Video Game / BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea

aka: Burial At Sea

This page contains unmarked (and probably late-arrival) spoilers for both BioShock Infinite and the original BioShock. Read at your own risk.

"The girl promised me a way out, and I was desperate enough to believe her."

Burial at Sea is a two-part add-on adventure for BioShock Infinite, set in the city of Rapture from the original BioShock. Intended to be played after completing Infinite (as it is a combination sequel to Infinite and prequel to the first BioShock), the game begins with protagonist Booker DeWitt as a down-on-his-luck private detective who is hired by a mysterious woman - recognizable as an older Elizabeth, though the two appear not to know each other - to help find a missing girl with a connection to Booker. Episode 2 continues the tale, but with Elizabeth as the player character. Originally available as a download only and released in two "episodes" in 2013 and 2014, in November 2014 a physical CD version of the add-on was released as part of a "Complete Edition" of Infinite.

Main Page | Tropes A to H | Tropes I to P | Tropes Q to Z | Burial at Sea

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BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea provides examples of the following tropes:

A-F

• Accent Slip-Up: Atlas lapses into his "real" accent during moments of high stress, usually when Elizabeth has managed to defy him in a significant way. At one point near the very end of the game, the subtitles even refer to him as "Fontaine".
• Action Girl: Elizabeth becomes this in Burial at Sea: Episode 2 to a degree, although due to intentionally low ammo and weapon supply, she still relies more on stealth.
• Adrenaline Makeover: Elizabeth, on account of Characterization Marches On and being Promoted to Playable for Episode Two. Further justified by having been Brought Down to Normal and focusing heavily on stealth rather than outright gunfights.
• Air-Vent Passageway: Elizabeth can use air vents to access areas not available to normal travel and avoid enemies.
• The Alcatraz: Of a sorts. Fontaine's former department store which Ryan made into a makeshift prison for Fontaine's followers then sunk it to the bottom of the ocean not too far down from the main city. Turns out Fontaine himself (in his Atlas guise) is down there with it.
• The Alcoholic: It's obvious that this Booker, like his counterpart, is a heavy drinker. Entering a wine shop will prompt the clerk to comment on his frequent visits, and an apparent drinking buddy complains about being left on his own on New Year's.
• All There in the Manual: This trope applies to anyone playing this game before playing Infinite. As the game assumes familiarity with the basic mechanics of gameplay, it does not go out of its way to tell the player about things like examining boxes and trash bins for pick-up items, or being sure to always scan tabletops for loose change. The audio logs are also introduced with no fanfare. As such, it's possible to miss many handy pick-ups early in the game until one becomes familiar with the mechanics. For example, players might choose to immediately follow Elizabeth out of Booker's office, not thinking to explore the room first to pick up money. There are also a number of locations that can only be accessed during this early part of the game, at least one of which has an item pick-up (a hidden audio diary) that is needed in order to complete an achievement. Following Elizabeth blindly into the elevator she leads Booker to renders these areas inaccessible for the rest of the game.
• Alternate Universe: In relation to Infinite, but not the first game; despite several thematic differences, Word of God confirms that this is Rapture Prime, in its prime.
• Anachronism Stew: Among the randomly heard conversations in Rapture are two citizens talking to each other about stem cells. Burial at Sea begins on New Year's Eve 1959 and ends in mid-January 1960; the concept of stem cells was not publicized until 1963 and the actual term didn't come into vogue until many years after that. Rapture is supposed to be populated with the best and brightest minds of their time, so perhaps they knew about stem cells before the rest of the world.
  • Episode 2 features a brief return to Columbia in 1912 and like the main game features some anachronisms, including one of the propaganda viewers showing a sound film, 15 years before they came into vogue.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Episode Two features Elizabeth as the player character due to Comstock's death at the end of Episode One.
• Androcles' Lion: Revealed to be the method behind Big Daddy conditioning, as well as how Songbird bonded to Elizabeth.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Both Ryan and Atlas attempt to make one with Elizabeth, and attempt to punish her accordingly when she understandably refuses (refusing to work with Ryan, and not giving Atlas the information he wants).
• Arc Words: "An ounce of X is a pound of Y" and variants in Episode Two.
  • Elizabeth constantly mentions "I'm here to repay a debt."
  • We learn the origin of the trigger phrase "Would You Kindly?" from the first BioShock game.
• Ascended Meme: If you eat too much food from the garbage, Elizabeth will comment on it. She will either be impressed or revolted.
• Asshole Victim:
  • In Episode One, we have Comstock, who fled to Rapture to escape the guilt of the Accidental Murder of Baby Anna.
  • In Episode Two it has been revealed, Elizabeth has been killed the first time in a Karmic Death by being killed by the same Big Daddy that killed Comstock after having Took a Level in Jerkass by exploiting Sally for a narrow-minded vendetta against this version of Comstock. Also, once again, we have Suchong, which is no surprise for anyone familiar with his character and his fate in the first game.
• Ass Kicking Pose: In Episode One, Elizabeth adopts one whenever Booker crouches. (Emphasized somewhat by her Femme Fatale outfit.)
• The Atoner: Elizabeth in Episode Two is consumed with guilt over the fact that she exploited Sally in Episode One to lure Comstock to his death. The irony certainly isn't lost on her. She also expresses guilt over killing Comstock, which manifests in part by her imagining conversations with Booker.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • In Episode 1, Shock Jockey and Old Man Winter use a prohibitively large amount of EVE, three shots each without EVE upgrades.
  • In Episode 2, Elizabeth being weaker than Booker makes a lot of the weapons and plasmids she has access to much riskier than the safer alternatives like the Peeping Tom plasmid and the crossbow.
  • In-universe, many of the features shown in Burial at Sea that weren't present in the original BioShock (drinkable plasmids, the Radar Range, and the Big Daddy's grapple drill, for example) are explained as having been deemed too impractical for mass distribution by Ryan Industries. For example, making a plasmid drinkable requires ten times the amount of ADAM. Notes regarding each feature can be found near the end of the game, around Suchong's labs.
• Ax-Crazy: Sander Cohen, as usual.
  • Arguably, Elizabeth has moments of this in both games.
• Award-Bait Song: "You Belong To Me", sung by Elizabeth, which appears over the credits and is heard as an Easter Egg on a radio if the player enters a non-essential area.
  • "Why Can't I Have a Piece of That Pie?", sung by a harmless man (actually one of Atlas' men according to the subtitles) Elizabeth encounters in Episode 2. Bonus points for being an original song, with lyrics relating to the story of the game.
• Back Stab: The DLC adds the ability to perform sneak-kills with the Air Grabber. If you melee an unaware enemy, it's a One-Hit Kill. Though when Elizabeth does it, they're just knocked unconscious for the duration, not killed. This is the only way to hurt enemies with the Air Grabber as Elizabeth; otherwise it just pushes them back.
• Badass Normal: In episode 2, Elizabeth becomes this, much to her chagrin. As a result she no longer has access to tears and only a limited access to plasmids, so she's forced to use stealth and, if necessary, brute force to progress.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite Atlas cracking her skull with a wrench in the final scene, and earlier performing the first step of a trans-orbital lobotomy upon her, all we see of Elizabeth's injuries is a trail of red blood running down the side of her face.
• Been There, Shaped History: In-universe example. Elizabeth's plan in Episode Two to return to Rapture and rescue Sally to atone for her misdeeds in Episode One results in the successful bonding of the Little Sisters to the Big Daddies, the start of Atlas' revolt, and Jack's arrival in Rapture.
• Big Bad: Atlas/Frank Fontaine in Episode Two.
• Bilingual Bonus: The café in Elizabeth's idyllic fantasy of Paris is named "La Poche du Temps" — literally, "time pocket". All the dialogue of passerby is Parisian French as well, and is only translated in the subtitles.
• Bittersweet Ending: Episode Two. Elizabeth dies, but she saves Sally and is secure in the knowledge that Jack will be Fontaine's undoing, killing him and rescuing the Little Sisters. She dies with a smile on her face.
• Blatant Lies: Elizabeth explaining her Tear abilities as a new Plasmid.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: All of the weapons save the Radar Range have shiny chrome-and-gold finishes with Art Deco-themed detailing.
• Book Ends: "La Vie En Rose" by Edith Piaf plays at the beginning of Episode Two, and over the closing credits.
• Brought Down to Normal: Elizabeth loses her godhood, connection to the multiverse, and ability to open Tears at the very beginning of Episode Two due to entering a universe in which she had already died.
• Bullet Catch: How the "Ironsides" Plasmid works, similar to the "Return to Sender" from the main game, but without the repulsion effect.
• Call-Back: A number of notable elements from the previous games, such as the Little Sisters and the "Bouncer" variant of the Big Daddy.
  • References to the original Rapture-set games include:
    • The traditional quest to go find a plasmid/vigor, Old Man Winter, just like Telekinesis, Incinerate, and Shock Jockey from the last three games.
    • On that note, Old Man Winter's Instructional Video, has the EXACT same audio from the Instructional Video for Winter Blast from Bioshock 1
    • One of the Little Sisters encountered by Elizabeth in Episode Two is none other than Masha Lutz, a mentioned-only character in the original BioShock who was forcibly taken from her parents (who subsequently committed suicide) and turned into a Little Sister. The final scene shows that she was amongst the Little Sisters ultimately rescued by Jack.
    • Episode I brings the protagonists to a party organized by Sander Cohen, in which you can see two splicers dancing to the "Waltz of the Flowers", a musical piece involved in a classical Sander Cohen sequence.
    • Plenty of references in Suchong's clinic in Episode II, including one to his death (you get a front-row seat of him being drilled by a Big Daddy while recording his last Audio Diary), you find the Audio Diary from BioShock 1 in which Suchong orders Jack to kill his puppy, and you can see the photo of a baby Jack sitting between Suchong and Tenenbaum.
    • If one finds all the coded messages in Episode 2, they lead Elizabeth to Fontaine's hidden panic room in the Manta Ray Lounge, where she realizes Fontaine and Atlas are both the same person. One can find several wigs and disguises in here, as well as a straw hat and mask that crudely resembles a Chinese man, referencing one of Fontaine's lines from the first game about how he was "a Chinaman for six months".
    • The last part of Episode II consists in finding the "Ace in the Hole" formula from Suchong and bringing it to Atlas. It happens to be the famous "Would You Kindly" sentence.
    • The ending cutscene includes Elizabeth having a vision of Jack highjacking the plane near Rapture's surface.
    • The whales swimming outside of Rapture appear to be of the same species as the whale swimming through Rapture when Jack first arrives.
  • There are also several callbacks to the original BioShock Infinite:
    • Booker boosting Elizabeth into the vent.
    • Booker and Elizabeth dancing.
    • The first time Booker sees Elizabeth lockpicking or opening Tears.
    • And of course, the ending where "Booker" dies.
    • Atlas killing Elizabeth with a wrench is framed very similarly to how she whacked Booker over the head with one early in the main game.
  • The brief photo of Fontaine's corpse references his body double's death in BioShock: Rapture — he went down firing a Tommy Gun in one hand (which can be seen near him) until a shotgun blast to the gut blew him into a wall.
• Call-Forward: Booker mentions that what Ryan does with Fontaine's building doesn't matter; "Fontaine's Dead."
  • While negotiating with Atlas, Elizabeth teases him by saying that if the plan doesn't work out, he should just find himself a wife and raise a family.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: In Episode Two, Elizabeth gets drunk from a single drink, as opposed to Booker who can put down several before the effects kick in.
• Cast as a Mask: In an inversion of this trope's use on the main campaign, the fact that your character is actually Comstock and not really Booker is obfuscated by the fact the VA is Booker's, not Comstock's. This makes sense as he's prematurely aged somewhat through use of the Lutece device, but not as much as the Comstock from the main game.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Atlas has a serious case of this, to the point that Elizabeth goes into their deal expecting to be betrayed. He literally never holds up his half of the bargain with Elizabeth.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: One of the major scenes in Episode Two is an extended torture scene where Atlas attempts to perform a trans-orbital lobotomy on Elizabeth to obtain the location of "The Ace in the Hole". When that doesn't work out, he threatens to do it to Sally.
• Comfort the Dying: Elizabeth gives Fontaine the code for a trigger phase for his sleeper agent which in turn would kickstart the plot of the first BioShock game. Of course not long after he kills her with a wrench (Though nearly doesn't get the code because he brains her before asking what it said as he can't read it. She remains conscious long enough to tell him). However he keeps his word to let the Little Sister he had held captive, Sally, go. As Elizabeth dies (though contently since she knows Jack, the protagonist of the first game, will stop Fontaine and Andrew Ryan, avenge her and save the other Little Sisters), Sally stays with Elizabeth and comforts her with a song in her final moments.
• Continuity Nod: Some of the background audio, whether it's the music or announcements, is taken directly from the first two games. Justified in that this does take place in the same locale, though just before everything went south.
  • At the end of Episode Two, you get to see the creation of one of the most memorable audio diaries from the first game.
  • Episode Two also includes a second copy of one of the first game's most disturbing audio diaries.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • In the BioShock: Rapture prequel novel, Diane McClintock sees Atlas talking charge of a bread line in the Fishbowl Diner in Pauper's Drop sometime before Christmas Eve 1959, when he should have been imprisoned in Fontaine's Department Store, which is never mentioned in the novel.
  • BioShock 2 established that after Suchong's death, Gil Alexander took over the Protector Program, worked on the Alpha Series bonding process, and bonded Subject Delta with Eleanor, all before the 1958 New Year's Eve Riots. However, Episode 2 established that Suchong's death occured after the riots, throwing the timeline into disarray. With that said, Irrational never confirmed BioShock 2 as canon, with Ken Levine referring to it as "2K doing its own thing" in an interview found on Bioshock Remastered.
• Cool vs. Awesome: The Bouncer vs the Motorized Patriot; turns out the Patriot isn't nearly as tough. Though it makes sense, since the Daddy is more advanced and is designed to withstand the crushing pressure of the ocean floor while the Motorized Patriot is basically made of wires, gears and a simple metal frame.
• Creepy Child: The Little Sisters are back in all their creepiness. This is especially true in the beginning of the game, where a large group being conditioned all turn to stare at you in unison when you get close enough. But they have nothing on Sally, a fully conditioned Little Sister who has Blank White Eyes with visible veins!
• Crapsaccharine World: As with the original BioShock, Rapture was a corrupt, poorly-run mess underneath the glitz, glamor, and promise of libertarianism. However, for the first time in the series we actually get to see it fully populated and thriving.
  Booker: Even in a Utopia, someone needs to clean up the mess. And that's where I come in.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Ryan justifies his nationalization of Fontaine Futuristics as protecting Rapture from Fontaine's destructive altruism. Of course, it rings a little hollow when he shows no empathy to the people he's supposed to be "protecting". It's just his city he's worried about.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: For all his insanity, Sander Cohen is remarkably intuitive when sizing up Booker and Elizabeth. He correctly notes there's more to Elizabeth than meets the eye, and even seems to ken that they're father and daughter. Cohen also warns Booker that he won't like where Elizabeth takes him.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Subverted after a fashion. While in Episode Two, the good ending to the original game is shown to be canon to the prime Rapture, the infinite possibilities of The Multiverse mean that somewhere, another Jack made the alternate choice.
• Didn't Think This Through: After Elizabeth gives Atlas the code, he immediately goes to killing her with a wrench... BEFORE she tells him what the code is. If she hadn't lived long enough to tell, he wouldn't have his Ace In The Hole.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: When Elizabeth returns to Rapture in Episode Two, she finds a dead version of herself.
• Deadpan Snarker: Elizabeth has moments of this, including an epic comeback after reviving Booker if he gets himself killed during a battle.
• Dead Person Conversation: Elizabeth converses with Booker Prime throughout Episode Two. However, Booker is pretty up front about the fact that he isn't real, being somewhere between Elizabeth's subconscious guiding her and an imaginary friend to help her cope.
• Death by Irony: Although Elizabeth didn't plan out every detail, the fact she ends up luring Comstock to a toy store to die at the hands of a Big Daddy for the crime of accidentally killing her baby self is certainly serendipitous. Episode Two reveals that she knew it was going to happen that way due to her omniscience allowing her to see into the future.
  • A Call-Back from BioShock. After Elizabeth tells some Little Sisters to give a Big Daddy some Adam, it imprints on them, and decides to protect them from harm. Cut to Elizabeth watching Suchong pondering over how to best cause the Big Daddies to imprint on the Little Sisters. As he tries to record the audio diary, the little sisters pester him until he slaps one of them, which causes the Big Daddy to rush Suchong and kill him with its drill.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Played straight in Episode One, as per usual. Averted in Episode Two, which is rather atypical for the series. Elizabeth has no one to revive her, nor are there an infinite number of disposable alternate version of her, as was theorized to be the case with Booker in Infinite, so if she dies she's dead for real and you get bumped back to the last checkpoint after either a cutscene of the Luteces criticizing your failure, a snippet of the audiologs, or silence.
• Death of a Child: Rapture Booker is a version of Comstock who accidentally caused his Elizabeth to be decapitated when the Tear closed during the kidnap attempt, instead of severing just her little finger like Elizabeth Prime. Barely averted with Sally, whom Elizabeth left to die — until the guilt is too much and she returns.
• Death Seeker: Elizabeth. It is implied that she returned to Rapture fully aware that she would die there, and at the end of the DLC, she willingly walks to her death at the hands of Atlas.
• Decoy Protagonist: Elizabeth is the protagonist of this story, not Booker. That's because this Booker is really a Comstock that survived.
• Defiant to the End: Even knowing that he is about to kill her, Elizabeth laughs at Atlas and calls him names. That she knows karma is going to catch up to him probably made it easier.
• Deflector Shield: The Shield upgrade is automatically acquired upon reaching the inside of the Department Store in Episode One. Elizabeth doesn't get one in Episode Two.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: A poster in Rapture is an advertisement for a brand of cigarettes explicitly targeted toward pregnant women.
  • This is also a Shout-Out to the main game's kinetoscope ad for Minor Victory, a brand of cigarettes marketed for sale to the kids of Columbia.
  • Ryan repeatedly criticizes Fontaine and Elizabeth for their soul-rotting evil of "altruism"
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: The ending for Burial at Sea: Episode Two. Elizabeth dies with a smile as Sally holds her hand.
• Dies Wide Open: Comstock and both Elizabeths.
• Diesel Punk: The Burial at Sea DLC brings our protagonists back to Rapture.
• Disc-One Nuke: Less than a third into Episode Two, you can acquire upgrades to the Peeping Tom plasmid that make it use up no salts as long as you stand still. Given that invisibility can make enemies literally in mid-swing completely unaware of you, it makes the rest of the game laughably easy. Likely justified as Episode Two is intended to be stronger on story than action.
• Discovering Your Own Dead Body: In episode two, Elizabeth finds the corpse of an alternate version of herself, revealing that her Rapture version was killed by the Big Daddy immediately after the battle at the end of episode one.
• Distant Finale: The Fact From Myth trailer is revealed to be set at the farthest point known point in the Rapture timeline (The '80s). With the woman in upstate New York implied to be an adult Sally, who snaps upon seeing a Cohen painting of Elizabeth.
• Doomed by Canon: Since Burial At Sea episode 2 takes place just before the events of the first BioShock, you know Atlas is going to survive your encounter. And those who have played the first game know he's going to get what's coming to him as well. The ending also shows that Sally ultimately survives and is saved by Jack, the hero in the first game, so Elizabeth's Heroic Sacrifice isn't in vain.
• Double Entendre: "What's the difference between a girl and a woman?" "Blood."
• The Dragon: Lonnie, to Atlas. It's never elaborated on what Lonnie's fate is by the end of the game.
• Dramatic Irony: The narrative assumes that the player finished BioShock Infinite, and has several hints based on said assumption.
• Dying as Yourself: Played with. This is the reason that Elizabeth made Comstock regain his memories in Episode One instead of simply killing him from the start.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The Frosty Splicers are susceptible to Devil's Kiss.
• Elite Mooks:
  • The Frosty Splicers serve this role, being immune to Possession and a fair bit tougher than ordinary Splicers. The player can summon Motorized Patriots and (bizarrely) Samurai to aid them in battle.
  • Episode Two has Houdini Splicers as part of Ryan's shocktroopers. Besides their teleportation and fireball attacks, they have a new area-of-effect attack similar to the one used by the Firemen in Infinite.
  • There's also a few helmeted enemies in Episode Two that are immune to the Back Stab. Fortunately, your weapons and stun arrows work just fine, and they are mercifully rare.
• Eternal Sexual Freedom: In one of the public areas, you can find two men cuddling while watching the view, without anyone reacting to them. Given the ideas Rapture was founded on, it makes some sense.
  • Similarly, two women are seen in a clinch while dancing in a 1950s-style diner.
  • A gigolo, surrounded by his clients, can be viewed having a debate with a Rapture citizen over the morality of prostitution.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • When one of Atlas' henchmen is attempting to have fun with killing Elizabeth via playing one-sided Russian roulette with her, Atlas objects to "torturing" her and notes that they're neither animals, nor running a sports show.
  • Even after killing Elizabeth, Atlas honors the deal they made and lets Sally go.
  • When Elizabeth comes across Daisy Fitzroy arguing with the Luteces, it's revealed that the Luteces were going to make Daisy threaten the child and allow Elizabeth to kill her, therefore making her into a woman. But Daisy is absolutely against hurting Fink's child in any way, and only reluctantly goes through with the plan.
• Everything's Better with Samurai: One of the Tears allows you to summon a samurai from Feudal Japan. It's pretty tough and can usually bring down a couple Splicers before they kill it.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Suchong simply could not comprehend a method of making the Big Daddies bond to the Little Sisters that wasn't based in science. He learned the hard way after Elizabeth facilitated one such bond, and the Big Daddy drilled him to a table for striking a Little Sister.
  • As the educational standard of Rapture was literally against empathy, it's not so surprising.
• Exact Words: Elizabeth repeatedly says she is in Rapture looking for Sally to "repay a debt" which confuses Booker but the player knows she means she is helping this Booker to repay the Booker who saved her and was drowned at the end of the game. Then it turns out this "Booker" is actually a version of Comstock and by paying her debts Elizabeth means getting revenge on him.
• Exploding Barrels: Drums full of diesel fuel, which explode when shot at or exposed to open flame.
• Eye Scream: Atlas does this as a torture technique in episode 2 in an attempt to get some information out of Elizabeth. While she manages to resist and even taunts him, he then decides to try the torture on Sally. Elizabeth breaks down and tells him what he wanted to know about "the ace in the hole" aka, about how to manipulate Jack, which turns out to be the words "would you kindly".
• Face Death with Dignity: Elizabeth, who even tells Atlas that she knows what he's about to do and willingly accepts her fate.
• Fair for Its Day: Invoked early on in Episode 1, as a way of showing that while Rapture is not without its many problems (extreme classism, paranoid isolationism, a cutthroat free enterprise, and encroaching authoritarianism), racial and sexual bigotries have less impact than they do on the surface or in Columbia; notably, there's a gay couple and a few mixed-race couples embracing each other during the New Year's celebrations, and a white man shining the shoes of a well-to-do black man who dismissively asks Booker, "What do you want, an autograph?" when he catches him staring. There's also a pimp with his sex workers openly advertising "companionship" services to passerby, but, as he notes, it's Rapture — as long as a commodity is in demand, it's good business.
• Fanservice Pack: Elizabeth is even more attractive here, judging by the amounts of fan art and screenshots. Partly justified as it's implied she's several years older than she is in Infinite. The fact her new outfit involves fishnet stockings and she adopts a somewhat provocative Ass Kicking Pose whenever Booker crouches is a bonus.
• Faux Affably Evil: Atlas, hands down. His public image is a violent revolutionary, to his closest friends he's actually a selfish crime boss, and deep down he's there to conquer Rapture, by himself if need be. At first he seems polite while asking his minion to just put Elizabeth out of her misery, but quickly degenerates into dishonorable torture and executions the more Elizabeth helps him into conquering Rapture. At the end of the game, when Elizabeth fails to give the code words to control Jack (Suchong didn't give Fontaine the code before his "death"), he threatens Elizabeth with a lobotomy, complete with actual hammering while talking about how it works, and then resorts to threatening to lobotomize Sally. And then he just kills Elizabeth anyway. It is unknown if he betrayed his close friends after getting all the pieces for Jack, but given what happened... and one of the first things that you see in BioShock 1 is one of his non-splicer mooks getting killed.
• Femme Fatale/Guile Hero: Elizabeth this time around, with a dash of Anti-Hero for good measure. It even turns out her entire purpose in hiring you was to get Booker/Comstock killed.
  • The Femme Fatale aspect is played up by having Elizabeth acting seductively towards Booker (for example, when he lights her cigarette and when they dance at Cohen's theatre.
• Film Noir: The trailer makes this apparent. The game loses the Film Noir elements eventually, however. Although one Noir element is kept throughout: Elizabeth playing the Femme Fatale to the hilt in order to get Booker/Comstock killed.
• Finger-Snap Lighter: Booker lights Elizabeth's cigarette with this.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning:
  • The elemental Plasmids you have access to are Devil's Kiss, Old Man Winter, and Shock Jockey.
  • The Surprise Element gear gives every bullet you fire a chance to deal one of these damage types.
• Foreshadowing:
  • There are several clues scattered throughout Episode One that Booker is actually Comstock, such as:
    • The game opens with Booker demonstrating an Incurable Cough of Death. At first, this seems to be the result of years of chain-smoking. It turns out to be an early indicator that he's really Comstock, whose health was compromised due to his heavy usage of the Lutece machine.
    • Booker's "AD" is apparently tattooed on, as opposed to a self-inflicted scar, and noticeably more fancy.
    • It may be minor, but it still works. When Booker walks by a German shopkeeper, they're addressed as "Herr Kraut". Kraut was often used after WWII as a slur towards Germans. This easily reflects Comstock's extreme hatred of foreigners.
    • The reason Booker adapts instantly to the use of tears is that he is already subconsciously familiar with them from his time as Comstock.
    • Elizabeth is extremely cold and even downright rude to this version of Booker, even refusing to call him by his first name. Not only is it (in a sense) a fake identity, she happens to be terribly angry at him for killing her.
    • Take a look around "Mr. DeWitt's" office and you'll find rank patches and regalia from the 7th Cavalry in a glass case. The fact that this Booker still regards his service as something to be proudly displayed is a tip that he's not the protagonist we're familiar with. Additionally, having such dated commendations would mark Booker's age to be extremely old by 1958, implying that Booker did not come to Rapture naturally.
    • Most players assume that Booker having a shield despite never having been to Columbia is just an Anti-Frustration Feature, or maybe it's part of a Plasmid. It's because Booker, or rather Comstock, has been to Columbia.
    • Unlike the friendly ones from the main campaign, the Motorized Patriot that you can summon during the final battle with Mr. Bubbles still recites its pro-Comstock propaganda phrases and has Columbian flags — a subtle hint as to who you're actually playing as.
    • Booker introduces himself to Sander Cohen as Booker DeWitt. Cohen replies: "Is that right...?" It technically isn't.
    • The fact that Elizabeth isn't familiar at all with Rapture.
    • Elizabeth calls the Air Grabber a Sky-Hook, and Booker gets a tear nosebleed.
    • Unlike the main game, you never see Booker's reflection, until the ending, where you suddenly see his flashbacks in greater detail. Despite shaving that beard Comstock's hair is still white, as shown by his corpse at the beginning of Episode Two.
    • Towards the end "Booker" has flashes of his face being brought to a basin full of water, a first-person view of how Booker #123 killed Comstock in the main campaign.
  • When Booker mentions he tortured Suchong for fifteen hours trying to get information about Sally out of him, Elizabeth says she doesn't quite know what to make of Booker. This is because she came to Rapture to kill him and is now finding herself conflicted about his apparently genuine concern for Sally.
  • Elizabeth's nightmare at the beginning of Episode Two foreshadows the entire conclusion. As she chases Sally down the street, a flurry of playing cards passes in front of her, one of which is the Ace of Spades, AKA the Death Card. She then sees a sign advertising trans-orbital lobotomies, followed by a scale model of her tower, complete with angel wings and Elizabeth's face, near a shop selling wrenches. This is implied to be her subconscious using symbolism to foretell the events near the end, when Atlas tries to get Elizabeth to reveal the location of the "Ace in the Hole" by threatening her, then Sally, with a trans-orbital lobotomy. Shortly before this, he tells one of his men that "she's no good to us with a halo and wings," and at the very end he beats her to death with a wrench.
  • The conversation the Luteces have with Daisy Fitzroy when Elizabeth is eavesdropping on them also applies to Elizabeth's final act. The end result—BioShock 1—was more important to her than her survival, much like Daisy's revolution was to Daisy.
• Functional Addict: Ryan's stormtroopers are clearly Splicers, but other than the facial deformation they talk and behave like perfectly sane (if rather ruthless) police officers. This makes sense, as Ryan is hyper-competent and rich enough to either only hire Splicers that are still largely sane, or to keep his Splicers supplied with sufficient Adam to stave off the worse aspects of mental degeneration.

G-L

• Game-Breaking Bug: Sometimes when you cycle the airlock (a disguised loading section) the doors will refuse to open and you'll be stuck there until you restart from your last save. Annoying, but not game breaking, unless it's combined with a somewhat rarer bug that stops the game from autosaving forcing a complete restart.
  • Another dead end can be created if one quits out of the game after the last autosave point before arriving at Cohen's in episode 1. Upon resuming the game, Elizabeth vanishes. As a result, she is not present when Booker attempts to gain entrance. Without Elizabeth there to interact with the doorman, the next mission is not triggered, rendering it impossible to proceed. Not only that but after speaking to the doorman the game remains locked in cutscene mode, rendering it impossible to move or do anything but restart from an earlier save point, which at this early stage of the game usually means restarting from scratch.
  • On the PS3, the game may crash with a black screen if the closing credits are interrupted. (Not really a gameplay-breaking bug, but it still requires a hard reset of the console.)
• Gatling Good: The turrets. There is also a Gun Automaton from Columbia that can be summoned into the Bistro.
• Genre Shift:
  • Gameplay-wise, the survival horror elements of BioShock are back in force versus the fast-paced gunplay of the main campaign. Due to the Splicers tearing apart, or already using everything in the department store, resource conservation is a must as ammo and health are scarce. Episode Two takes this one step further and is essentially a stealth game.
  • In terms of art direction, the aforementioned shift from a Two Fisted Tales to Film Noir, though the Noir elements get mostly dropped once they reach the department store.
• Geo Effects: In Episode Two, certain parts of the environment affect Elizabeth's stealth. Walking through glass shards creates noise which pretty much every Splicer nearby will hear while walking in water makes splashing sounds and ripples which will alert enemies nearby. The Peeping Tom invisibility cancels both of these.
• Glass Cannon: The weapons are restricted to the strongest: the shotgun, hand cannon, and machine gun, and you have notably lower health and shields. In part 2, Elizabeth doesn't even have a shield. Your characters can deal out large amounts of damage, but can't take much themselves.
• Guide Dang It!: Booker can carry the Revolver, a Tommy-Gun, a Shotgun, a Carbine, and the Radar Range all at once - but it doesn't tell you this anywhere in the game. It appears that Booker is carrying two weapons like he does in Infinite, and the only way to access all of these weapons is to hold down 'F'. Because Booker cannot pick up a weapon that he's already carrying, many players mistakenly thought there was a bug where you could not pick up a weapon you had dropped.
• Happy Place: The Paris sequence in the beginning of Episode Two is described as this by Elizabeth; it's not Paris as it is, but rather as she always imagined it would be.
• Hardboiled Detective: Booker.
• The Hero Dies: Comstock dies in Episode One (though "hero" is putting it loosely by that point), and Elizabeth dies in Episode Two.
• Heroic Sacrifice: One of the running themes in Episode Two. Daisy pretended to be a psycho to goad Elizabeth into killing her because Elizabeth needed to have blood on her hands to be strong enough to kill Comstock. Elizabeth ultimately sacrifices her own life so that Sally and the other Little Sisters can be rescued by Jack and lead a normal life on the surface.
• He Who Fights Monsters: The end of Infinite saw Elizabeth begin her mission to travel across the multiverse and kill every iteration of Comstock as to prevent Columbia from being created. But come the end of Burial at Sea: Episode 1, when we find out that the Booker you were playing as was a Comstock who reformed and went to Rapture after the accidental death of a baby Anna, you realize that somewhere along the way, what was originally her launching justified pre-emptive strikes became solely about revenge, even if that meant killing a man who bore no resemblance to who he used to be and using his young adoptive daughter as a means to an end to lure him to his own gruesome death. Burial at Sea Comstock posed zero threat to anyone, cared deeply for Sally and put everything towards finding her again, and when his memories were regained, he showed genuine sorrow and remorse for what he had done, but Elizabeth coldly rejected it and allowed him to be killed for what she believed was a crime against her younger self, completely ignoring Sally near-burning to death just a few feet away. Come Burial at Sea: Episode 2, she's begun to have nightmares about what she did to Sally, and although Elizabeth originally denies that she did anything wrong, it's revealed in the end that she came back to Rapture to save her, knowing full well that she herself would die in the process, but feeling the need to rescue Sally from a situation that wouldn't have happened if not for Elizabeth's desire for all Comstocks to die.
• History Repeats: The Rapture version of Booker lost his (adopted) daughter to gambling/kidnapping just like Booker Prime. Doubly so when we learn he's actually a version of Comstock and how events happened in his version of history.
  • Elizabeth fears this happening in Episode Two, lamenting that her sins and mistakes are ironically just the same as Booker and Comstock's, wondering if perhaps that it is In the Blood after all.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • The Elizabeth that used a Big Daddy to kill Comstock was herself killed by that Daddy. She might have known that would happen, though.
  • In a roundabout way, the wrench that Atlas uses to kill Elizabeth at the end of Episode Two is one of the weapons involved in his ultimate death from his "ace in the hole".
• Honor Before Reason: The whole point of the trip to Rapture was just to eliminate the Comstock and get out. However, Elizabeth refuses to leave Sally behind and even sacrifices her powers and strands herself in that dimension to protect her (which is even lampshaded by the Luteces and "Booker" himself how foolhardy this is). Ultimately she causes the events of the first game and the downfall of Ryan and Fontaine.
• Hope Spot: Downplayed. In Episode Two, you can come across a poster for the Hypnotize Big Daddy Plasmid. The caption? "Coming next year."
• Hotter and Sexier: Elizabeth clearly matured in other ways by the time Burial at Sea takes place.
  • Also Rapture itself. Turns out there's a shop selling porn which you didn't see in the first game... and copies of its wares are common across the game. In Episode 2 Elizabeth lampshades this by noting when entering the porn shop that she didn't have any books like those when she was growing up in the Tower ... right before it's revealed that she stole her femme fatale outfit from the peep show stripper (she left her Columbia outfit as a replacement, and the stripper rather likes it).
  • You can also watch a video relaying the Rapture philosophy on sex. It's genuinely amusing and full of Double Entendre.
• How We Got Here: The entirety of the two episodes show how Rapture ended up being the messed up dystopia we see in the original game. It also shows how Fontaine came to arrange the first game.
  • Episode 2 features an optional recap video. Strangely, the video covers the events of the original BioShock, and not Episode 1.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: The Weapon Wheel used in previous games has returned. Though you might not realize it right off the bat.
• Hypocritical Humor: The first Need-To-Know kinetoscope states, referring to Fontaine Futuristics, that the way to success in Rapture is through innovation, not cheap shots; it's only one in a long list of aspersions in the "Are You In The Know?" film series against Fontaine's character, including an entire tongue-clucking installment denouncing him as "the best friend the parasite ever had".
• An Ice Person: Frosty Splicers, who have been drinking Old Man Winter Plasmid bit too much. They have ice crystals protruding from their bodies and a "Santa Claus" style beard. They even shoot balls of ice from their fingertips.
• Ice Breaker: Attacking an enemy under the effects of Old Man Winter will shatter them.
• I Die Free: For literally her entire life, people have been trying to exploit Elizabeth and her abilities for their own gain, and finding their own ruin in the process. Comstock wanted her to take up his mantle and burn the "Sodom Below," Songbird worked tirelessly to keep her locked up, and even Booker sought to use her to get out of his gambling debts before eventually realizing his error. In this game, Andrew Ryan attempts to press her into his employment and Atlas tortures her to get her to give him the location of the Ace in the Hole. But in the end, she dies having set in motion the events that would bring Jack to Rapture and set Sally free, a destiny that she decided for herself.
• Imaginary Friend: Booker in Episode Two. Turns out it's just residue from Elizabeth's fading powers trying to help her through the situation (he even flat out tells her so at one point). Though oddly her "conversations" with him are done as if it's through a radio communication.
• Immune to Bullets: The Ironsides Vigor in Episode Two allows Elizabeth to absorb incoming fire, refilling her own ammunition. An upgrade also heals you and refills your EVE based on the damage of the attack.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Comstock gets this thanks to the Big Daddy's drill. In Episode Two, one version of Elizabeth is found impaled on some rebar after getting knocked around by the same Big Daddy. Finally, we get to see Suchong's death in all its karmic glory.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: Zig-zagged. While Fink did base the development of Columbia's Vigors on Plasmids, it's revealed that Dr. Suchong stole back Fink's work upon discovering the Tears to further improve his own Plasmid research. He even calls the whole thing an intellectual property theft two-way street. Eventually, it's revealed in Episode Two that they even collaborated on the development of Songbird and the Big Daddies.
• Incest Subtext: Elizabeth plays the role of the Femme Fatale to the hilt, but it's clear she's not enjoying it, and it later becomes very clear she's not doing so for lust or love. She needs to kill this version of Comstock, and finish the job that she and Booker started in the finale of BioShock Infinite, in order for the both of them to live a normal life. She may possibly need to help Sally as well, although by the time you reach the end of Episode One, it's clear she has yet another motive: revenge.
  • Also, the whole dance scene. To quote Elizabeth, "I shudder to think what else he could ask."
  • When Elizabeth first meets Booker, there's a subtext of flirtation, especially when she has him light her cigarette.
  • The Luteces, again. You'd think that getting killed and having their quantum signatures smashed across probability space would disable their biological clocks. One of Rosalind's Voxophone recordings weighs the cost of being normal to the cost of being an unkillable abomination and able to, or pretty much forced to, unlock the mysteries of the universe. Robert talks about kids.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: In Episode 2, Elizabeth strikes a deal with Atlas to rescue a Little Sister; bring him the "Ace in the Hole" and he lets The Little Sister (named Sally) go. She knows that Atlas cannot be trusted and Andrew Ryan even tells her as much in an attempt to get her on his side. In the end Atlas betrays her, by threatening to lobotomize her and Sally if she didn't hand him the Ace. She does it because she knows that Atlas will die in the original BioShock, though she dies by the end of the episode.
• Instant Sedation: The crossbow tranq darts drop whoever they hit instantly. The gas darts take a few seconds on account of being gas, but otherwise are just as effective.
  • Also the backstab move on the unaware—it actually knocks them out, and if you stay by their prone forms you can even hear them snoring.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Just like the main game, lockpicks are single use and some locks require multiple picks even though this makes no sense, especially for someone as skilled at lockpicking as Elizabeth. The alternative wouldn't be much of a challenge, though. Fortunately, you can buy more at the vending machines and you don't need to open every lock.
• In the End, You Are on Your Own: The last time Elizabeth sees Booker is when the mental version of him shows her where The Ace In The Hole is. Once he vanishes, Elizabeth begins screaming his name, begging him not to leave her there.
• Invisibility: The Peeping Tom Plasmid in Episode Two lets Elizabeth turn invisible by holding down the plasmid button. While invisible, any sound she makes is also muffled, though attacking will break it.
• It's All About Me: To instill a sense of pride in, and acceptance of, Ryan's objectivist views, students in the school that Elizabeth infiltrates in "Episode 2" are encouraged to not share their toys with their classmates, lest they help create a new generation of "parasites."
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Atlas threatens this to Elizabeth, promising to torture Sally if she fails to give him what he wants in episode 2.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Implied; Booker knows Suchong didn't take Sally because he had the man strapped to a chair for fifteen hours. It turns out Sally was taken for the Little Sister program, except it was Cohen who passed her along.
  • With Episode Two comes the incredibly uncomfortable and hard-to-watch trans-orbital lobotomy scene, in which Atlas nearly performs amateur brain surgery on Elizabeth. No further description is necessary. If you've played it, you'll know exactly what is meant by this. Made even worse by the fact that Elizabeth wasn't lying when she said she didn't know what the "ace in the hole" was.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: After Fontaine's empire collapsed, Cohen took stewardship of the orphans in Rapture. Then it's revealed he only took the orphans in the first place because he was paid, and to make a profit on selling them. The ones he couldn't, he had sent to Fontaine's Department Store where all the renegade splicers were held. True to form, he is actually offended that anyone would criticize this "act of charity."
• Join or Die: Andrew Ryan offers this to Elizabeth. She decides to Take a Third Option.
• Jump Scare: Watch Sander Cohen's Kinetoscope movie in Episode Two. The ending will surprise you.
  • In episode 2, there's one during Elizabeth's nightmare at the start.
• Just Before the End: The DLC is set in Rapture before things went from idyllic to nightmarish. To drive it home further, it's set on New Year's Eve, the day when "Atlas" and his army performed their raid and kick-started the civil war in the city. As such, we see that part of the city is operating as normal and fully populated, while part of it is already in ruins and overrun by splicers.
• Just Think of the Potential!: Suchong discovers the existence of Elizabeth, as related by audio logs, and is practically giddy at the idea of having her create Tears for him.
• Kick the Dog: A very large amount of Episode Two is devoted to showing just how much of an absolute monster Atlas is.
  • Suchong has a rather extreme one towards the end of Episode Two , where he can be heard on an audio log, forcing a little boy to break the neck of his beloved puppy through the arc words of the original BioShock, complete with sounds of the puppy barking, yelping and shrieking as her neck is audibly broken, while the boy is crying and pleading for her life. Serves as a last minute reminder of his complete lack of empathy, and makes his morbid demise somewhat less pitiable
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Frosty Splicers are immune to Possession. In Episode Two, the mooks with heavy metal helmets are immune to the Back Stab.
• Last-Name Basis: Elizabeth insists on referring to this version of Booker as "Mr. DeWitt", even after he requests that she call him Booker. This is because she refuses to recognize Comstock as Booker.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: Pretty much the entirety of the original BioShock game is spoiled along the way, as are significant elements of Infinite, though as a DLC to the later game, it's assumed no one is going to play Burial at Sea before Infinite (though this is possible as the game was circulated as a standalone and can be played before the main game in the Complete Edition). As it happens, the entire franchise is revealed to be one big time loop so any confusion or unexplained elements could be seen as one way of experiencing the story.
• Leonine Contract: Ideal sexual congress apparently works this way in Rapture, with both parties advised to outline the terms of their impending relationship in writing (no oral agreements or handshakes), but still strive to be as selfish a lover as possible.
• Limited Loadout: In Episode Two, Elizabeth only gets four guns and very limited ammo for them. Only the Radar Range keeps its ammo supply from the previous episode, probably as a concession since it's an ammo hog.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Shattering enemies frozen by Old Man Winter. You won't be able to loot them if you off them this way, though.
• Lockpicking Minigame: In Part 2, as with Infinite and episode 1, picking locks always consumes a certain number of lockpicks (which you have to find or purchase from vending machines). However, unlike the other games where Elizabeth usually pops the lock instantly, in Part 2 it requires timing. You are shown the six color-coded pins inside the lock: white ones open it, blue ones give you a special noise-making crossbow bolt, and red ones raise the alarm. The pick moves back and forth across them continuously and at random, and you have to press a button just as it's under the correct pin to set it. Needless to say, it gets more difficult to avoid the red pins as the game goes on.

M-R

• Mad Artist: Cohen shocks two people dancing because they're not giving him the artistic vibe he wants.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Some of the Splicers wear makeshift masks or wear crates on their heads.
  • Sander Cohen's Rabbit-mask wearing guests and servants make his part of the game incredibly creepy too.
• Meaningful Background Event: If you look closely in the background just after leaving the office, you'll see a Big Daddy shooting his drill to the top of a building like a grappling hook and swinging away like Spider-Man. That same Big Daddy is later seen repairing a billboard advertising Fontaine's Little Sister orphanage, which appears to be closed by the Council. And Elizabeth says this when the elevator passes the billboard:
  Elizabeth: This nation values children, not childhood. There's a profit to be made, and men who make it.
• Meaningful Name: Elizabeth's Title Drop indicates that "Burial at Sea" refers to the fact that Ryan rounded up all of Fontaine's people, put them inside Fontaine's department store, and then sunk the store to the bottom of the ocean trench that Rapture is built over. It also refers to Elizabeth bringing Booker/Comstock to said department store so he can die there, a fact reinforced by the "Burial at Sea" achievement occurring at the moment of Comstock's death. It also refers to Elizabeth's death, which similarly has an achievement appear to reinforce this concept.
• Mini-Game: Elizabeth's lockpicking skill is represented as a simple "stop the needle" minigame, quite similar to the one from BioShock 2. White unlocks the lock, blue unlocks it and drops a noisemaker, and red triggers an alarm.
• Missed Him by That Much: During Elizabeth's trip back to Columbia, she gets on an elevator. She passes by her younger self and Booker, who were preoccupied with a message from Daisy Fitzroy to look back and notice her (as an Easter Egg, Booker's camera is locked during this scene in the game, so you can't turn around and see Elizabeth behind you). Justified, as she informs Booker that she can't run into her younger self this time because she didn't last time.
• Money for Nothing: In Episode One, Booker can continue collecting money even after he passes a point in the episode where there is no longer any place to spend it, and the cash does not carry over into the second part.
• Ms. Fanservice: Players who find Lauren Bacall from her To Have And Have Not era unbearably sexy will find it hard taking their eyes off noir-ized Elizabeth.
• Mugging the Monster: In one of the closing Episode Two scenes, Suchong slaps a Little Sister demanding his attention; unbeknownst to him, she very recently managed to bond with a Big Daddy, resulting in his very grisly death.
• Mundane Utility:
  • When you exit the first elevator, you're greeted by a waiter who uses the Houdini teleportation to bounce around the room making sure people are taken care of. Because walking would just be too inefficient.
  • Also when Booker uses the Devil's Kiss plasmid to light a cigarette.
  • The Radar Range, a powerful Ray Gun-type weapon, is good for toasting Splicers... and turkey, apparently.
  • The first plasmid Elizabeth finds, Peeping Tom, allows her to turn invisible and see through walls. It was designed to let men be perverts.
  • Old Man Winter, used for freezing people into blocks of ice and turning giant waterfalls into solid bridges, is sold and used at an ice rink.
• Mutants: The splicers were originally ordinary people who purchased injectible upgrades for their DNA when ADAM arrived on the market, gaining good looks, intelligence, even superpowers... right before the side-effects of frivolous ADAM-usage started cropping up.
• My Death Is Only The Beginning: Heroic example. Elizabeth chooses to return to Rapture without her powers, knowing this will result in her death at the hands of Atlas, but also that it will eventually lead to her goal of saving Sally and the other Little Sisters being accomplished by Jack.
• Mythology Gag: The main game's Arc Words were "Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt." What does Elizabeth say her occupational field is in? Debt collection, of course. And the achievement for completing Episode Two is called "Paid in Full".
  • In the end, Booker (really Comstock) tries to pull Sally out of her hole and gets drilled by the Big Daddy in the same manner as the man in the first BioShock trailer.
  • Remember the wrench in the first game, which made a cameo in Infinite? Pops up in a slightly bigger role here as well.
  • Remember how Eleanor has her father figure in her head? Now, so does Elizabeth.
  • The Kashmir Restaurant and the Adonis Luxury Resort, the first areas you see in BioShock 1 & 2, are one of Atlas' possible targets. You can also see "Sinclair Solutions" on some makeup tins.
  • Some people also claim to see a split-second flash of Delta through a tear.
  • One Radio Advertisement in Episode 1 mentions genetically modified crops grown at the Farmer's Market in Dionysus Park, one of the more prominent levels in 2
  • In Suchong's clinic, you can find notes regarding the Vita-Chambers from the first game. It turns out they work via a combination of plasmids and "quantum entanglement," which (while mentioned in the first game) now means that they bring back an alternate universe version of whomever they revive (which is implied to be how Booker keeps coming back to life when he's separate from Elizabeth in Infinite). This ties the pseudo-sciences of the original game and Infinite together.
  • A self-deprecating one is found in Suchong's workshop. Early teasers of the game had Columbia flying via balloons. This was replaced with the Lutece Particle in the shipped game. A board full of Suchong's sketches shows off several examples of Columbia's airborn tech, with the scrawled comment, "Giant balloons? RIDICULOUS!"
  • When entering The Garden of The Muses, upon arriving at Cohen's party, you are treated to a rendition of Tchaikovsky"s, "Waltz of The Flowers," played on a concertina. An obvious nod to Cohen's famous outburst from the first game where he briefly forces Jack to contend with several splicers while the piece is played over the Fort Frolic speaker system.
• Nerf:
  • The Carbine is changed from single-shot to a less accurate three-round burst, like the Burstgun from the main campaign.
  • To emphasize the stealth aspect of Episode Two, the shotgun and hand cannon get a huge nerf to their firing rates, nor is Elizabeth as competent in cycling and reloading them. The shotgun's clip size is also cut in half. Elizabeth herself is much less resistant to damage than Booker, and doesn't receive a shield, gear, or Infusions at all. Finally, Elizabeth can't do any damage with a melee attack unless it's a Back Stab; it only stuns the target and allows her to hide or shoot them with something else.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Both Booker and Elizabeth inadvertently help out in bringing about the civil war that tears Rapture apart. Not that Ryan wasn't already doing that himself, they just sped up the process. Though Elizabeth does set in motion Jack's arrival that will bring down Fontaine, Atlas only escapes his burial at sea due to her actions in the first place. So while Elizabeth does ultimately save the Little Sisters that Jack brings with him back to the surface, she also indirectly causes all the brutal harvestings of Little Sisters by packs of mad splicers in the interim before Jack's arrival.
  Elizabeth: We'd all be better off, us DeWitts, if we could leave well enough alone.
• No Antagonist: In Episode One. Much of the conflict comes from random splicers getting in the way of Booker and Elizabeth finding Sally. The closest thing to a direct confrontation is Booker, revealed as Comstock, was Elizabeth's target all along.
• No Canon for the Wicked: Played with, in an odd fashion. While the nature of the Multiverse means all choices are canon, it's Elizabeth's actions that cause the good ending of BioShock to even exist:
  Elizabeth I can see behind all the doors... and behind one of them, incredibly, I see him.
• Noir Episode.
• Non-Lethal K.O.:
  • Comstock thinks he's killed the Big Daddy. He hasn't.
  • You're forced to do this a lot as Elizabeth in Episode 2 of Burial at Sea. Fortunately, enemies you knock out or tranquilize are counted as "killed", meaning you can loot them, and though they're not technically dead (you can even hear them snoring if you crouch near them), they won't get back up either. That said, there are instances of Respawning Enemies, so be cautious of just running over that broken glass or puddle, lest you alert the new enemies to your presence.
• Nothing Is Scarier / Jump Scare: Right after the Sander Cohen's Kinetoscope movie in Episode Two ends, a man in one of Cohen's rabbit masks is seated directly behind you, raised up from a trap door. But he doesn't try to fight, nor does he react to your actions taken against him. He just sits there. Watching. Waiting. Even worse? That isn't a man. That's one of Cohen's plaster statues. So, it still might be a man, frozen in plaster.
• Off with His Head!: This iteration of Booker pulled a little bit harder than the main one, managing to drag his daughter back as the Tear closed. Unfortunately, it closed just a bit too soon.

• Old Soldier: Rapture's Booker seems older and wearier than Booker Prime, but that doesn't stop him from defeating a small army of splicers and even a Big Daddy. All those feats seem much more impressive when it's revealed that you're actually playing the prematurely aged and terminally ill Comstock.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Sally happens to share her name with the risque poster of a pin-up girl you "rescue" in the main game.
• Only Six Faces: The number of different NPC models is very limited; this is especially noticeable in the opening "peaceful" areas, which are relatively densely populated.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Angered that he is unable to understand the Ace in the Hole, Fontaine breaks his Atlas character and reverts to his original Bronx accent.
• Pacifist Run: It's possible to go through the entire second episode without killing anybody, provided you only use the knockout crossbow bolts and melee-attack enemies by sneaking up from behind. Harder-than-Hard 1998 Mode doesn't allow you to pick up guns, enforcing this trope.
• Paranoia Fuel: Invoked in Episode Two via Sander Cohen's "regarderent et furent observes" kinetoscope.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": Though Suchong's encoding is indecipherable to the layman, Elizabeth's knowledge of chemistry and experience with code-breaking allow her to discover the basic structure pretty quickly. The only thing missing is the cipher itself, but that is right on the paper: "Suchong". Suchong also uses his birthday as the code for his lab in the department store. Elizabeth lampshades how his ego is his undoing.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Unlike the main game, you can't buy new Plasmids, only find them. You start with Possession and Devil's Kiss, earning Old Man Winter along the way. Shock Jockey is fairly easy to find, though optional. Bucking Bronco, however, is located in only one spot and easy to miss if you aren't paying close attention. However, since you don't find it until after the final checkpoint, it's not a huge deal. Some gear drops are also impossible to access if you miss them the first time around (in particular one seen in an elevator shaft located close to a point of no return).
  • In Episode Two, the upgrades for vigors cannot be purchased (i.e. they're a special pickup item hidden around the episode), meaning passing a Point of No Return renders them this. Special mention for the Ironsides Vigor^note A passive alternative to "Return to Sender" from the main game — ammo hits are absorbed, but are added into inventory instead of building into a thrown projectile. which cannot be obtained if you miss it. The vigor upgrades are provided in lieu of gear pick-ups.
• Pink Mist: Concentrated fire by the Radar Range causes the target's entire body to blow up into this with enough force to kill enemies around them. There's an achievement for doing just this to 15 foes.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Booker DeWitt is now a Private investigator rather than a Pinkerton detective. He shows no detective skills in the game and spends most of the game shooting up splicers like he would have in Infinite. Of course, as we find out later he's not really a private investigator, just trying to fool himself into believing he is.
• Playing with Fire: The Devil's Kiss Plasmid.
• Point of No Return: Exiting most regions renders them forever inaccessible again. The game usually warns you before you cross such a threshold. However, due to the airlock door Game-Breaking Bug, it is sometimes not possible to backtrack to get to places or pick up items, that have been missed.
• Politically Correct History: Rapture is racially integrated and openly accepts homosexuality, transsexuality, and pornography in 1958 (although this is not to say certain period appropriate prejudices don't exist. See, for example, Atlas' surprisingly racist reference to an Asian character at the start of Episode 2). Justified in that Rapture is an individualist utopia that was created in part to escape from the social injustices of the mid-20th century.
• Portal Cut: The nasty problems that can occur when messing with portals comes up again. And this time with a Gory Discretion Shot when instead of a finger, the fight over baby Anna in this universe resulted in all but her head staying on Booker's side. This horrible accident causes Comstock's breakdown.
• Power Perversion Potential: In-universe. The Peeping Tom Plasmid lets its user see through walls and turn invisible, which is quickly adopted by perverts as a way to spy on women. The player on the other hand uses it for stealth purposes.
• Promoted to Playable: Elizabeth is the player character in Burial at Sea: Episode Two.
• Propaganda Machine: Similarly to the "Voice of the Prophet" Kinetoscopes, the "Need to Know Theater" films are little more than thinly-veiled promotions of Andrew Ryan. The nurseries in Rapture also teach stories about "Ryan the Lion" triumphing over "Peter the Parasite" in order to indoctrinate children into following his philosophy.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Played straight in Episode One in order to be fully deconstructed in Episode Two. Elizabeth uses Comstock's grief at the loss of his adopted child in order to bait him into a dangerous situation. Once he finds out that she's been turned into a Little Sister, Elizabeth does nothing to rescue the child from being stuck in the piping-hot vent in order to insult Comstock, who is subsequently killed by the Big Daddy. This is all ignoring the fact that she exploited and hurt a child in order to accomplish her goal, which isn't that different from the real Comstock. She eventually comes to realize this and is horrified at the thought of her own actions, causing her to have a terrible nightmare, leading her to return to Rapture while the Luteces give her a What the Hell, Hero? speech.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: Fryderyk Chopin's "Nocturne" Op. 9, No. 2 shows up again, this time given a twinkling, childlike remix for the toys section of Fontaine's department store.
  • Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Waltz Of The Flowers" returns, this time a piano cover as Booker and Elizabeth go to see Sander Cohen.

• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Some of the male enemies in their idle chatter may make comments along the lines of implicitly sexually assaulting Elizabeth if they catch her.
• Ray Gun: The Radar Range. Never has a microwave-oven substitute gotten this close to being one.
  Booker: Never figured out if the thing is supposed to cook a turkey or a Splicer.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Gender inverted in episode 2, Elizabeth discovers that she was manipulated into killing Daisy in Infinite in order to force her to mature by way of spilling blood. As she becomes noticeably more mature and subdued in Infinite afterwards, and this carries on into Burial at Sea, this appears to have been successful.
• Reflecting Laser: Well, lightning. A new upgrade to Shock Jockey gives a chance to make lightning bounce off a surface towards an enemy if the player happens to miss. Given how costly each shot is, this is a worthwhile upgrade to have.
• Rejected Apology: Booker, the alternate version of Comstock that fled to Rapture, tells Elizabeth that he is sorry for what happened. Elizabeth tells him that he's not sorry, but he soon will be... just before he is impaled through the chest by a Big Daddy.
• Retraux: The Fact from Myth trailer, which like the Truth from Legend ones is presented as an early 1980s documentary, though set in the Rapture timeline. It also features a woman living in upstate New York who may or may not be Sally.
• Revenge: Elizabeth's secondary motivation this go around. She wants Comstock to pay for what he did to an alternate version of her. Doubly motivated by the fact that Elizabeth, after leaving Infinite's Booker at his baptism, had previously attempted to stop this version of Comstock from kidnapping a baby version of her, as revealed in Booker's flashback at the end of Episode One.
• Revenge Before Reason: Episode 2 establishes that the above incident of revenge qualified. Elizabeth is driven to return to Rapture by the knowledge that regardless of what he had done to her, Comstock was genuinely trying to rescue Sally. In taking her revenge, Elizabeth had intentionally prevented him from succeeding and not only hurt Sally as part of the plan, but also left her behind to rot once she was finished. The ghost Booker, all but stated to be from Elizabeth's subconscious, reacts to her defense of why Comstock had to die with clear disbelief.
• Revision: Daisy Fitzroy was instructed to try to kill Jeremiah Fink's son by the Luteces. She actually objected to this at first, claiming that his son wasn't to be held accountable for his father's actions, but she agreed to go through with it so that Elizabeth's resolve to stop Comstock would be strengthened. The only reason we assumed she had been Jumping Off the Slippery Slope is because, justifiably, she didn't tell Booker and Elizabeth.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Even more than the main campaign, due to the fact that fights tend to be against smaller groups, Booker can't hold much ammo, and he can't take as many hits. In Episode 2, Elizabeth has no shield, a pittance of health, and extremely slow weapons with no upgrades. On the other hand, she has the three highest damage weapons in the game, save the RPG and sniper rifle, and much better stealth options, as well as a very effective tranquilizer crossbow (which has the unique perk of, in some cases, allowing Elizabeth to retrieve ammo from a target).
• Rule 34: In-universe: Were you aware there was such a thing as Big Daddy pornography in Rapture? Well...
  • Luckily, it does not show what they actually look like under the suit. A porn actor just plays one.
  • There's also an ironic real-life tie-in. Reportedly the game's creators were upset at the preponderance of Rule 34-inspired porn featuring Elizabeth created by fans on the Internet. The Big Daddy porn, coupled with the sex shop Elizabeth explores in Episode 2 (where we learn she obtained her femme fatale dress from Episode 1 from a peep-show stripper, and left her iconic blue dress from Infinite behind, presumably for the stripper to use in lieu) adds a touch of irony to the complaints.

S-Z

• Safe, Sane, and Consensual: Discussed in an "In The Know" reel in Episode Two. While it couches it in the language of Andrew Ryan's guiding philosophy, the ideas of valuing self-esteem, negotiation with one's partner, and insisting on one's own pleasure from the act are pretty consistent with the principles of informed consent.
• Scenery Gorn: Fontaine's Department Store.
• Scenery Porn: In its prime, Rapture truly was a beautiful city.
  • The first few minutes of Episode Two's Paris.
• Scenic-Tour Level: Much like the base game, it's a pretty long one in Episode One, comprising the first third of the game. Episode Two also has one, though comparatively shorter.
• Self Cest: Taken to ridiculous extremes in Episode Two where a voxophone reveals the Luteces are considering having children.
• Sentry Gun: The turrets from the first two games make a comeback, and the automata make an appearance when Elizabeth is forced to Columbia by Suchong.
• Series Continuity Error: In the first game, the drill that killed Suchong still has the guard ring, while it remains on the Bouncer here.
• Ship Tease: The dance scene in Cohen's, which is sadly followed soon after by a Moment Killer. Mind you any player familiar with the actual relationship between Booker and Elizabeth would find that a Moment Killer and the revelation at the end of the game also destroys any potential shipping thoughts.
• Shmuck Bait: The audio diary you find in Jack's bedroom. It should be obvious what it contains before you hear it. You'll probably listen to it anyway, on the off chance that it's something new.
• Shock and Awe: Aside from the Shock Jockey Plasmid, Cohen shocks the crap out of his dancers with electric cables if they fail to keep the mood.
• Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Atlas almost causes this to happen; once Elizabeth has retrieved The Ace in the Hole, Atlas hits her with the Wrench to kill her. He then finds out that, while this is indeed The Ace, it's encoded in a code he cannot read. But Elizabeth has just survived and tells him that it says... Would You Kindly.
• Shout-Out:
  • Burial at Sea 2 features a 1998 mode that emphasizes stealth, and the promotional post had Elizabeth in a cloak and a crossbow. Thief was released in 1998, and features a cloaked man on its cover with a bow and arrow. Adding to this, Andrew Ryan repeatedly calls Elizabeth this when she returns from Columbia. Elizabeth's crossbow also features several of the same abilities as the bow and arrow featured in Thief.
  • A dreamy, sunny day at Paris, at a cafe, that turns into a nightmarish maze as La Vie en Rose plays? Wake up, Elizabeth.
  • There's a little girl named Cosette in Paris, which is also a Continuity Nod to the main campaign, where Elizabeth mentions Les Miserables when she talks about the Vox Populi.
  • There is also a couple named Roxane and Christian in Paris. These are the names of two of the characters (and a romantic couple) from Edmond Rostand's play Cyrano de Bergerac. Further, Roxane asks Christian for a poem, which is a common occurrence in the original work, and he replies with "A kiss is a secret which takes the lips for the ear, a moment of infinity humming like a bee, a communion tasting of flowers, a way of breathing in a little of the heart and tasting a little of the soul with the edge of the lips," which is a direct quote from the original French.
  • Elizabeth chasing a child chasing a bright red balloon that sticks out through the streets of Paris at the beginning of Episode Two is a reference to The Red Balloon.
  • You can pick up an audio diary by Rosalind explaining that she will die for real if she returns to the original dimension she died in. It's named "The Lazarus Project", and it doesn't refer to anything else in the text - but Rosalind's voice actress voiced another woman who was resurrected by a Lazarus Project.
  • At the start of Episode 2, Booker advises Elizabeth that she will have to decide whether or not to start killing people as she proceeds on her mission, and lethal weaponry eventually becomes available. This "to kill or not to kill" quandary is reminiscent of Deus Ex where the player character can choose to avoid using lethal force — or go all Jack Bauer on people.
  • The threat of lobotomy in an attempt to reveal the truth, on a woman by the name of Elizabeth, conjures up a certain 1959 film based on a Tennessee Williams play.
  • One of the Vigors suggested to Fink is a drink to give you Amnesia, with the byline "Forget Everything You Know". While Fink deemed it an obvious dud, a certain baron seems to have found a use for it.
• Shown Their Work: The cipher Suchong uses, that Elizabeth decodes various instances of throughout Episode Two, is real.
• Show Some Leg: Elizabeth is dressed much more attractively this time around and uses it on a few occasions to distract people.
• Slashed Throat: Melee executions can now do this in addition to decapitation and other gory methods of killing.
• The Sociopath: It's made very clear over the course of Episode Two that Atlas is this.
• Spread Shot: Frosty Splicers can shoot five spreading ice projectiles out of their hands.
• Stable Time Loop: It's implied that the entire reason Elizabeth sent herself to Rapture while she was still omnipotent, knowing full well what would happen to her, is because her still-omnipotent self realized she had to die to trigger certain major events in Rapture — notably helping the Big Daddies bond with the Little Sisters and giving Atlas the Trigger Phrase for Jack — which would eventually lead to the downfall of both Andrew Ryan and Atlas, and the long-term salvation of the Little Sisters.
• Stealth Prequel: Initially offered as a What If? story where Elizabeth and Booker are transplanted into a Film Noir mystery taking place in Rapture. Then after many allusions of the multiverse concept from the main game, it's finally revealed to be a Stealth Sequel to Infinite; Elizabeth and the Luteces are hunting down and killing the last remaining Comstock in the multiverse. Then it's revealed to be this in Episode 2, where Elizabeth ends up being witness to and responsible for some major events in the first game's backstory, including helping Atlas launch the New Years Eve bombings, creating the imprinting process between Big Daddies and Little Sisters, indirectly causing the death of Suchong, and finally handing over the "Would You Kindly" Trigger Phrase to Atlas, thus setting up the events of the first game.
• The Stinger: After the credits, the tail end of Apollo Air Flight DF-0301 is seen sinking into the city, signalling the arrival of Jack and the beginning of the first game.
• Strapped to an Operating Table: Sally, when Atlas questions Elizabeth about the location of the "Ace in the Hole".
• Stealth-Based Game: Most of Episode Two revolves around this, as it's obvious Elizabeth isn't trained for combat. She takes hits harder than Booker, ammo and health are very scarce, and while she can get Plasmids, very few are made for direct combat. Her melee attack doesn't even do any damage at all unless the enemy is unaware. The best approach is to sneak around and knock out people when they're not looking and use hit-and-run tactics.
• Summon Bigger Fish: After discovering that Sally has become a Little Sister when trying to force her out of the vent, Sally lets out a cry that summons a Bouncer to come to her aid.
• Supermodel Strut: Elizabeth does this when she first enters Booker's office, to illustrate how she's more of a Femme Fatale now. She also occasionally does it when her A.I. goes into "wait for the player to stop exploring around" mode, though this mode occasionally averts the trope by having Elizabeth creep around like a little girl the way she does occasionally in Infinite.
• Super Prototype:
  • The Plasmids used by the Splicers are the original versions, not the derivative versions produced and sold by Ryan Industries. As a result, the Splicers are considerably tougher than in 1 and 2.
  • The Big Daddy that you encounter multiple times throughout both episodes has the ability to fire its drill at you, which the Big Daddies in the first game lacked. It does lose said drill when it gets stuck in Suchong, though. It's eventually given a Hand Wave in the form of a note that says that the gas used to propel the weapon damaged the psyche of the Big Daddy, as well as the wires being fragile.
• Take Your Time: Although theoretically in place, the game makes it a challenge to loiter too much in Part 1 as Elizabeth will frequently remind you there's a mission to be completed. Towards the end, when the time comes to turn up the thermostat on Sally, Elizabeth will become insistent that you do this right away, rather than explore the area for pick-ups. As a result, it is very possible to completely miss an area downstairs which contains pick-ups that might be handy for the boss fight that follows.
• Thanatos Gambit: In Episode Two of Burial at Sea, Elizabeth willingly sacrifices herself to trick Atlas into bringing Jack to Rapture, dying content in the knowledge that she'd brought about his eventual downfall and that Sally and all the other Little Sisters would finally be free.
• Teleporting Keycard Squad: Any time you complete some portion of the main level, expect more Splicers to have crawled out of the woodwork to make your life difficult.
• Terrified of Germs: One audio diary you come across is a recording of a woman who couldn't help but worry about all the bacteria a man might have in his saliva and if he had brushed his teeth while he kissed her. Such behavior is common to ADAM users.
• The Stinger: A post-credits scene depicts Jack's plane sinking into Rapture.
• Time Skip: Elizabeth is unintentionally drugged into unconsciousness for two weeks in Episode Two. Bringing her from just before the revolution to it being in full-swing.
• Title Drop: When Booker and Elizabeth reach Fontaine's former store sunken at the bottom of the ocean. The latter can't help but muse about Ryan's decision to send Fontaine's followers down there with it.
  Elizabeth: It takes a cold son of a bitch to do that to a living person.
  Booker: What's that?
  Elizabeth: Burial at sea.
  Booker: You read your residency contract with Ryan Industries? "In perpetuity". We're all buried at sea.
• Tomato in the Mirror: In Episode One: You may call yourself Booker DeWitt now, and even speak with his voice, but you've really been playing as Father Comstock the entire time. You never see his face in Episode 1, but the beginning of Episode 2 shows his corpse, revealing that his hair is all white from his exposure to the Lutece device. Kind of explains why Elizabeth wouldn't call you "Booker", doesn't it?
• Tomato Surprise: In Episode Two: It turns out the plot is not just a parallel universe, but the one where the events of BioShock unfold, making both episodes a prequel.
• Too Awesome to Use: In episode 2, your weapons and ammunition are limited, and attempting to melee enemies who are alerted to your presence just pushes them down (justified in-universe as Elizabeth not being as strong as Booker to outright kill them). On top of that, Elizabeth doesn't have access to shields like Booker, and has much lower health, meaning she can't take that many hits. This forces you to rely more on stealth and sneak attacks rather than going in guns blazing like Booker can. As a result, some players may be hesitant to ever really put said weapons to much use even when there's a room full of enemies that you could blast away.
• Too Dumb to Live: Comstock doesn't even turn around before he gets impaled by the Bouncer Drill, even if said Bouncer's footsteps are clearly audible.
• Took a Level in Badass: Elizabeth goes from being your non-action backup to knocking out Splicers and using guns in Episode Two. It's out of necessity, though, and Elizabeth isn't as badass as her father.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Elizabeth is much ruder to this version of Booker than she was in the main campaign. Turns out it's because she's been going around the multiverse killing every version of Booker that becomes Comstock; this one changed his name back to Booker and had the Luteces scrub his memory and send him to Rapture rather than face the guilt of causing the death of Anna in his reality.
  • Elizabeth realizes this about herself in Episode Two, that by using Sally as a means to manipulate Comstock and then leaving her to rot in Rapture when she was done, she unintentionally became no different than Comstock, who would also discard people who were no longer of use to him.
• Torture Technician: Atlas, as revealed when he almost performs a lobotomy on Elizabeth to try and get the location of his ace in the hole. And when Elizabeth laughs in his face, he decides to try it on Sally instead.
• Tranquil Fury: Elizabeth, as she stands covered in Comstock's blood. A far cry from her previous instance of Blood-Splattered Innocents.
• Tranquillizer Dart: Elizabeth's crossbow uses non-lethal ammunition, either in sedative or knock-out gas variety. It can also fire noisemakers for a distraction.
• Trap Is the Only Option: Elizabeth knows Atlas won't stick to his end of the deal, but she doesn't have any other option but to go along with his demands and hope he slips up somewhere. This being Fontaine, it does not go well for Elizabeth.
• Trashcan Bonfire: There are several of these in the area where you find the Old Man Winter plasmid in Episode Two.
• Troll: The entirety of Episode One turns out to be one long ploy by Elizabeth to mess with Booker/Comstock solely to punish him for the accidental death of her counterpart, what he would have done if he'd succeeded, as well as failing to learn from his mistakes despite claiming he came to Rapture to atone.
  • Episode Two reveals that Elizabeth returned to Rapture due to overwhelming guilt because of this. She even is remorseful for what she did to Comstock, saying that while he at least tried to help Sally, she used Sally to emotionally manipulate him, making her no different from him.
• Unbroken First-Person Perspective: Episode 1 has this for the whole game, while Episode 2 does this right until Elizabeth dies.
• Uncanny Valley: When Elizabeth comes across her own dead body at the beginning of Episode Two, the valley effect is made worse by the fact the body, with its eyes open in death, looks no different than Elizabeth does while "alive". At one point Elizabeth reaches over and closes the corpse's eyes, which actually makes things creepier.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Burial at Sea: Episode Two is fundamentally a stealth game, and while "guns blazing" is still an option, it's a much less viable one. Elizabeth doesn't have a regenerating shield like Booker, she has much smaller health and only one life,^note Unlike Booker, death means you're instantly kicked back a checkpoint. and she has a severely reduced ammo supply; however, she can still one-hit-melee unaware enemies, can pick her own locks, has access to a crossbow with darts, and can carry up to five medkits.
  • In Infinite and episode 1, using a lockpick involves Elizabeth just popping off a lock, usually instantly. In episode 2, it becomes a mini-timing game with both awards and penalties possible depending on how it's played.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Elizabeth cannot pick up guns in Episode Two on 1998 mode.
• Vice City: Rapture.
• Voodoo Shark: The previously unexplained Vigors are revealed to be Plasmid technology that Jeremaih Fink stole from Rapture. Drinkable Plasmids are also Hand Waved as needing 10 times the ADAM to explain their absence in the first two games. This raises the question of how Jeremiah Fink got enough ADAM to mass produce Vigors without an equivalent to Little Sisters. Also ADAM is highly addictive and causes cancer like growths, properties Vigors are never implied to have (aside from the Body Horror effects on Booker's hands).
• Wham Episode:
  • The ending to Episode One. Everything after the Big Daddy fight. This incarnation of Booker is revealed to be a Comstock who, after the attempt to get his Booker's Anna went horribly wrong, had the Luteces send him to Rapture so that he could forget. And then Comstock is killed by a Big Daddy.
  • Episode Two doesn't disappoint, either. Elizabeth gives up her omnipotence in order to save Sally. As a result, Sally lives but Elizabeth dies; however, she finds solace in the fact that Fontaine's not going to get to enjoy his victory for much longer, since Jack will take up her sword and destroy Fontaine, then save Sally and the other Little Sisters.
• Wham Shot:
  • The ending of Episode One, when Comstock looks down and sees the drill sticking out of his abdomen.
  • In the opening of Episode Two, there's Elizabeth finding her Dead Alternate Counterpart, which is quickly followed up by another example of her restored pinky, indicating that she has been Brought Down to Normal.
• What If?: The primary selling point of Burial at Sea is that, instead of the flying city of Columbia, it's set in BioShock's Rapture. Subverted, as it's a Stealth Prequel to the first game.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Splicers, just like in the first game, are psychotic from ADAM abuse.
• With This Herring: Booker starts his journey to rescue Sally with a couple of Plasmids and a revolver with 3 bullets.
• With Us or Against Us: Andrew Ryan gives this offer to Elizabeth, to either be an asset to him or a criminal against him who follows Atlas. She says she's neither, and doesn't even care about the conflict outside of Sally's involvement, but he takes it as the latter anyway.
• Wrench Whack: Jack's wrench makes a few appearances, and it's the weapon Atlas uses to kill Elizabeth at the end of Episode Two.
• Women Are Delicate: In episode 2, Elizabeth can't take as many bullets as Booker can, and doesn't carry as many weapons.
  • But in episode 1, she's as indestructible as she ever was in Infinite. ( Well, at least until the episode's conclusion..)
• Would Hit a Girl: Episode 2 shows us that Atlas and his mooks definitely have no problem with this.
• Would Hurt a Child: Suchong freely experiments on young children for the Little Sister program, and Atlas almost performs a lobotomy on Sally to get Elizabeth to talk.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: In episode 2 when it's revealed that Elizabeth originally had no intentions to actually rescuing Sally, making her no different from Comstock.
  • Elizabeth knows very well she herself is on the receiving end of this for Atlas, that once she accomplishes the task Atlas sent her to do in exchange for Sally's freedom, Elizabeth will be killed by him, but allows herself to outlived her usefulness at Atlas' mercy to free Sally and eventually cause the events of the first BioShock game by having Jack to save Sally and the Little Sisters from Atlas and unknowingly avenged her death by destroying him upon confronting him.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The Columbia segment in Episode Two opens with a suspiciously easy fetch quest for an item one uneventful elevator ride from the start point. When you try to go back, however, Suchong pops in to force you into performing a longer, far more dangerous fetch quest for an unrelated item.
• You Will Not Evade Me: The Bouncer Big Daddy can now fire his drill as a Grappling-Hook Pistol. He can use this to either bring himself to you or, if you've been caught by his stun attack, drag you to him.
• Zeerust: Invoked with Rapture's art design.

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