Trivia / BioShock 2

• Approval of God: While Ken Levine wasn't involved with the game's production, he came out after the game's release giving praise towards its development team, commending them for doing a great job in "completing the story of Rapture."
• B-Team Sequel: Jordan Thomas steps in as the director for this game, replacing Ken Levine.
• Creator Backlash: In 2022, Karl Hanover admitted that he isn't particularly proud of his performance as Frank Fontaine in this game's audio diaries, as he had unknowingly recorded his lines while coming down with a cold, causing his voice to sound different from the first game.
• Defictionalization: NECA has replicas of the EVE Hypo and Big Daddy dolls, just in case your normal Little Sister wasn't creepy enough. They also have one for the "bunny" and "wielder" splicer masks.
• The Original Darrin: An unusual case. Karl Hanover had originally voiced Frank Fontaine in the first Bioshock game, but was replaced by Greg Baldwin later on to make it harder for players to guess The Reveal that Fontaine is Atlas's true identity. From this game onwards, Hanover would voice Fontaine alongside Atlas for the games.
• Throw It In!:
  • "Something in the Sea" wasn't going to have an effect on the main game, but fans loved it so much that protagonist Mark Meltzer was given a minor role.
  • Apparently, Sheryl Lee of Laura Palmer fame ended up in the recording studio due to a scheduling mishap (likely due to confusion with Sheryl Lee Ralph, the voice of Grace Holloway). She was given a role as a Baby Jane splicer in the Atlantic Express, discussing Jack's whereabouts.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The very first teaser trailer revealed the game as having a subtitle: BioShock 2: Sea of Dreams, but almost immediately afterwards, 2K announced that it was dropped.
  • A removed message from Eleanor revealed that Delta is her biological father (Sophia picked his DNA randomly from a bunch of archived DNA).
    • That said, there is also a removed ADAM vision from Eleanor where it is revealed that Delta is not her biological father. It is unknown if the developers simply couldn't decide whether to have Delta be Eleanor's biological father or not, or if it was going to be dependent on some choice made by the player, but was ultimately scrapped.
  • A pair of removed messages also revealed that Subject Delta and Eleanor apparently knew each other before they become a Big Daddy/Little sister pair, and had tried to escape Rapture together. It would have been revealed that Delta either saved Eleanor from a flooded airlock, nearly dying in the process, teaching her to help and protect others. Alternatively, it would have been revealed that he had her flushed down the airlock to save himself, thus teaching her to survive at all costs. Which message the player would have gotten would almost certainly be determined by whether they saved or harvested the Little Sisters.
  • Dionysus Park was originally conceived as being as a perfectly intact area that wasn't leaking and falling apart like the rest of Rapture. The player was originally supposed to get there by way of an underwater section through a completely flooded Fort Frolic. The area would have been home to wild parties hosted by the famous filmmaker Ava-Marie Tate. Stanley Poole, who was so delusional from splicing that he believed he was still the Moral Guardian Intrepid Reporter he once was and was implied to be Grace Holloway's husband, tasked Delta with getting Tate's parties on film. Delta would have taken an ADAM-derived drug called Eden, which would cause hallucinations such as images from his past, large marionettes, and Sander Cohen as a "20-foot tall Freudian bunny monster". However, the footage would have shown that Stanley was spliced up himself and had sold Eleanor to become a Little Sister, causing him to Go Mad from the Revelation and attempt to "erase" Delta.
  • The Rumbler is an updated version of a cut Big Daddy from the previous game (which even made it onto some screenshots) code named "Slow-Pro FUM" ("slow-moving, projectile-shooting, f'ed-up-melee"). The Slow-Pro had a single cannon which he had to kneel down in order to use and a huge hook for heavy damaging melee attacks in case the player got close. The Slow-Pro ended up being cut late in development, much to the chagrin of the designers. Eventually it was reworked into the Rumbler, with the hook replaced with the mini turrets (since they believed the Bouncer had the heavy melee department covered).
  • Originally there was only going to be a single Big Sister who would be the real Big Bad of the game: one of Jack's rescued Little Sisters who couldn't adjust to life on the surface and would return to Rapture and recreate her childhood by kidnapping children to make into new Little Sisters. In the final version of the released game, you can even see a bit of what's left of this original idea at the start of the game where the Big Sister acts as a single entity popping in a few times to keep a Little Sister away from Delta. After that, the game acts like there's multiple Big Sisters throughout the game that are just there for Boss Battle encounters against Delta.
  • In another version, Sofia Lamb would still be the Big Bad, but there would still be a single Big Sister as The Dragon, which would be revealed to be Eleanor (hence why in Audio Diaries, Sofia still refers to Big Sister in the singular). Thus you would fight the Big Sister in a series of Hopeless Boss Fights where you had to survive and damage her enough for her to retreat. Eventually the developers scrapped this since they felt knowing that the Big Sister would always escape would undermine the excitement of the battles as well as feeling that "the Big Sister being YOUR Little Sister" was a weak twist. In a way they partially kept the twist, with ONE of the Big Sisters being the protagonist's Little Sister-only she was Delta's Little Sister, not Jack's.
  • Subject Delta's armor used to be based off of old World War II bombers and would have been a lot more top-heavy and bulkier.
  • Speaking of armor, originaly Delta was going to be a lot more durable, on the level of other Big Daddies. The idea was that individual splicers would be like flies, but become a threat in swarms. In the final product, Delta is just as squishy as Jack, if not more so.
  • Many promotional images show Big Sisters with a bayonet attached to their left arm rather than a long syringe, and without a harpoon and wrench strapped to their right arm.
  • You could use Pneumo Tubes to buy and sell supplies with non-spliced survivors who had barricaded themselves from the splicers. Ultimately this idea was cut along with the survivors, whose model was re-used for the splicer with the shaved head that Delta stomps in the game's opening.
  • Failed "Little Brothers" who were too aggressive to be used for gathering would have appeared in Inner Persephone. A Little Brother therapy room in Inner Persephone was repurposed as a Pediatric Ward for the Little Sisters.
  • A concept pitch for a re-imagined Vita-Chamber◊ mentions an "alternative generation of Big Daddys & Big Mommas", suggesting female Big Daddies were considered, as they never appear in the franchise except for the three female multiplayer characters.
  • The Soviet Union was supposed to invade Rapture at one time.
  • Minerva's Den almost suffered from Executive Meddling when 2K wanted the staff to include one last battle in C.M. Porter's office before the ending, but the team pushed hard enough for the company to reject the idea. This is most likely why there is a Vita-Chamber right after the elevator.
  • Speaking of Minerva's Den, originally, The Reveal was that C.M. Porter was plain Dead All Along, rather than turned into the Big Daddy known as Subject Sigma. This was inspired by the series's Spiritual Predecessor System Shock 2, where your Mission Control also turns out to be an AI impersonating a dead person.
  • The Protector Trials DLC was originally intended to be canon. The writers planned to mention them in the main story, and there would have been somewhat more story linking the gathering sessions together. However, changes to main story rendered the Protector Trials DLC's plotline (stealing ADAM from Sofia Lamb) less plot-critical, while the Protector Trials DLC was put on the back burner.
    • The player would also use the stolen ADAM to create the gene tonics seen in the Little Sister gifts and then the "Master Protector" tonic that's available in Minerva's Den as a reward for the Protector Trials. The Big Daddy in the Protector Trials would have delivered it to a pneumatic tube, which Sigma would have picked up. In the final version, it's just available for free at a Gatherer's Garden.
• Word of God: According to Jordan Thomas, the enormous light under Persephone is a luminescent biomass that mutated the sea slugs to produce ADAM.