Mythology Gag / BioShock Infinite

• One of the alternate realities? Rapture. In fact you're taken on the same bathysphere journey from the start of BioShock... in reverse — as 1946 standard Beyond the Sea plays.
  Booker: A city at the bottom of the ocean?! Ridiculous.
• The way the Boy of Silence ambushes you in Comstock Tower, with you unable to move until you turn around, is exactly like how a Doctor attacks you in BioShock.
• Songbird's eyes change color depending on his status (green=calm, yellow=alert, red=hostile), just like those of the Big Daddies. That's because Songbird was based off the design of Big Daddies.
• The searchlights on the Gun and Rocket Automatons act the same way. In this case, green indicates an automaton that is affected by Possession.
• The beginning of the game has you traveling toward a lighthouse, opening a box and cradling a gun, which mirrors Jack's arrival at Rapture in the original BioShock. Adding further to it, the way to get to Columbia is a one seated rocket ship which has a window which gives a nice view of the city once you arrive. Similar to the bathysphere which dove you down to Rapture in the first BioShock.
• A down-on-his-luck man being hired to infiltrate an insane religious cult secluded from the rest of the world, possessing advanced technology, was the pitch of the original BioShock.
• Elizabeth:
  • Being known as "The Lamb of Columbia" seems to be a Call-Back to Sophia Lamb from BioShock 2.
  • Her role is extremely similar to Eleanor Lamb: both are held captive by terrible parents who wish to use them as a sacrifice/cult leader to lead the insane masses to destroy the surface, possess terrible power, have been locked up and isolated from the populace for years, are worshiped as Messiahs, both are referred to as "Lamb", serve in supporting combat roles (though Eleanor is much more direct in combat), are influenced by the player character's actions, are eventually part of a Hive Mind, can potentially turn evil, and are saved by their real fathers, who die after the fact. Bonus points for Eleanor potentially drowning her mother, while Elizabeth puts Booker to the drink. And as of Burial at Sea Part 2, both women have their father in their heads.
  • Ironically, BioShock 2 was supposed to contain flashbacks of the player character in Rapture before its downfall that might be parallel universes. Infinite has flashbacks to Booker's life before Columbia. BioShock 2 was also was supposed to have the twist that you actually are Eleanor's father, but it's just heavily implied in the final product.
• You find an ex-employee of a deranged, evil boss murdered and impaled to a wall, with a sign that reads "SACKED". In BioShock 2, you'd find similar corpses, but the wording was "YOU'RE FIRED" or "FIRED". You also get shuffled into a deadly "demonstration" of their fine products to prove your worth, both of which include robotic enemies.
• An "amusement" park meant to inform that's really more to scare the kids and keep them in line, or indoctrinate them to the nation's cause. In BioShock 2, it was Ryan Amusements, here, it's the Hall of Heroes in Soldier's Field.
• The code for an elevator is 0451, a common reference in video games born from being the keycode to Looking Glass offices back in the day, and is also seen in: both System Shock games, Deus Ex, the first BioShock, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Yeah, Ken Levine and Ion Storm really like that number.
• When you first arrive in Columbia, upon entering the circle, the first words from the priest who tries to baptize Booker are "Is it someone new?", echoing the first words you hear from a female Splicer once you enter Rapture.
• Comstock, like Andrew Ryan and Sophia Lamb, first contacts Booker through a video device which of course ends in threatening you.
• You find some pistol ammo sitting on a baby carriage, a callback to receiving your first weapon in the original BioShock.
• A broken vending machine looks much like the tonic vendors from BioShock, and laying on the ground nearby is the wrench. You can also "hack" the vending machines with your first Vigor, Possession. They dump out a number of coins.
• The Dollar Bill vending machines are all voiced by Ken Levine, in the same voice as the Circus of Values machines from the first game. They even have modified versions of the original vending machine scripts. "Come back when you've got some money, buddy!" becomes "Return when you have the currency, fella!" If you don't notice it right away, you will when you hear the Dollar Bill machine say "I appreciate a lady who appreciates value!" "A carnival of thrift at your disposal!" — "Carnival of Thrift" being a rough synonym for "Circus of Value".
• At one point, Elizabeth knocks Booker out with a very familiar wrench.
• At another point, Booker comes across a police illustration of what an eyewitness thinks he looks like... which very closely resembles Sander Cohen.
• Eating food or using a medical kit plays the familiar med hypo/med pack sound from System Shock 2 and BioShock, respectively.
• The sound played when a new objective displays is also the same as in BioShock.
• Towards the end of the game, there's a Jump Scare where an enemy spawns right behind you, just like in the previous games.
• Fink puts people into categories like Andrew Ryan did. Ryan divided people into Men, Slaves, and Parasites, while Fink divides people into Lions, Oxen, and Hyenas.
• An easy one to miss but when you die, Elizabeth brings you back with a syringe filled with a green liquid. Said syringe looks just like how the original idea for said syringe was designed to look for injecting ADAM. Also ADAM itself was originally green.
• When you first enter Columbia, you end up in a church used for baptisms. The entire church is waterlogged, and you are up to your ankles in the stuff... just like you were in BioShock.
• Both BioShock and BioShock Infinite feature a scene in which something significant catches the player's eye upon first entering the city. In BioShock, Jack sees a whale swimming by as he enters Rapture; in BioShock Infinite, Booker sees a zeppelin flying by as he enters Columbia.
• In the Gamescom 2010 Gameplay Trailer, early on a woman is spotted calmly sweeping her shop as it burns down around her, setting the scene that something is "off" about the city's residents right away. In the final game, none of the scenes from this gameplay trailer are present, but in Downtown Emporia, a single NPC townswoman can be found in the blurry "trapped between realities" trance state - endlessly sweeping a burning shop. The fact that she is the only such NPC on this level, and in fact the only non-enemy/non-main character NPC to be seen in this state in the entire game, strongly suggests this was an intentional throwback to the scene from the gameplay trailer.

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