History YMMV / BioShock1

* AluminumChristmasTrees:
** Many Objectivists object to the game's critique of Objectivism, saying that Ryan's descent into megalomania dooming the city is a betrayal of the philosophy. Ayn Rand, Andrew Ryan's namesake and the founder of Objectivism, ended up leading a cult in Greenwich Village. The members were forbidden contact with outsiders beyond the bare necessities of work and daily life; they watched Rand-approved media every evening as a group; anyone who started to deviate was subject to "psychotherapy" to "reacquire objectively correct moral standards" (locked in a room and shouted at for days until they gave in); and anyone who wouldn't comply was ejected and tried in absentia, with their closest friends required to come up with a list of the things they hated most about the excommunicated. This eventually led to a split with Nathaniel Branden (the Cheney to her Bush), who was far more charismatic than Rand, as she couldn't stand him upstaging her, and his departure ultimately doomed the cult as she couldn't hold it together without him.
** The diving suits Big Daddies are wearing are much closer to something [[https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-xlarge/jzzoegkoh2ghaenqcbzp.jpg that was really made and used]] than you would expect from first glance.

** [[ManipulativeBastard Frank Fontaine]], aka [[spoiler:[[DiabolicalMastermind Atlas]]]], is the ArchEnemy of [[Characters/BioShockAndrewRyan Andrew Ryan]]. [[VillainWithGoodPublicity Seemingly providing shelter for orphans and the poor]], in reality he was subjecting them with ADAM, a deadly substance he forcibly extracted from little girls, turning them into dangerous and insane Splicers. He would use these Splicers to start a civil war that would engulf Rapture in flames; during that time he forced [[spoiler:[[Characters/BioShockInfiniteElizabeth Elizabeth]]]] to help him, first by torturing her then by torturing a child right in front of her, and later kills her after she gave him the means to control [[spoiler:protagonist Jack]]. He would program [[spoiler:Jack]] to kill his own [[spoiler:father Andrew Ryan]] while he usurps the latter's position, and tries to kill him once he has served his purpose.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Many Objectivists object to the game's critique of Objectivism, saying that Ryan's descent into megalomania dooming the city is a betrayal of the philosophy. Ayn Rand, Andrew Ryan's namesake and the founder of Objectivism, ended up leading a cult in Greenwich Village. The members were forbidden contact with outsiders beyond the bare necessities of work and daily life; they watched Rand-approved media every evening as a group; anyone who started to deviate was subject to "psychotherapy" to "reacquire objectively correct moral standards" (locked in a room and shouted at for days until they gave in); and anyone who wouldn't comply was ejected and tried in absentia, with their closest friends required to come up with a list of the things they hated most about the excommunicated. This eventually led to a split with Nathaniel Branden (the Cheney to her Bush), who was far more charismatic than Rand, as she couldn't stand him upstaging her, and his departure ultimately doomed the cult as she couldn't hold it together without him.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: ''Bioshock'' is a lot harder to appreciate and respect for gamers who didn't latch on to it in 2007 when it came out. At the time, a title like it -- an FPS ImmersiveSim with RPGElements and genuinely rich art direction, and a high concept (parodying a real-world writer of note) -- was revolutionary. It was also the game that more or less made {{Deconstruction}} of games as a medium mainstream, and the famous plot twist of the game was genuinely surprising, inspiring later games like ''VideoGame/SpecOpsTheLine, VideoGame/FarCry3'' among many others. Today, when so many games mine similar material, concepts, and where [[Creator/ChristopherNolan Nolan]]-esque twists are not only common, but predictable, ''Bioshock'' tends to get more criticism, especially for its weak sequels and followups.

* CompleteMonster (Fontaine and Suchong are also in ''[[BioShockInfinite/BurialAtSea Burial at Sea]]''):

* EvilIsSexy: If you can believe it, [[spoiler:Frank Fontaine/Atlas]] has amassed quite a few fangirls. It's probably [[EvilSoundsDeep the voice]],and the fact that [[spoiler:he spends his entire boss fight all muscled up and [[FullFrontalAssault completely naked]].]]

* ValuesResonance: The player later finds an audio diary detailing that people came to Rapture thinking they would be "captains of industry" found that someone in the end had to perform jobs that keep society running. This caused some {{Applicability}} as well, making people who got college degrees finding a lack of employment opportunities they were promised

* VindicatedByHistory: Of a sort. The game did receive critical and commercial success, but there was a pretty vocal group of critics who saw the game as an inferior knockoff (or a poor spiritual successor) to ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'' saying the game lacked "Depth" and "was dumbed down". (Yahtzee having a very [[ReviewsAreTheGospel cult-like fanbase at the time who parroted his opinions]] didn't help either.) Eventually, people started to warm up a little more - pointing out that they may have been a little too harsh on it and were seeing it as a followup to ''VideoGame/SystemShock2'' rather than its own product.

* SpiritualAdaptation: The game is a fantastic deconstruction and adaptation of ''Literature/AtlasShrugged'' and ''Literature/TheFountainhead''.

** ''VideoGame/BioShock2'' reveals the fates of those Jack had to leave behind: [[spoiler:most of them went on to become Big Sisters when they aged out of their usefulness, in order to protect the new batch of Little Sisters, most of whom were kidnapped from the surface. If anything they're even more TragicVillain types than the Big Daddies for this reason. And it can be presumed that those who didn't either died or became regular Splicers while fighting to survive in Rapture.]] The GoodEnding of the sequel at least implies that [[spoiler:Eleanor manages to rescue ''all'' of the surviving new generation of Little Sisters.]]

** How some fans feel about the last levels of the game after the scene regarding [[spoiler:Andrew Ryan's death and Atlas revealing himself to be Frank Fontaine]]. Nothing, aside from getting revenge, drives the storytelling through the hotel suites and Little Sister factory levels.
** Opinion is at least split for the hotel suites level; some enjoyed the CharacterDevelopment for Dr. Tenenbaum seen throughout this portion of the game, and coming across the cause of Yi Suchong's death got a laugh out of quite a few people.
** Another complaint about the latter part of the game is that, despite the fact that the preceding climatic scene makes a comment about {{Railroading}}, the gameplay doesn't change to reflect this. You’re still taking orders from a VoiceWithAnInternetConnection, albeit a much nicer one, but you don't actually get to choose to say, not kill Fontaine and leave the city.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Sander Cohen seems to be very popular among the fans, if fanart and the like is anything to go by. It may be in no small part to his memorable lines, LargeHam persona, and being completely insane, even by Rapture's standards. There's also the fact that he doesn't betray the player (aside from that one outburst), even allowing him to leave in the end (in truth, ''Jack'' has the potential to betray ''him'').
* EvilIsSexy: If you can believe it, [[spoiler:Frank Fontaine]] has amassed quite a few fangirls. It's probably [[EvilSoundsDeep the voice]], the FoeYayShipping potential with [[spoiler:Jack]], and the fact that [[spoiler:he spends his entire boss fight all muscled up and [[FullFrontalAssault completely naked]].]]
* {{Fanon}}: One Audio Diary recorded by Suchong is interrupted by a Big Daddy [[spoiler:killing him.]] After the release of ''VideoGame/BioShock2'', a lot of players began thinking this Big Daddy was Subject Delta, as [[http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Lamb%27s_Gambit a removed audio diary]] indicates was once the case. ''Burial at Sea'' shows otherwise; the Big Daddy looks extremely different to Delta, and had ''two'' little sisters bonded to him, and neither of them was Eleanor.

* GeniusBonus: Andrew Ryan's story about burning down his forest rather than letting the US government nationalize it reveals more about his character than he intended, if you're aware of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain_in_the_United_States Eminent domain in the United States]]; that that the government can't seize property without compensation. Ryan would have been paid for his land, but chose to destroy it outright rather than "sell" it against his will. This is actually an ongoing issue; [[https://mises.org/library/judges-vs-private-property land seizures]] are ''always'' bitter specifically because ''the government decides what the property is worth.'' This ''can'' be contested in court, but ''always'' at the citizen's expense, with no compensation for legal fees. In many cases, the government has been accused of specifically targeting individuals who can't ''afford'' to contest the assessment, especially when the seized property is a home/business/source of livelihood; the funds are placed in the plaintiff's account when the seizure is carried out, and unless they can successfully defend their case without touching a cent of those funds, the case is thrown out. Ryan was the wrong guy to push around; destroying the forest was an optimal way of washing his hands of the whole fiasco while at the same time getting his point accross.

** A more cosmetic example; it seems that poor Jack cannot go anywhere without the Baby Jane splicer attacking him in every other stage, her having the most appearances in the game by far with her irritating voice.
* GoodBadBugs: The game has several setpiece where going to a specific area for the first time always spawns a Big Daddy-Little Sister pair. In a few levels (Neptune's Bounty, Fort Frolic, Arcadia, Farmer's Market), it's possible to rescue[=/=]harvest all the levels' Little Sister before triggering one of those setpieces, [[https://bioshock.fandom.com/wiki/Extra_Little_Sister_Bug which results in the game spawning an extra Little Sister]]. The ingame counter for the gifts Brigid Tennenbaum sends you for each three Little Sisters rescued takes the extra Little Sisters in account, however there's no supplementary gift once you rescue more than 21 of them. [[spoiler:It also allows to harvest a single Little Sister yet get the good ending anyway.]]

** [[spoiler:Barring the whole "Would you kindly..." business, what if Tenenbaum did some suggesting of her own while she removed Fontaine's?]]

* UnderusedGameMechanic: Using the environment to your advantage. There's a JustifiedTutorial early on where the game makes it pretty obvious that you have to use the Electro Bolt plasmid on the water electrocute a bunch of soaked enemies. This gives the impression that there's going to be many moments throughout the game where you can rely on the environment to help with the killing, yet there's hardly any moments to do so afterwards.

* WoobieSpecies: The little sisters. They were once little girls that got turned into monsters, and even if Jack is nice enough to save all of them and get the good ending, it's still sad thinking of what they went through. And even in the good ending, only five of them escape, whereas the player encounters at least twenty-one over the course of the game, and it's implied there are more off-screen.