that it stops him from condemning interracial couples, demonizing minorities and literally bringing African Americans to Columbia by FORCE to work as servants.
  • He has the gall to to use Booker’s drinking problem to shame him early in the game yet, as evidenced by all of the liquor in his personal quarters, he has a huge drinking problem as well.
  • Later on when he’s trying to talk Elizabeth into staying in Columbia, he calls Booker a “killer of women” which is quite rich coming from him give how he not only killed countless innocent women and children at Wounded Knee but also murdered his own wife and both Luteces for being a liability.
• I Hate Past Me: Both Comstock and Booker despise each other. Whereas Booker grows to despise Comstock over the course of the game, Comstock has held Booker in hostility long before he arrives in Columbia. They're both the same person, with different reasons to hate their shared past. Besides him thinking "it's Never My Fault", and quickly Becoming the Mask, and any related tropes, it may be his defining trait- The entire game happens because he doesn't want to be Booker. What makes this worse is they're the same age. The Twin's machine only makes him look older as it slowly kills him.
• I Reject Your Reality: Comstock is a master of fooling himself above all others. Any fact that intrudes on his delusions of grandeur is only a slight inconvenience. He knows that all his "divine visions" and "miraculous powers" are the result of the Lutece's interdimensional technology, that Elizabeth isn't his daughter, and that he wasn't some great hero in his youth a "Booker", but has warped his perception enough that he can ignore all of it to serve his ego.
• Improbable Age: Booker was born in 1874 and established Columbia in 1893 when he was 18-19. While it's possible to be a preacher and have a substantial following, the government simply wouldn't build a large autonomous warship and give someone, who couldn't even vote, control over it purely on faith.
• Ignored Epiphany: It's implied he started using his religious faith as a shield against his guilt, rather than being forced to deal with it like our Booker — leading him to conclude the Indian Wars were justified and that America is still being undermined by undesirables.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: How he meets his end at the drill of a Big Daddy in Burial at Sea.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: It's hinted that for all his dismissive comments about Booker, he's deeply envious of Booker's ability to come to terms with their past, as well as have a child that he cannot due to his sterility. Lampshaded by the Luteces in Burial At Sea, who imply that his decision to steal Elizabeth and try the same with Sally is simply transference for his self-loathing and desire to be someone else.
  • There is one Voxophone in which Comstock sounds angry. When he recounts how he was teased before the Massacre at Wounded Knee for having Sioux Ancestry. This led him to buring several Sioux families alive to win the approval of his fellow soldiers.
• It's All About Me: Everything in Columbia is built around worshipping him. To the point where he twists the Bible to the point where his brand of Christianity is barely recognizable in order to make himself the center of attention above God Himself.

J - Y

• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: The monuments to Lady Comstock and his war against the Vox Populi being over Daisy Fitzroy supposedly murdering her do give the impression that he did actually love Lady Comstock. In reality he didn’t, or at least not enough to not kill her for being a liability and later resurrect her corpse as a monster to kill Booker.
• Kick the Morality Pet: He seemingly loved Lady Comstock but it didn’t stop him from killing her when she became a liability. He also had both Luteces killed for similar reasons.
• Knight Templar: He sincerely believes in what he does as the will of a perfect and all-forgiving God, even knowing how harsh his actions often are.
  Comstock: Is it not cruel to banish one's children from a perfect garden? Is it not cruel to drown your flock under an ocean of water? Cruelty can be instructive, and what is Columbia but a schoolhouse of the Lord?
• Lack of Empathy: Comstock seems to be completely lost to human compassion.
• Large Ham: Though not always, he does occasionally chew the scenery, particularly in some of his Voxophone recordings and in the later half of the game.
• Laser-Guided Karma: In the Burial at Sea DLC, an alternate version of Comstock accidentally beheaded Anna during the jump between worlds. His overwhelming guilt led him to sentence himself to Rapture, where Anna did not exist and where he could again live as "Booker", with no memory of what he did. Unfortunately, this led him to end up losing his (adopted) daughter the exact same way as Booker Prime.
• Literal Metaphor: As the Big Bad to Booker's Player Character, Comstock is literally His Own Worst Enemy.
• The Lost Lenore: Lady Comstock’s death hit him hard judging by how an entire wing of the Hall of Heroes is dedicated to her. Subverted HARD when you find out late in the game that Comstock murdered her when she suspected that Elizabeth wasn’t her child.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Zachary is a shortened and Americanized pronunciation of the Hebrew name Zechariah, meaning "The Lord has remembered" in English. It is the name of two biblical figures: the priest Zechariah ben Jehoiada, and the prophet Zechariah.
  • He shares his surname Comstock with a number of 19th century U.S. politicians and judges. One of the more noteworthy associations is with moral crusader Anthony Comstock, who, in his position as postal inspector and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, introduced stringent obscenity laws and prosecuted violators with such zeal (personally crediting himself with driving 15 artists/authors to suicide) that his name is synonymous with heavy-handed censorship laws.
  • Hale is a name which is believed to have originated from either the Old English word halh, which refers to a nook or hollow where people may find shelter, or the Saxon term haelaeh, which refers to qualities of heroism such as courage or strength. In Modern English "hale" can also be a descriptor for someone who is strong and healthy in spite of their age (as in "hale and hearty") - this makes it a thoroughly Ironic Name: Comstock is a lot younger than his appearance suggests and extremely unhealthy due to terminal cancer, both caused by overexposure to the Lutece's machine.
• Messianic Archetype: Comstock wields this trope like a bludgeon in Columbia; half the population are convinced that he's a prophet, and that Elizabeth is his divinely ordained successor.
• Mirror Character: Of Daisy Fitzroy or Booker DeWitt. All brutally dedicated to achieving their goals, whatever lies they have to tell or means they have to resort to. There’s a reason for that. This is extremely emphasized in the first Burial at Sea episode: When he's left without his city and his resources, he's so similar to Booker that it's hard to tell the difference but for a few key differences in perspective.
• Misery Builds Character:
  • His plan for molding Elizabeth into an Apocalypse Maiden includes Cold-Blooded Torture and destroying any hope she may have of escaping Columbia.
  • Comstock escaping the guilt and misery of his past lead him to becoming who he is, as opposed to Booker.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Lady Comstock thought he was having an affair with Rosalind Lutece and Elizabeth was their baby. He wasn't, of course, but in her defense that sounds far more plausible than "Lutece helped me buy this baby from an alternate universe version of myself."
• Moral Myopia: The way his religion works. It's all a giant coping mechanism to keep himself from feeling guilt for his past. Forgiveness in Christian traditions typically means "Go and Sin No More" — baptism means your sins have been washed away, the slate is clean, and you can start over as a way to be better than the person you used to be. Comstock's religion tells him "You cannot sin, no matter what you do, so do whatever you want".
• Narcissist: Columbia is less of a city and more of one huge cult of personality around him. In fact it’s implied that the game’s Jesus Taboo is the result of him not wanting another figure to distract from his spotlight.
• Never My Fault: Comstock has severe trouble facing his own guilt, to the point that this is his most defining trait. He only exists because he's a version of Booker that accepted baptism and created a new identity to bury his guilt over Wounded Knee. Driving the point home further, Burial at Sea features an alternate Comstock who accidentally killed Elizabeth when he tried to take her from her own world, and then had the Luteces move him to another world so that he could escape his guilt over that, too.
  Rosalind Lutece: Comstock was never one to own up to his errors, was he, brother?
  Robert Lutece: Never comfortable with the choices he made...
  Rosalind: Always seeking someone else's life to claim as his own...
  • Ironically, this condemnation is given the one time he does owns up to his past and mistakes before Elizabeth teaches him This Is a Drill.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Twofold. First, by killing his wife and framing Fitzroy for it, Comstock ends up setting in motion the chain of events that led to the creation of the Vox Populi. Second, he had Jeremiah Fink kill the Lutece Twins in a "lab accident" to keep Elizabeth's origin a secret only to spread them across time and space, allowing them to rectify their mistake by bringing Booker to Columbia.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Despite his vast propaganda toward militarism, the most violent thing he does himself personally is grab Elizabeth's right arm and demand Booker tell her why she's missing digits from her pinky. After that, Booker smashes his head, strangles, and drowns him with ease. Of course, he's prematurely aged and terminally ill, so that's about all he could be expected to do.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He plans for Elizabeth to destroy human civilization on the surface world as his version of the final judgment.
• Orcus on His Throne: Comstock used the Lutece machine to become near omniscient, and initally used it to quell any threat to Columbia and more importantly his rule. However, he’s barely done anything against the Vox Populi who have been waging an insurgency since 1895.
• Pet the Dog: In Burial at Sea he’s quite protective of Sally, a simple orphan he adopted. He fights through a small army of splicers to reach her and objects to Elizabeth's plan to try to force her into the open with extreme heat. How valid that is, and how much this redeems him, are subject to debate. He doesn't take it so well when Sally refuses to come with him, however.
• Permanent Elected Official: Maybe the best description of his position; Columbia is born in the image of the United States, but Comstock has absolute, unyielding authority within the city. He’s king-like, although never referred to as such, and his devotees not only give him their allegiance but their worship.
• Phony Psychic: His directives supposedly all come from the Archangel Columbia, including his plans for a dynasty to take over before the cancer claims him. This is actually the standard playbook of a tyrant, but he rationalizes it through scripture. He's actually been using the Luteces' machine to peer into other realities, claiming credit for any wondrous discoveries he finds. This means that while his predictions are 100% correct, he's both lying about their source and filtering them through his pseudo-religious philosophy.
• Phony Veteran: Slate accuses him of being one. Subverted as he's ultimately an alternate version of Booker, who actually is a veteran.
• Politically Correct Villain: For a man of his time, he's extremely progressive about gender issues, employing women in his armed forces, grooming his daughter to take over after him, and listing "misogyny" as one of the sins of "the Sodom Below" that his followers should hate and fear. When it comes to other issues such as race... well, there he goes in the opposite direction.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Via Deliberate Values Dissonance, which makes some of his positions seem monstrous to a modern audience, though merely "extreme" by the standards of his contemporaries.
  • Also it's debatable how genuine his racism is. His identity as Comstock certainly is racist, but Booker doesn't appear to be, at least from his interactions with people of different races. Booker may have deliberately chosen this character trait for his new identity to feed Columbia's sense of isolation, superiority, and victimization, to better present himself as a savior and protector. When he started believing in what he was saying, however, his pretend racism may have shaded into the real thing.
• Psychological Projection: Most of the things he uses to shame Booker into going back to the “Sodom below” are things that he himself is guilty of. The fact that he’s an alternate version of Booker is probably why.
• Redemption Rejection: In Burial at Sea Episode One, the playable Comstock after inadvertently killing Anna while trying to take her gave up his plans of building Columbia and burning the Sodom below and fled to Rapture where he could go back to being Booker and forget it all happened. In time, he adopted a young orphan named Sally and became violently protective of her, being willing to torture Suchong and fight through an army of splicers to rescue her after she was taken. Most notably, he objects strenuously to a plan that would hurt Sally for her own good, which was the main Comstock's entire philosophy for 'educating' Elizabeth. Nevertheless, Elizabeth and the Luteces view the entire sequence of events as him just trying to run away from his problems and arrange to have him brutally murdered even as he apologizes to Elizabeth.
• Retired Badass: He’s known to be a successful military man back in the day, having participated in the battle of Wounded Knee and the Boxer rebellion. He’s also a prematurely-aged version of Booker DeWitt, meaning that he could do anything that Booker can do if he had a younger body. Burial At Sea shows us just how well he can handle himself even in his withered condition.
• The Reveal: Comstock was at Wounded Knee and the Boxer Rebellion because he’s Booker, a version who accepted baptism and a new name with it. He still didn't lead at Wounded Knee, mind you (he was just a corporal), making Slate's protests still somewhat valid. But that single choice—to baptize or not—is the heart of the game, as Comstock goes on to found Columbia, become sterile from peeking into Lutece Fields, and arrange for the purchasing of some other timeline's Booker's daughter because of Heir Club for Men reasons.
• Right-Wing Militia Fanatic: An early 20th century version of this and it may even be taken up a notch since he believes America isn't American enough.
• Sanity Slippage: A constant among the various identities - his newfound nationalist zealotry apparently consumed his original self in the wake of his baptism, and the advanced age and cancerous side effects from his exposure to the Luteces' Tears pushed him further into senility. Even his Burial at Sea counterpart, still younger at the time of Elizabeth's death, went into an outright fugue state upon creating a new identity in Rapture, and only learned who he really was by the time of his death.
• Scam Religion: Comstock was originally quite aware that he wasn't a prophet and that his visions were the result of science, not faith. However, he nevertheless cultivated a religon which worships him and his ideals in an attempt to create his vision of a perfect world. However, probably due to his declining mental state and after he killed anyone who could expose him, he came to genuinely believe he was a prophet of god. Rosalind Lutece even remarks on it in an audio log. Oh and he takes advantage of his “divine” status to charge a 50% tithe on the people of Columbua.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Quite ironically for a man who wants to destroy the entire surface for their (perceived) sin, he fits all of the seven deadly sins.
  • Lust: He desires absolute power over everyone in Columbia
  • Envy: He’s implied to be jealous of Booker’s ability to accept that he’s done monstrous things unlike him.
  • Sloth: Rather than take any actual steps towards becoming a better person and atoning for his sins, he took a single baptism and saw himself as a changed man who was incapable of wrongdoing.
  • Wrath: Wants to destroy the entire “Sodom Below” and has no qualms with killing anyone who gets in his way, even his own wife..
  • Greed: He charges a 50% tithe on every citizen in Columbia.
  • Gluttony: He rules his own city and is worshipped as a holy prophet yet still wishes to destroy and have control over the surface.
  • Pride: He sees himself as a man chosen by God Himself and Columbia is more or less an alter for people to worship him at.
• Shadow Archetype: For Booker. Justified because they're the same person, though 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.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: Elizabeth tries talking sense to "Final Comstock", but when diplomacy doesn't work out, she and the Luteces wind up chasing him to Rapture and executing him. Subverted in that Comstock begs for forgiveness by the end — a day late and a dollar short.
• The Sociopath: Manipulated a city of people to die for him, imprisoned and tortured his daughter, and planned to have her destroy major cities on the earth just to avoid any responsibility for his actions at Wounded Knee.
• Sole Survivor: In the Burial at Sea DLC, the playable Booker in Episode 1 turns out to be an alternate Comstock, making him the only one to survive the original Booker's Heroic Sacrifice. This is because he ceased to be a Comstock to begin with. However, he doesn't last long once Elizabeth realises he's still alive.
• Sinister Minister: He's a kind old prophet... who has brainwashed a city and wants to declare war on the world to make it holy, and has a tendency to believe his own lies.
• Start of Darkness: Ironically, it was an act meant to cleanse his sins that created Comstock; in accepting baptism to try and redeem his sins at Wounded Knee, Comstock, in a case of Dramatically Missing the Point for the ages, took "go forth and sin no more" to mean that his actions were justified and that nothing he did was a sin. This moment is so pivotal to Comstock's story that averting it prevents his entire existence.
• Sympathy for the Devil: A Downplayed In-Universe example can be seen in Burial at Sea: Episode One — a conversation that Final Comstock and Elizabeth share after reaching Fontaine's department store makes it evident that he does have some sympathy for the splicers, and can even understand the addictive needs that drove them into embracing ADAM, but not so much as to blind him to how dangerous they are. He also implies he's seen splicers tearing Little Sisters apart in order to get their ADAM, which understandably undercuts his ability to sympathize with them.
• That Man Is Dead: His whole life before his baptism, when he was Booker DeWitt was supposed to be this. Eventually he loses his marbles and starts taking credit for the very deeds that drove him to seek absolution in the first place.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: He goes farther than either Andrew Ryan or Sofia Lamb in trying to make his vision of Eden a reality, ultimately plotting to have his utopia destroy "the Sodom Below."
• Villainous Breakdown: In the last third of the game, his repeated failures at capturing Elizabeth/killing Booker slowly make him more unstable. When confronted in person on the Hand of the Prophet, the previously Faux Affably Evil Comstock ends up flipping out at both in rage.
• Villain Protagonist: Of the first Burial At Sea DLC, though how much of a villain he is is unclear. Though how he acts before his death doesn't help him look any better...
• Villain with Good Publicity: He's regarded as the "Hero of Wounded Knee" for his role in the Battle of Wounded Knee, which in history is better known as the Wounded Knee Massacre. In it, he performed the associated atrocities for the sake of gaining the acceptance of the other soldiers in spite of his Native American ancestry.
• Visionary Villain: And an extremely charismatic one, too, able to secure funding to build a flying city on the basis of a few visions.
  Comstock: "And then, the archangel showed a vision: a city, lighter than air. I asked her, "Why do you show this to me, archangel? I'm not a strong man. I'm not a righteous man. I am not a holy man." And she told me the most remarkable thing: "You're right, Prophet. But if grace is within the grasp of one such as you, how can anyone else not see it in themselves?"
• Voice of the Legion: Often addresses Booker through speakers that cause a deeper-pitched delayed echo of his voice. On the other hand, this could just be Booker's perception; his brain's way of telling him that Booker and Comstock are one and the same.
• White Man's Burden:
  • He’s a big believer in this, taken straight into rationalization of slavery, detesting Abraham Lincoln as emancipating blacks from their "rightful place". He sees the duty of the white people to rule over and shepherd all the others.
  • He also says the trope name word for word in an audio log.
• You Killed My Father: Daisy Fitzroy was accused of killing his wife. It’s later revealed that Comstock had her killed because she wouldn't be willing to keep Elizabeth's secret. Fitzroy was a scullery maid in the wrong place at the wrong time he could use to deflect blame away from himself.
• Younger Than They Look: Comstock is the same age as Booker, but appears older due to the Luteces' experiments taking a toll on his health. It become more apparent in Burial at Sea when he shaves; he looks like a white-haired Booker.