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For characters seen throughout the series, such as the Big Daddies, Little Sisters and Splicers, see here.

For characters who originated from the first game, see here.


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Main Game

Protagonist

    Subject Delta 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/subject_delta.png
The protagonist of BioShock 2 and the Player Character, a Super Prototype Big Daddy and the first to be successfully bonded to a Little Sister, who happened to be Eleanor Lamb. Unfortunately for Delta, Eleanor's mother Sofia managed to recover her and used a Hypnotize plasmid to force him to shoot himself in the head. Delta was revived years later by the Little Sisters at the behest of an older Eleanor to stop Sofia who has taken over Rapture and aims to do something terrible to Eleanor.

  • And I Must Scream: The rest of the Big Daddies are in many ways luckier than Delta, because they've been brainwashed to the point that they are no longer self-aware or possessing human-level intelligence, and most of them are already dead with Jack's rampage in the previous game. Delta's self-awareness has been restored... meaning that he is now fully aware of the Body Horror he has experienced, and the monster he has become. Even Sofia Lamb is horrified at Delta's situation and expresses genuine pity:
    Lamb: I had thought you some golem of Sinclair, brought here to hold Rapture's arms as he rifles through her pockets. But no... you are aware of your plight. Who, I wonder, would be so cruel? To force a mirror... on a man with no face?
    • Also, in a literal sense, he cannot physically speak anymore because of his voicebox modification.
  • All-Loving Hero: If Delta saves all the Little Sisters and spares the major NPCs, he'll be interpreted as one by the in-game characters. To a point where Eleanor in highest Good Ending will pledge to follow his example.
  • Anti-Hero: If you don’t go out of your way to either spare or kill each Little Sister and NPC, Subject Delta will be this, type varying depending on your actions.
  • Back from the Dead: Is pulled back into life due to Eleanor's bond with him.
  • The Big Guy: To a much bigger extent than Jack. While Jack may be 6'2 (1.88 m), Delta is a whopping 7'1 (2.16 m). It also helps that he's a Big Daddy.
  • Body Horror: As with other Big Daddies, we never see exactly how Subject Delta has been spliced and mutated, but it apparently isn't pleasant, that's for sure.
  • Can't Live Without You: As an Alpha Series Big Daddy, Delta will either lapse into a coma or die unless he is reunited with Eleanor soon. When you finally see her again, Lamb smothers her daughter to trigger this, sending Delta into a coma.
  • Composite Character: Delta combines the abilities of the Bouncer and Rosie Big Daddy models, starting off with the Bouncer's drill and obtaining the Rosie's rivet gun early on. Delta also has the ability to use Plasmids, which Jack, the Player Character of the first game could use, but the Big Daddies pointedly didn't.
  • Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Jack was an ordinary human who fights mostly with scavenged small arms and improvised weapons, had a distinct feeling of vulnerability to him even as he acquired more powerful Plasmids and began to prove himself in battle. This is compounded by the revelation that he was little more than a mind-controlled slave of Fontaine's from the very start, devoid of free will. Delta, on the other hand, is a hulking, heavily-spliced monster of a man, clad in an armoured suit and capable of braving even the ocean floor unscathed. Meanwhile, others regard him as nothing but a mindless automaton, but the fact that he actually does possess free will is a large part of his character and motivation.
  • The Corrupter: Potentially. Harvesting Little Sisters and killing the relevant NPCs will condition Eleanor to believe such behavior is perfectly natural, and that her own survival justifies anything. She will extract your ADAM to make you a part of her (forcibly if you did not save at least one Little Sister) and vow the world will never see the destruction she will unleash coming.
  • Dark Is Evil: Delta is mute, heavily spliced monster in a diving suit at all times and can be a merciless killer who is willing to kill children.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: On the other hand he can be the most heroic character in the game despite those same traits.
  • Deathly Unmasking: In the intro, Subject Delta is hit with a hypnotize plasmid and ordered to remove his helmet by Sofia Lamb. As this is seen from Delta's perspective, we don't actually see what's under the mask, but the point of this isn't to reveal his true face: it's to make him easier to dispose of. Sofia then hands the Big Daddy a pistol and orders Delta to shoot himself. Unable to resist, he complies... only to wake up alive ten years later.
  • Determinator: Subject Delta stops at nothing to save Eleanor, not even Sofia Lamb sending an entire city worth of Splicers after him. Towards the end, even though his bond with Eleanor is broken and he is doomed to die, he still powers through long enough to help her escape to the surface.
  • Elemental Powers: Through the use of Plasmids, he can gain elemental powers such as Electro Bolt, Incinerate, Winter Blast, and Cyclone Trap.
  • Evil Parents Want Good Kids: In the Neutral Ending an Evil Subject Delta refuses to allow his corrupting essence to be absorbed by Eleanor, stopping her needle and shaking his head slowly, choosing death rather than letting her follow his or her mother's poor example, so she can find her own way in the world.
  • The Faceless: Literally, since whatever face he has is permanently hidden behind a one-way visor.
  • Firing One-Handed: Justified by both his enhanced strength and because he wields his Plasmids with his off hand.
  • Flawed Prototype: Crosses with Super Prototype below. Despite being more mobile, intelligent, and able to use plasmids over successor models, Alpha series Big Daddies are less armored, more expensive to create, and can be bonded to only one little sister. If their little sister is killed, or if they are separated for too long, Alpha series will either go into a coma then die, or go completely insane/berserk and attack anything or anyone within sight.
  • Friend to All Children: If Delta rescues all of the Little Sisters.
  • Genius Bruiser: Largely dependent on the player, but thanks to his free will Delta is capable of strategizing and using superior tactics to outsmart his enemies.
  • Glass Cannon: Just like the other Alpha Series Models, he is less durable than other, later models of Big Daddy, but makes up for it with firepower, and the ability to also use plasmids. In gameplay, he can be easy to kill if the player isn't careful, even with Armored Shell.
  • Good Is Not Soft: If you choose to rescue all of the Little Sisters but kill the NPCs, Eleanor comes to see you as someone who believes justice is a contract that can never be repaired if broken. She sees this worldview through by killing her mother as an act of justice.
  • The Hero Dies: In every ending, though the details vary.
  • Heroic Mime: Justified, since Big Daddies can't speak. He is not voiceless, however, as he will grunt in pain or when jumping.
  • Heroic Willpower: Despite having his bond broken to Eleanor, Delta continues to persist for a time, dying only after saving her and escaping to the surface together, putting an end to Sofia Lamb's Family and plans for Rapture.
  • It Can Think: When he is broken free of his brainwashing, he regains his higher faculties.
  • It's Personal: Aside from the main conflict being to save your daughter figure, it’s very difficult to blame Subject Delta should you choose to kill Stanley Poole, who got him turned into a Big Daddy and Eleanor turned into a Little Sister; a fact he expresses no remorse for aside from cowardly begging for his life when finally cornered.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: Just as only Eleanor can keep you alive, so is your coming for her the only thing that allows her to maintain hope of a better tomorrow.
  • Made of Iron: Subject Delta endures a lot, even by the standards of most Alpha Series. In the cutscenes alone, he's hit by a wall of high-pressure water when a Big Sister shatters a bay window; he's trapped in a room and pelted with gunfire and molotov cocktails until the floorboards under him break, sending him on a three-story fall; the train car he's riding gets torpedoed by Father Wales; Sofia Lamb floods Siren Alley, nearly crushing him to death when a metal door's slammed into him by the resulting water pressure; his link to Eleanor is disrupted when Sofia half-suffocates her with a pillow, leaving him on the brink of death; a corridor of demolition charges explode in his face, and he has to ride to the surface while hanging onto the side of Sinclair's escape pod, being battered and crushed by intense pressure on the way. The last one seems to have been the tipping point, as he dies shortly after if his essence isn't extracted by Eleanor.
  • Magic Knight: Optional. You can use just your drill and plasmids in this game, and there's a tonic which (optionally) forces you to use basically nothing else. With the right tonics and plasmids, this can be incredibly effective.
  • Morality Chain: Potentially. If you save the Little Sisters (and optionally, spare the NPCs), Eleanor will develop a more conventional sense of morality, which may drive her even to forgive her mother and leave her the opportunity to move on. Eleanor even lampshades this by calling Delta her conscience, and extracts his ADAM so he can be with her forever.
  • Mysterious Past: Very little is known about who he was before becoming a Big Daddy, including his real name, apart from having been a deep sea diver who discovered Rapture and was known to the citizens as a sort of celebrity called "Johnny Topside". The Rapture novel indicates that he only used aliases instead of his real name, and was asking around the city about missing girls, behaving in a way that made Andrew Ryan suspect him of being a government agent, and promptly having him arrested.
  • Odd Friendship: Of a sort with Augustus Sinclair, an Affably Evil Southern-Fried Genius big businessman with a good deal of wit, humor, charisma and personality, where Delta is a giant, Heroic Mute Super Prototype One-Man Army cyborg, with the two men complimenting one another as a brains and brawn partnership respectively, working together to achieve their mutual goals.
  • One-Man Army: Delta basically rips through whatever remains of Rapture almost entirely on his own.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: As Subject Delta and Johnny Topside.
  • Papa Wolf: He tears through half of Rapture to save Eleanor, though whether it’s to save his own life or genuine protectiveness (or both) is up to the player. This extends to the Little Sisters as well if you choose to not harvest them.
  • Parental Substitute: It's strongly implied that Eleanor saw Delta as one of the few positive parental figures in her life, even before he was freed of his brainwashing 10 years after his death. This may also be one of the reasons Eleanor saw to his revival in the hopes he'd save her from her imprisonment.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: If he chooses to kill Grace Holloway, Stanley Poole, and Gilbert Alexander, although considering Grace and Gilbert "evil" is a matter of opinion.
  • The Paragon Always Rebels: If you choose to go down the evil path, then so would Eleanor herself.
  • Power Copying: Using the research Camera, Delta can gain many of the abilities of his foes.
  • Psychic Link: Eleanor can communicate telepathically with Delta and Delta’s very life is tethered to Eleanor’s.
  • Psychic Powers: Some plasmids allow for powers such as telekinesis, a blast that knocks enemies around, or mind controlling splicers and other Big Daddies.
  • Roaring Rampage of Rescue: It's entirely feasible to do a playthrough where you murder every living thing between you and Eleanor, including those who don't really deserve it and/or have no way of defending themselves.
  • Silent Protagonist: As a result of becoming a Big Daddy, Delta's vocal communication is limited to grunts of pain. Stanley even lampshades this, joking that Delta is his "silent partner."
  • Spirit Advisor: In most of the endings, Eleanor injects herself with Delta's ADAM, allowing him to live on inside her mind.
  • Summon Magic: The Summon Eleanor plasmid, which briefly brings Eleanor to Delta's current location and allows her to fight alongside him.
  • Super Prototype: He's more mobile than a normal Big Daddy and can use plasmids, at the cost of not being quite as tough. Dr. Suchong also mentions that he's superior to what is to come, but they had to Nerf the following versions to the point of "mediocrity", mostly because they would be too dangerously overpowered. Not to mention too expensive. Some of Gil Alexander's diaries also note that the "one Sister, one Daddy" linking system built into Delta ultimately caused more problems than it solved. Given the game's plot this was no doubt very true.
  • Surprisingly Similar Characters: Subject Delta shared some similarities with Alex J. Murphy/RoboCop from RoboCop (1987) as both characters are Amnesiac Heroes who each Was Once a Man prior to turning into armored protectors by a corporation for its privatized metropolis.
  • This Is a Drill: Like most Big Daddies, a drill is standard issue. It's Delta's version of Jack's wrench.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: Not including the "Was Once a Man" bit below (which isn't surprising since all Big Daddies were made from people), Sofia Lamb actually brings this up in conversation, talking about how cruel it is to force awareness onto something that was human but is no longer.
  • Trap Master: If Delta chooses to adopt the Little Sisters, he becomes one by necessity, as using Trap Rivets, Cyclone Traps, Proximity Mines, and so on do wonders to help in keeping Splicers at bay while the Little Sister in collecting Adam.
  • Villain Protagonist: He becomes one if you harvest every Little Sister and kill all 3 NPCs.
  • Was Once a Man: Apparently, he was known as Johnny Topside, a deep-sea explorer who found Rapture whilst exploring the sea-bed. At least that's what Stanley says.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Delta has to defeat a number of Big Sisters during the game. Although they look and sound monstrous, they are still human women who have been mutated.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Delta has the choice of harvesting the Little Sisters just like Jack did in the first game.
  • Your Days Are Numbered: As soon as his link to Eleanor is broken, Delta is doomed to the same fate as all other Alpha Series Big Daddies, though he manages to hold it together long enough to save her.

Major Characters

    Sofia Lamb 

Voiced in English by: Fenella WoolgarOther Languages 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/drlambbioshock_3576.bmp
Click here for her in-game model 

"Until ADAM, the human animal was a slave to the gene... the inner Tyrant. Lust... greed... rage; self obsession was etched into our DNA. We were not pulling the 'Great Chain of progress,' as Ryan believed - but shackled to it. But now, in theory, we can redraft the human blueprint. Serving the common interest can become as natural as breathing."


The Big Bad of BioShock 2. An idealist as obsessive as Ryan, but with a philosophy that's diametrically opposite. She believes in absolute collectivism, denouncing individuality and even sentience as a curse. She plans to use her daughter Eleanor to set the foundations for Utopia, whatever it takes.


  • Abusive Parent: From the opening cutscene, it's plainly obvious that Sofia cares nothing for Eleanor, only for how she can be used to further her own plans. Of particular note is the way she says "[Eleanor] is mine," the emphasis treating Eleanor more like an object than a person. Case in point, one audio log has her explain how Eleanor isn't her child but a project of hers, she even left her daughter with a patient of hers to build on her utopia and when she found out that her child became a Little Sister, she is more annoyed than sad. A later audio log has Sofia emotionally expressing regret at the possibility of having to kill Eleanor, although given her usual responses to Delta and Eleanor's interactions, it's likely she was saddened by her plan crumbling down around her more than losing her daughter.
    • It's subtle but it's revealed that Eleanor didn't become the vessel until 1967, nine years after she was rescued. Yet, all records seem to seize of her from childhood until being a teenager, and Dr. Gilbert always seems to speak of her in past-tense. This is because once her conditioning was broken she became a normal girl and eventually a Bratty Teenage Daughter. Eleanor then became a political threat, because if her own daughter isn't listening why should anyone else? So Sofia had her placed in stasis, only pulling her out when she became central to her plan.
  • All-Loving Hero: She's anything but, yet still manages to be a unique deconstruction of the idea. She loves everyone without bias. Or, in other words, no one person is important to her in any way, and everyone is a potential sacrifice for the sake of her Utopia. Even saying she cared for Subject Delta as much as anyone else in her flock and compared his sacrifice to saving many other children by sacrificing one rebellious son. What is one person to the whole?
  • Animal Motif: Sofia Lamb uses a butterfly as an embodiment of her metamorphosis ideology. The rapture family uses the infamous blue butterfly to distinguish members of the inner circle, as they wear a butterfly pin to show their membership. There are also murals and posters glorifying Sofia with blue butterflies.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Who the biological father of Eleanor is, with the Rapture novel having Simon Wales ask Sofia and her saying it is a private matter. A deleted message from Eleanor in the game reveals it was Subject Delta back when he was a prisoner known as "Johnny Topside", that Sofia picked the genetic donor at random, while another deleted message says he isn't her biological father, so their deletions makes the entire matter more open to interpretation in the game itself.
  • Apologetic Attacker: She asks for Eleanor's forgiveness before she non-fatally smothers her with a pillow to break the pair bond with Delta. Given she’s doing this solely to save her skin from Subject Delta, it’s unlikely it was a genuine apology.
  • Big Bad: Of BioShock 2.
  • Berserk Button: She couldn't stand Eleanor rejecting her ideology and went to increasingly erratic and extreme lengths to stop Subject Delta. Finally, she smothers Eleanor in a last-ditch attempt to stop Delta; she had no way of knowing this wouldn't kill Eleanor as well, but it's quite clear she didn't care.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Despite her calm demeanor and utopian views, she is clearly a cold-hearted sociopath at heart, ruling Rapture with an iron fist.
  • Blatant Lies: Claims she does not hate Subject Delta, but in some of her messages to him its quite clear she bears a certain degree of contempt and malice towards Delta.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: She has a really warped take on utilitarianism. She's all about "altruism" and "the common good", but this manifests as a disregard for human life that borders on misanthropy.
  • Break the Haughty: Suffers from this in the semi-good ending of the game, especially when Eleanor makes it clear that she only saved Sofia's life to make sure that she'd go on living in the knowledge that her Utopia had failed and her daughter had betrayed her.
  • Catchphrase: Usually starts her little speeches with the phrase "Ask yourself".
  • Con Artist: In the Novel, Fontaine expresses his admiration for her ability to con a large group of people at once. Remember, this comes from none other than Frank Fucking Fontaine, Mr. "The Longest Con" himself!
  • Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Her collectivist outlook makes her one to the objectivist Andrew Ryan, although you can also see this trope in their mannerisms, namely in that while Ryan was outwardly and brutally honest towards things he didn't appreciate, Lamb at least feigns interest until she can properly eliminate the problem. Futhermore, Ryan's imminent downfall was met with his utter rage and self-destruction, and even though he had accepted his own fate, he was still screaming at the top of his lungs that his city would live on and continue to thrive, having Rapture's integrity as his priority. Lamb, on the other hand, doesn't care about Rapture proper and is perfectly fine with destroying it if it benefits her and, instead of screaming, she just resigns herself to quietly sobbing in rage at Delta for taking her daughter and Utopian ideals away from her.
  • Cutting the Knot: As Subject Delta draws close to destroying her plans and rescuing Eleanor, and her army of Splicers is unable to defeat him, she decides to smother her daughter to break her psychic link to the Alpha Series Big Daddy, dooming him to a coma and death, before reviving Eleanor. Though it does doom Subject Delta, he manages to power through it long enough to defeat Sofia and escape Rapture with their daughter.
  • Dark Messiah: She's this to the dispossessed and desperate people of Rapture, who are understandably disillusioned by Ryan's vision. While Lamb does offer hope, safety, and community, she mostly sees The Family as fodder, and considers them all expendable in the pursuit of her goals.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Part of her plan to create the ideal utopian is have all of Rapture's greatest minds implanted into Eleanor. Unfortunately for her, it didn't seem to occur to Lamb that this would also make Eleanor better at resisting and escaping from her plans.
    • In the prequel novel, her initial plan is to turn Rapture into an experimental commune under the sea. Her strategy, once she builds up enough loyal followers, is to simply wait while Rapture's social problems spiral out of control and swoop in at the right moment. She never considers that someone else might also try to exploit those same problems and that the conflict could sufficiently damage the city that there might be nothing left to save.
  • Dirty Communists: Subverted. Ryan remarks the very presence of her collectivist ideas will cause another Kremlin to spring up in Rapture. This fits in line with American anticommunist (and to a lesser extent, Objectivist) thinking at the time, where any sort of collective ideal was seen as communism. However, given that Lamb repeatedly shows contempt for the surface world like her nemesis, and her philosophy is at best some weird composite of Jungian and Freudian psychology with a bit of ADAM mixed in with no discussion of politics, economics, or labor, it's clear she wasn't a communist.
  • Dirty Coward: Whereas Andrew Ryan opted to face his death with dignity, Sofia attempts to slink away in Sinclair's lifeboat, leaving the Rapture Family behind to save her own skin once it's clear her plans for utopia are collapsing around her. For all her smug gloating and air of superiority, her fear of Subject Delta is also evident, and at no point does she ever try to fight him personally, leaves it all for her cult to handle.
  • Don't Create a Martyr: Exploited. Part of her plan before the civil war is to goad Ryan into arresting her and sending her to Persephone. Because he never won the argument with her and had to use brute force, she became a martyr for her remaining followers without actually having to die for it, and being in Persephone kept her away from Ryan and Fontaine's struggle for the city, allowing her to build a new power-base in Persephone in relative peace.
  • Dramatically Missing the Point: She talks about Jack and his mental conditioning in one of her audio diaries. Unsurprisingly, she's more concerned with how that conditioning allowed him to escape his "self" and whether it could have been used to promote the common good, as opposed to the atrocity Fontaine committed by stripping Jack of his free will and using him to promote his selfish goals.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: She shows some standards from time to time… only to go back on them each time.
    • Even she is horrified when she realizes that Subject Delta had his free will restored, and was thus aware of his transformation into a Big Daddy. Of course this doesn’t stop her from converting both Mark Meltzer and Sinclair into Big Daddies, with Sinclair explicitly keeping his self awareness (but not his free will) so she could get more information out of him.
    • Played with in the novel. She seems to feel genuine sympathy for her patients as they describe feeling trapped in Rapture, particularly an aspiring actress named Margie who was forced into prostitution after she got fired from her job at Fort Frolic. At the same time, she's taking notes on how she can use that sympathy to win people's loyalty and accomplish her own plans.
    • In one of her audio diaries, as she contemplates what she might have to do to sever Eleanor and Delta's bond, she admits that if she goes through with what she's thinking of doing (non-fatally smothering Eleanor) she wouldn't be able to forgive herself. She even sounds a little choked up at the thought of it. Of course, she still goes through with it to save her skin and even tries to leave Eleanor to die in Rapture by escaping in Sinclair’s life pod after her plans have fallen through.
  • Evil Brit: Her heart is black as can be and she has a British accent courtesy of Fenella Woolgar.
  • Evilutionary Biologist: Her ultimate goal is to remove human free will and self-consciousness at the genetic level, using ADAM-derived splicing technology. Eleanor is intended to be the prototypical New Utopian, designed both genetically modified and behaviorally conditioned according to Lamb's ideology.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She's quick to scoff at Delta should he choose to spare Grace Holloway, decrying the action as a 'feeble ruse' meant to gain her trust. The idea that a human could have genuine selflessness in their nature seems so absurd to her that it's not even worth considering.
  • Evil Is Petty: She floods Siren Alley and kills several of her own followers by drowning and crushing them with the water pressure just to get Delta individually. And her added commentary when the place is completely taken by water indicates she knew Delta would survive but the others wouldn't, commenting on how she's perfectly fine with Rapture being destroyed if it benefits her objective. She eliminated an entire city block-worth of her own people to prove a point to Delta.
    Sofia: Look, Delta, it is the world for which you strive. You... alone... among the dead.
  • Evil Matriarch: Is she ever! It's clear from the opening cutscene that she possesses no love for Eleanor as a human being, only as a tool.
  • The Evils of Free Will: She believes that individuality is the root of all evil and wants to remove it from humanity.
  • Expy: To the Body of the Many from System Shock 2. Her plan, and all of her dialog is a version of everything the Body tells the player in the game.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Never raises her voice and is unfailingly polite, though at times condescending. This while she sends her army of splicers to murder you.
  • Foil:
    • Mainly to Andrew Ryan, being a Straw Collectivist to his Straw Randian. While they have polar opposite ideologies, both are notably similar in being motivated primarily by megalomania, and are both ultimately done in by their own hypocrisy.
      • Lamb's repeating lines over the loudspeakers sound almost like Ryan's repeating lines over the loudspeakers, just with the word "parasites" replaced with "tyrants". Both of them are complaining about people whom they consider selfish, but Ryan's solution is to create a society where altruism is practically illegal, while Lamb's solution is to create a society where the common good is the only mindset.
      • Both even had their Start of Darkness triggered by the bombing of Hiroshima, seeing it as a perversion of their values (science and industry for Ryan and the use of "the greater good" as a justification for Lamb) and came to the conclusion that mankind was doomed and Rapture is its only salvation.
      • This is also shown in how they each treat their respective children. Ryan outright allows Jack to kill him simply because he can't bring himself to raise his hand against his own son. Lamb, meanwhile, smothers Eleanor without second thought, in order to prevent Delta from getting to her, proving that she is perfectly willing to sacrifice her own daughter in what she perceives as the common good.
    • To some extent, she's this to Subject Delta. She acts out of a perverse desire to force collectivism on others and sees free will as an obstacle to utopia. Delta, in the good ending, saves the little sisters, kills no more than necessary, and serves the collective good because he chooses to do so, acting only out of love for Eleanor.
    • This also applies VERY lightly to Frank Fontaine, a con man who promised charity and understanding to the downtrodden of Rapture solely to get on their good side and have an army at his beck and call to defeat Andrew Ryan. Lamb shares a similar hatred of Ryan and also exploits charity and good will to her advantage, except unlike Fontaine, she actually believes in what she preaches. He even lampshades it in an Audio Diary.
  • Four Eyes, Zero Soul: She evokes a pretty dark version of Stoic Spectacles; her horn-rimmed specs emphasize her sociopathy.
  • Freudian Excuse: In the form of her strict upbringing as a psychiatrist following in her father's footsteps, and in the form of her volunteer work in post-bomb Hiroshima after her friends she made there perished in the atomic bombings. Both of which would turn her into the sociopathic utilitarian she's known to be.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Chain-smokes cigarettes—apparently as a result of stress, as the only time she's seen doing so is when Delta is standing right outside her door.
  • Hate Sink: Fitting in with the game's more personal narrative, Sofia is a highly deplorable woman without any of Andrew Ryan', Frank Fontaine's, or even Zachery Hale Comstock's more likable or even cool traits. She is a highly self-righteous, yet hypocritical woman who forces Subject Delta to kill himself in front of his own daughter figure, has a callous disregard for her followers, and sees her own daughter as property. You'll probably end up destesting her as much as Subject Delta and Eleanor by the end of the game.
  • Hates Everyone Equally: An odd example. Lamb is devoted to loving everyone equally, but at the same time she is deeply cynical and misanthropic, which evens out to Lamb working for the common good (or what she sees as it), but also bearing no concern what happens to people who aren't part of her utopia, since she believes that everyone's equally selfish at heart.
  • Helpless Window Death: In Bad Karma playthroughs, she's drowned by Eleanor while Delta looks on through the windows of the escape pod. For good measure, it's possible to play Delta as being helpless and remorseful in this occasion if you pick the neutral ending.
  • Hero Killer: Responsible for both of Subject Delta's deaths at the beginning and the end, as well as engineering Sinclair's. Played with in that she doesn't kill them personally, rather through underhanded methods. The first time she forces Subject Delta to shoot himself from a Hypnotize Plasmid one of her followers hit him with, then the second time smothers Eleanor to break her link to Delta and doom him to a coma and death, and has Sinclair captured and brainwashed into fighting Subject Delta, forcing him to kill his own partner.
  • Hot Librarian: She evokes certain aspects of this.
  • Humans Are Bastards: As much as she claims to love everybody without bias, there's really no denying that her opinion of human nature overall is about as low as it gets, to the point of fervently believing greed is etched into humanity's very genes (though scientifically speaking she's not exactly wrong) and the idea that someone, anyone could possess inherent selflessness is absurd to her.
  • Hypocrite:
    • She preaches collectivism, but she is practically as possessive as Ryan himself. This was true even before she came to power, as she leaves the surface because she believes others have corrupted HER collectivist ideas. She also continually berates Delta for stealing her child away, yet has been kidnapping children from the surface to make them into Little Sisters. Were she less busy trying to murder Subject Delta, she might realize that he perfectly resembles her idea of the "utopian" - working tirelessly, regardless of free will, and willing to die for the sake of another.
    • She constantly decries the self as being the root of all evil yet almost every action she takes is highly selfish. As a therapist she used her therapy sessions to convert vulnerable people to her side rather than helping them cope with their mental issues, treats Eleanor like a tool rather than a person, kills hundreds of her followers by flooding Siren Alley just to prove how little she cares about Rapture to Subject Delta, smothers Eleanor just to save her skin when Subject Delta reaches her, and attempts to abandon her followers by fleeing in Sinclair’s life boat as a last ditch effort to save herself from Subject Delta and Eleanor.
    • It also piles on the Irony that a collectivist who does what she does to "protect the common good", ie creating a better world for other people besides yourself, sees these other people as inherently selfish and unworthy of her care, preferring to use them as tools.
    • As much as Lamb tries to portray herself as Just the First Citizen, she has a tendency to position herself as the worshipped leader of whatever group she's in.
    • If you show mercy to all of your opponents, she will scoff that Delta only thinks he's doing good — he actually is, and the fruits of that mercy are transferred to Eleanor, who shows her the same.
    • On some level she's aware of her own hypocrisy, as the point of creating an 'Utopian' is that such a person would be able to follow her ideals better than Sofia herself and so create her ideal society without being encumbered by Sofia's own selfishness. Of course, she also refuses to recognize Eleanor as the Utopian because Eleanor doesn't learn her ideals from Sofia specifically, even if Eleanor was fulfilling her purpose perfectly by emulating Delta's selfless heroism.
  • I Have No Daughter!: Right before smothering Eleanor, she bemoans that Eleanor has been learning from Delta's actions instead of her own, rendering her little better than him in Sofia's eyes.
  • Insufferable Genius: She's a famed psychiatric doctor who graduated first in her class and carries as much condescension with those credentials. It's even negatively remarked upon by Andrew Ryan during his first meeting with her in Bioshock: Rapture which would foreshadow their later public animosity.
  • It's All About Me: What her hypocrisy and the moments where she's no different from Ryan essentially boil down to, ironic as it may be. To reiterate, she abandons the surface world in favor of Rapture because of what she feels are violations of her collectivist ideals. The idea that to serve the common good, one must subscribe to her views and follow accordingly. She frequently treats her own daughter as an object rather than a person, as noted when she constantly emphsizes "Eleanor is mine". At the game's climax, she's cursing at Delta for ruining her vision, and at the people who turned Eleanor into a Little Sister. Not because of the trauma and suffering they incurred upon her daughter, but because it ruined her life's work. Finally, once it is made clear she's not going to win against Delta, her final plan is to escape in Sinclair's pod, entirely on her own, leaving all of her cult's members behind to die with Eleanor and Delta in order to save her own skin.
  • Karmic Death: If Delta doesn't harvest any Little Sisters, yet kills Grace, Stanley, and Gil, Eleanor forcibly drowns Sofia, proving that she could never be welcome in a true family, and suffocating her to death just as Sofia smothered her to break her link to Delta and try to murder her father in the process. In another ending she simply lets Sofia drown while watching it happen and not rescuing her.
  • Kick the Dog:
    • In the intro, she could have easily pulled the trigger on Subject Delta herself, but then she decided to make him shoot himself, in front of Eleanor no less.
    • She later floods Siren Alley, knowingly killing hundreds of her own followers and knowing Subject Delta would survive. While it was to prove an inane point, the sheer lack of regard for her followers qualifies nonetheless.
  • Knight Templar: Played with. As time goes on, it's unclear as to whether Lamb is genuinely deluded about the value of her utopian project or simply a megalomaniac on a power trip for which her ideology is a convenient justification. The ending subtly implies that it's both.
  • Lack of Empathy: Gil Alexander explains that Sofia does have empathy, but for everyone equally. The net result is that she doesn't give a single damn for any one individual, only caring about how they can benefit her cause for humanity as a whole.
  • Lean and Mean: She's pencil-thin and exceedingly cruel.
  • Light Is Not Good: Blonde, pretends to be nice, symbolic name, leads an evil cult, and will screw the world over to make it "better". Yee-up!
  • Loophole Abuse: Collectivism wasn't actually illegal in Rapture, so there was nothing Ryan could do about her making a commune right under his nose. Ultimately, subverted as Ryan simply ignores the law and had her arrested anyway. Ironically, her commune was genuinely stockpiling weapons with the goal of a revolt, meaning she was genuinely breaking the law! note 
  • Mama Bear: An odd non-emotional example. She sees Eleanor as her property, and will do anything to protect her so long as she serves as the key to Lamb's utopia. The instant Eleanor breaks free of her control, Lamb aims to kill her without a moment's hesitation.
  • Manipulative Bastard: She engineered her own jail conviction to gain popular support as a martyr and place herself in a facility far from Rapture where she could turn the inmates into an army. Even Fontaine is impressed.
  • Mirror Character: Despite being Ryan's Foil, they are incredibly similar. They are both hypocrites willing to bend their philosophies to their own ends. They also both treat Rapture as a means to an end, more concerned with their imagined utopias than the actual city or inhabitants under their control. And as other trope entries on this page show, the similarities do not stop there.
  • Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: She's a psychologist brought to Rapture by Ryan to shut the mentally fragile up.
  • Moral Sociopathy: A curious case in that she probably did not begin as this, but by the time of BioShock 2 she has definitely become a sociopath obsessed with her philosophy.
  • Motive Decay: If she was ever genuine with her collectivist ideals, it has long since given away to her self-righteousness and hypocrisy. It’s clear that she cares less about making the world a better place through collectivism and more about enforcing her will on the world by the time Subject Delta is revived and begins to hunt her down.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: Never attempts to actually fight Delta, presumably because she's unspliced and not dumb enough to test herself against a Big Daddy. Her threat comes from her control over the splicers in her cult.
  • Nothing Personal: She goes as far as to say she loves Subject Delta just as much as anyone else, before sending a pack of splicers to kill him. As noted above, she "loves" everyone, but to such an insignificant degree that their lives mean nothing to her.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: A subtle example. She may have truly believed that what she was doing was right, but the fact that she subjects those who oppose her to some truly unnecessary and downright sadistic cruelties, sacrifices hundreds of her own men just to prove an inane point to Delta, and tries to ditch everybody, including her own daughter, to die in Rapture just to save her own skin gives a certainly nasty implication that she’s not as altruistic as she likes to think herself as.
  • Psychic-Assisted Suicide: She attempts to do this with Subject Delta at the beginning of the game by using a mind control plasmid. Fortunately, he gets better.
  • Psycho Psychologist: She originally worked as a psychotherapist but used her therapy sessions to recruit followers to her collectivist cult.
  • Shadow Archetype: Her very existence in Rapture scares the pants off of Ryan, because she represents everything he built Rapture to escape from. He has to be talked down from sending her straight to jail when he figures out who she really is.
  • Sigil Spam: The symbol of her 'Rapture Family' is a blue morpho butterfly, to represent transformation by rejecting the self. She encouraged her patients to wear butterfly pins, her splicers are distinguished from non-Family splicers by wearing said pins, and blue morpho butterflies feature prominently in murals and graffiti created by the family.
  • Soft-Spoken Sadist: The sadist part is downplayed, but during the opening scene there's clearly no real reason for Sofia to force Subject Delta to shoot himself under mind control, other than to give him a rather cruel and humiliating death in front of Eleanor.
  • Straight Edge Evil: Much like Ryan before her, she doesn't indulge in Plasmids and Gene Tonics, to the point that the above-mentioned mind control was administered by one of Lamb's splicers. However, she is an avid smoker and does so throughout all her appearances.
  • The Sociopath: She probably doesn't actually have the condition, but she does a bang-up job of imitating it with her combination of misanthropy and extreme The Needs of the Many outlook. She's so committed to loving everyone equally that she cares for absolutely no one; even her daughter Eleanor is just another tool for her to create her utopia.
  • Statuesque Stunner: She towers over rest of Rapture's founders, being 6 ft (183 cm). The 'Stunner' part is Downplayed, however.
  • Tautological Templar: Sofia Lamb just wants to push mankind into its next evolutionary stage. It's for the Greater Good, and nothing could be more evil than trying to stop this noble goal. Ask yourself: are Rapture, human consciousness, individuality itself, and Eleanor's mind really such high prices to pay for paradise?
  • Totalitarian Utilitarian: Her ideology is a demented form of utilitarianism that takes the good of the "collective whole" and turns it into a quasi-deity for which every individual is expected to give their lives and subordinate their interests. As Eleanor puts it, she'd rather everybody be miserable than allow any one person pursue their own interests.
  • Truly Single Parent: She tries to invoke this with Eleanor in a removed audio diary, telling her to think of the whole world as her family. It doesn't really stick.
  • Un-person: The reason you never heard of her in the first game - Andrew Ryan, not wanting any possibility of her regaining control, had all records of her existence disposed of.
    Andrew Ryan: Bury her memory, Sinclair. Bury it, and salt the earth.
  • Villainous Cheekbones: Played perfectly straight. Notably, Eleanor lacks them.
  • Villain Has a Point:
    • Depending on how you play. Murdering the three karmic individuals on your journey through Rapture does justify her calling you a tyrannical monster. Alternatively, if you choose to save the little sisters and turn the other cheek to Grace, Stanley, and Gil, you defy her point about The Evils of Free Will by showing that choosing to do good will have a better effect on the world than forcing collectivism upon it.
    • She may be a domineering sociopath, but her criticisms of Ryan and Rapture's failings were right on the mark. Problem is, her approach isn't any better.
  • Villainous Breakdown: At least in the first few hours of the game, Sofia has Rapture dancing to her tune and is in complete control of the situation. But in Siren Alley, when Delta kills Simon Wales to drain Dionysus Park at the pump station, Sofia's response is to flood Siren Alley, drowning several of her followers in the process, which is a clear demonstration of power going against her very philosophy (a tyrant flexing their muscle to eliminate an entire city block of people loyal to them just to get one target). Once Delta enters Fontaine Futuristics, she's clearly starting to run out of ideas to deal with him and, when the player reaches Persephone, she smothers her own daughter to near-death, just to send Delta into a coma so he'll die gradually from the pairbond mechanism, and it's clear she didn't care at all about the possibility of Eleanor dying in the process. By the last level, all that's left of Sofia's previous bravado about Eleanor being their "salvation" and "a true Utopian" is a quivering, enraged woman that takes no less than two seconds to send her troops to kill both Delta and Eleanor. This all ties back to the start of the game, with Sofia's line of "Eleanor is mine", emphasizing her as an object more than a person, and also drawing attention to Sofia's hypocrisy. The second her plans fall apart, she ditches the "Family" immediately so she can save her own skin and escape to the surface on Sinclar's vessel... All the while still claiming that her views are correct and dismissing Eleanor coldly so she can die with Delta.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: But not in the way most would think: her actions and audio diaries quite clearly reveal she never had any intention of saving Rapture. Her real goal is to create a "Utopian," who would be able to serve the common good with no concern for their own desires, and gradually convert the rest of the world into similar beings.
  • Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Wins the Rapture Civil War by hiding in Persephone while Ryan and Fontaine took each other out during the first game.
  • You Are Not Alone: She name-drops this trope several times in her speeches. She also shows a villainous example of this trope; not at all meant to help people, she was only using it to coax poor folks into being a part of her grand scheme, never intending to actually help them.

    Augustus Sinclair 

Voiced in English by: Doug Boyd Other Languages 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sinclairsport_8246.bmp
Click here for his in-game model 

"I like to look a man in the eyes when I give him my word. You and me, kid — we’re goin’ places!"


A friendly, charming and somewhat amoral businessman who aids Subject Delta in his quest to reunite with Eleanor Lamb.


  • Action Survivor: Lives through the Rapture Civil War and ten years of Lamb's rule of Rapture while remaining unspliced. Unfortunately for him, his skills failed him when he tried to rescue Delta and Eleanor.
  • Affably Evil: Amiable and without scruples from the word "go."
  • An Economy Is You: His principal business enterprise is a twofold scheme that virtually guarantees repeat business - his Sinclair Deluxe apartments cater to poor and miserable individuals by offering cheap rooms at low prices, and the "tenant discount" available at his Sinclair Spirits bars makes sure said tenants remain poor and miserable.
  • Anti-Hero: Nominal Hero at first, mellows out to Unscrupulous Hero as he and Delta work together, and reaches Pragmatic Hero in his final moments.
  • Anti-Villain: The Noble type: he was involved in a lot of the more disturbing experiments and schemes run in Rapture, including the development of the Big Daddies, but he had several lines he refused to cross and genuinely wants Delta to succeed in his mission to rescue Eleanor- especially since it will mean he gains access to technology he can sell on the surface. In a sense he's what Frank Fontaine would be like if he had some shred of morality and wasn't a sleazy conman.
  • Apologetic Attacker: Gets turned into an Alpha series Big Daddy near the end of the game and forced to fight Delta, desperately apologizing to him and Eleanor along the way.
  • The Atoner: He's fully aware that he's mostly responsible for what happened to Delta and Eleanor, and spends the last moments of his life trying to make up for it.
  • The Barnum: Much like Fontaine, Sinclair figured out that Rapture is filled to the brim with people both gullible enough to believe Andrew Ryan's sales pitch and too self-assured to believe they could be fooled. His businesses take advantage of this by bilking his customers while tricking them into thinking they're the ones getting over on Sinclair. In his own words: "I was whittling wooden nickels till I made a mint."
  • Big Damn Heroes: Attempts one of these to free Delta from captivity. It doesn't go well for him.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: Sinclair as an Alpha is considerably tougher than the ones you've fought so far, probably owing to his recent conversion and Lamb's meddling.
  • Consummate Liar: Subverted. Despite having similarities to Frank Fontaine, never does he actually lie to Delta. In fact, he's pretty much one of the most honest folk in Rapture and a foil of sorts to everything Fontaine represented. Which doesn't save him from what Lamb has in mind.
  • Con Man: Not nearly as much as Fontaine, but still present. He fittingly uses a style achetypical to the American South that relies on his marks to themselves be greedy and willing to screw others over (a safe bet in Rapture). E.G. he sells syringe parts and buys complete syringes at a significantly greater amount. People think they've found a get rich quick scheme and are pulling one over on him, but as he explains, he still buys the completed syringes for less that it would cost hire employees with the market value of labor.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: He has no qualms about taking advantage of Rapture's rampant social problems and Ryan's selfishness and paranoia to make a quick buck.
  • Dying as Yourself: Rather than continue being controlled by Lamb as a Big Daddy, upon being defeated, he requests Delta to Mercy Kill him.
  • Enlightened Self-Interest: Primarily concerned with first getting his own ass out of Rapture, and second selling off what pieces of its advanced technology he can scavenge to the richest world powers. That said, he realizes that the best way to get what he wants is to help you get what you want, so he's on your side.
  • Fat Bastard: Downplayed. He’s got a bit of a gut and is very morally questionable, but he does have a few morals keeping him in check and is legitimately affable toward Delta.
  • Foil: To Frank Fontaine, much as Lamb provides one to Ryan. He's essentially Fontaine with a conscience and a few morals keeping him at worst Affably Evil, at best an Anti-Hero. His southern American accent might even be a reference to this: Atlas was reportedly originally intended to speak with one, before Fontaine's alter ego was changed to Irish instead.
    • Also one to Stanley Poole. Both are greedy, self centered men who screwed over Subject Delta in the past when he was called "Johnny Topside" and played a role in his being forcibly converted into a Big Daddy and the dilemma he is in as a result of it. But where Stanley is a Dirty Coward only out to save his own skin and tries to hide his past betrayal from Subject Delta, as well as an Evil Uncle who betrayed Eleanor too, Augustus owns up to his past actions and undergoes Character Development, works genuinely with Subject Delta, risking his own life to save Eleanor, wants the best for the two of them and for them to escape Rapture, and earns a Redemption Equals Death when all is said and done.
  • Freudian Excuse: Apparently, his grandfather was a strong believer in working in the name of "The People," and "The World Entire," and drowned in the construction of the Panama Canal- thus giving Augustus Sinclair an early bias against altruism.
  • Functional Addict: He's apparently indulged in ADAM-based plastic surgery, but evidently not enough to drive him to Splicerdom.
  • Good Counterpart: He's what Atlas would've been if he was entirely on the level.
  • Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Can be seen holding a cigarette holder on the one occasion Delta meets him face to face. In defiance of convention, however, Sinclair's not truly evil, just mercenary.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: An absolutely heartbreaking example. He's turned into an Alpha Series Big Daddy by Lamb, still fully conscious, but unable to control his body. He's practically begging Delta to put him down, all the while apologizing for getting him into this mess.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sure, he's an exploitative sleazebag who wants to sell Rapture's biotechnology to the highest bidder, but he goes out of his way to help Delta and prefers him showing mercy.
  • Karmic Death: Downplayed, in that Augustus gradually undergoes Character Development, is apologetic for his actions and attempts to redeem himself for his past before he dies, but he is imprisoned in his own prison and converted into a Big Daddy, then has to be mercy killed by Subject Delta. This after he was the one who gave away Subject Delta to be converted into a Big Daddy in the first place, back when he was a prisoner known as "Johnny Topside".
  • Mercy Kill: Would rather die than remain Sofia's slave, and you have to oblige.
  • Pragmatic Villainy: Sinclair was complicit in a lot of the nasty stuff that was going on in Rapture, not the least of which being the genetic research that would produce ADAM and the creation of the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. However, he was only ever an opportunist taking advantage of the financial prospects of such projects, and once it becomes clear that he can benefit by doing the right thing, he's more than willing. He also doesn't seem to hold much of a grudge against Sofia Lamb, despite her being responsible for him losing everything, and is only opposing her out of practicality. In his last moments, he apologizes to both Eleanor Lamb and Subject Delta for his role in what happened to both of them.
  • Private Profit Prison: He built Persephone, which was designed to take advantage of Ryan's paranoia to give Sinclair a renewable supply of cheap labor, test subjects, and bright minds. One such prisoner was Sofia Lamb, who seized control of the inmates to start the Rapture Family and force Sinclair into hiding.
  • Redemption Equals Death: Apologizes for giving you up for Big Daddy conversion after being converted himself, and only asks that you make sure Eleanor gets to see the sun after you kill him.
  • Reforged into a Minion: Is converted into an Alpha Series at the end of the game.
  • Sheep in Sheep's Clothing: He's the game's Atlas analogue and it's made clear he's done some very shady things in the past... but in the present, his help is totally genuine.And while you do have to fight him in the end, it's very much against his will and he spends the fight apologizing and encouraging you to kill him.
  • Spanner in the Works: He manages to derail Lamb's plans by doing the one thing she never counted on him doing: trying to help someone other than himself.
  • Southern-Fried Genius: Born in Panama and raised in Georgia, Sinclair is a shrewd businessman, and according to some, a brilliant scientist. He did help develop the Vita-Chamber, after all.
  • Southern Gentleman: He has a thick southern accent and is rather polite, if not overly sarcastic, in a majority of his interactions.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: He's Subject Delta's version of Atlas, guiding him through Rapture via shortwave radio. Unlike Atlas, Sinclair actually meets you face-to-face briefly, and he never betrays you. Not by his own will, at least.
  • What You Are in the Dark: Could have left Subject Delta for dead upon his capture and escaped Rapture on his own to continue his plan to make profit off the city's technology, instead he attempted Big Damn Heroes to save his partner, and paid the ultimate price for it.

    Eleanor Lamb 

Voiced in English by: Sarah Bolger, Sydney Unseth (as child) Other Languages 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Eleanor_Lamp_Portrait_6365.png
Click here for her appearance in cutscenes 

"Look, Father, I know you may not have wanted a daughter. But love is just a chemical. We give it meaning by choice. I will be damned if I let Mother take you away from me again."


Sofia Lamb's daughter and Delta's former Little Sister. Constantly in sedation, as part of Lamb's master plan.


  • Acquired Poison Immunity: Apparently due to her exposure to large amounts of ADAM as a child, Eleanor can tolerate extensive splicing without any of the side-effects. Unfortunately, this makes her the perfect candidate for her mother's experiment...
  • Apocalypse Maiden: This is what Sofia Lamb intends for her to be, in order to usher in a new age of perfect altrusim.
  • The Atoner: In the Neutral ending, even though she feels she has become a monster, she wonders if she can find redemption like Delta has by choosing to give up his life.
  • Ax-Crazy: Goes into this in the bad endings or even when working to it when she's an ally, butchering through the various splicer types with outright glee. And you influenced her into it.
  • Action Girl: Even among other plasmid wielding citizens, Eleanor's talents are formidable. Her time as a little sister has also made her immune to the negative side-effects of splicing. Even more impressive once she becomes a Big Sister.
  • Badass Bookworm: Extremely intelligent and knowledgeable as part of her upbringing.
  • Badass in Distress: Turns out she's very capable of looking after herself. It seems her mother was less afraid of others harming her and more afraid of her daughter simply going her own way.
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: Why she regards Subject Delta as her "Father". He shows her genuine love, protects her and allows her to be her own person without forcing political doctrine onto her.
  • Berserk Button: At least for Good Eleanor, harming her father is a good way to earn a harpoon to the gut or an Incinerate! plasmid to the face. Her mother Sofia also learns this the hard way in the Justice ending when she is drowned by Eleanor for condemning her father to death.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Good Eleanor in general, who slices through Splicers with righteous fury, but exemplified in the Justice ending, obtained by saving all Little Sisters but killing the three side-characters along the way. Eleanor learns from Delta to protect and sacrifice for the innocent, but to spare the guilty no mercy. She starts by drowning Sofia, remarking that she'd "given up the right to exist" with all the evil she'd done.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Not confirmed, but in some unfocused moments after absorbing Delta's conscience in the bad endings, her eyes seem to turn pitch black. It's quite unsettling.
  • Blood Knight: Fairly low-key if you saved the little sisters, but if you harvested them, she actively enjoys rampaging through the splicers.
  • Brainy Brunette: She was designed by Sofia to have all of Rapture's greatest minds inside of hers, eliminating her sense of self.
  • Bratty Teenage Daughter: Sofia laments that Delta is turning her into this, blinded to the fact that Eleanor has always been independent and rebellious since she was a child.
  • The Chessmaster: The entire game is Eleanor's escape attempt, with Subject Delta as her main piece on the board.
  • Child Prodigy: Highly intelligent even in her earliest years, dismantling electronic devices and reassembling them for fun. She also had a tendency to disable her mother's security systems so she could sneak out of the house (not that this approach always worked).
  • Corrupt the Cutie: As Eleanor is watching virtually everything you do, harvesting the Little Sisters and killing defenceless characters will result in her becoming just as ruthless and violent.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: When you summon Eleanor to fight with you in Persephone, she pretty much stomps all over the splicers.
  • Daddy's Girl: Favors her adoptive father Subject Delta over her biological mother. Though given her mother's poor treatment of her and the fact Delta is one of the only people who has shown her genuine love and affection, it's not hard to see why.
  • Daddy's Little Villain: In the bad endings.
  • Disappeared Dad: We hear nothing about Eleanor's biological father and the circumstances of her conception and birth. This is odd because a woman like Dr. Lamb being a single parent in 1950s society is unlikely to have gone unremarked on. For her part, Eleanor looks upon Subject Delta as her father figure, even going so far as calling him Father.
    • The only implication of her father's identity is revealed in Bioshock Rapture; when asked by Simon Wales about who Eleanor's father is, Lamb replied that it was a private matter. Given she had entered Rapture alone and had Eleanor in the city, it must have been someone down there. Dummied Out content from the game revealed she used Johnny Topside's genetic material to create Eleanor during his time as a prisoner, chosen at random, while another piece of deleted content states that Delta wasn't Eleanor's real father. The matter is ultimately left an Ambiguous Situation.
  • Friend to All Children: Becomes this if Delta rescues all of the Little Sisters, rescuing all of the ones she encounters in Persephone and bringing them up to the surface with her.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: From a little sister to basically an invincible, teleporting Big Sister with telekinesis. Even more of a case in the Bad ending, in which case she's a Blood Knight that derives joy from both killing things and watching them die, and has both her own genius and Delta's cunning and experience on top of all those powers.
  • Evil Brit: Becomes one in the "bad" endings. Otherwise, she presents an Aversion of this trope, especially when compared to the examples provided by her mother and Dr. Alexander. (It should be noted that the voice actress is actually Irish, but modulates her accent closer to British to be consistent with Sofia's voice.)
  • Flashy Teleportation: As a Big Sister, she appears and disappears with a flash of purple light.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Sofia wanted a daughter who was empathetic and brilliant; she didn't consider that those traits would make Eleanor rebellious. There's even an audio recording where Sofia teaches Eleanor to block out the demands of others.
  • Good Is Not Soft: She kicks plenty of ass as a Big Sister regardless of your decisions and in one ending where she saves her mother, she admits that she's not doing it out of kindness or love, but because she wants to Sofia to live with the knowledge that everything she worked for was for nothing. Conversely, in one of the endings where she kills her mother she states that it's because her mother's sins precluded mercy.
  • Helpless Window Death: In the penultimate level, she's smothered with a pillow by her mother while Delta looks on from behind a window, helplessly thumping on the door. On the upside, she only stays dead for a short while... but on the downside, the smothering was enough to sever her pairbond with Delta.
  • Human Sacrifice: Basically what her mother is planning.
  • Hyper-Competent Sidekick: As a Big Sister, she pretty much obliterates enemies with far greater speed and efficiency than Delta, at least when she's summoned.
  • Leitmotif: "Eleanor's Lullaby", which is played during the Good Ending and whenever Delta adopts a Little Sister.
  • Light Is Good / Dark Is Evil: Not her, but the sky varies between a bright, sunny day to a raging dark storm seemingly at night with various skies in between to represent Eleanor's morality. With Infinite Going Cosmic, this can be explained by the endings happening at different timelines of The Multiverse.
  • Living MacGuffin: The entire game is centered around Subject Delta's quest to get to Eleanor, as without her, he will die.
  • Messianic Archetype: She's implied to become a legitimate Messiah if you save the Little Sisters. Of course, she'll also become (symbolically) the Antichrist if you harvest them. Messiahs go both ways, after all.
  • Never My Fault: In the Choice ending, she outright blames Delta for turning her into a monster.
  • Not Afraid to Die: As part of her new-found resolve, she flat-out tells Delta that she'd rather die than lose him again, or go back into her mother's care.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Assuming Delta killed Grace, Stanley, and Gil, Eleanor forcibly drowns Sofia.
  • Playing with Fire: She can shoot fireballs out of her hands.
  • Psychic Powers: She can communicate with Delta telepathically. Later, as a Big Sister she makes use of the Telekinesis plasmid.
  • Rebellious Princess: Her natural curiosity and intelligence didn't mesh well with Sofia's attempts to control her life, so this was the inevitable result.
  • Self-Made Orphan: Depending on how Delta treats the trio of named characters, Eleanor drowns her mother Sofia.
  • Significant Wardrobe Shift: She wears a simple white dress for most of her onscreen appearances, but near the end of the game, she puts on a Big Sister suit that's white in color, as opposed to the dark suits the Big Sisters you've fought throughout the game wear, to symbolize that she is not her mother's lab rat anymore. Also, unlike the other Big Sisters, she retains her normal human proportions.
  • Statuesque Stunner: Upon donning the Big Sister suit, Eleanor stands eye to eye with Subject Delta. Big Sisters in general are also around 6'10".
  • Stop Worshipping Me: After her time as Delta's little sister, she wants nothing to do with Sofia's attempts to turn her into a being wholly without self-interest to end the self of the world:
    Big Sister Eleanor: I am not your bloody messiah!
  • Teens Are Monsters: Unless you work at it.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Near the end of the game, the frail teenager you've been trying to reach for the whole game gets in a Big Sister suit, and proceeds to wreak unGodly havoc upon her mother's regime with the powers given by the ADAM injected into her.
  • The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter: We never really see Delta's face under his helmet, but with his Big Daddy modifications it's safe to assume he's not much of a looker in comparison to his daughter Eleanor.
  • Unskilled, but Strong: It is unlikely she's had any formal combat training, instead relying on instinct and what she's observed from Delta to tear apart enemies.
    • Possibly subverted. As her combat system is similar to that of the Big Sisters, it's likely she has gained the genetic memory of them via her plasmid treatments, thus is as skilled as an experienced combatant.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Or, more accurately, a telepathic connection.

Secondary Characters

    Gil Alexander 

Voiced in English by: John Hillner Other Languages 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Gil_Alexander_1713.png

"Anyone in the Plasmid business ultimately requires the use of human test subjects. It's our dirty little secret, and to be frank, Rapture doesn't really want to know, provided the end product is sound."


Another one of Fontaine Futuristics' leading scientists, Gilbert "Gil" Alexander replaced Dr. Suchong as head of the Protector Program; in this position, he created the Alpha Series and the symbiotic bond with their Little Sisters—making him indirectly responsible for the creation Subject Delta. Following the collapse of Rapture's security police, he also designed the city's automated security system. However, he eventually fell in with Sofia Lamb and the Rapture Family, assisting in their development of a "Utopian."


  • Apocalyptic Log: How his still-lucid self communicates.
  • The Atoner: Dr. Alexander was genuinely ashamed that he'd been responsible for Eleanor's transformation into a Little Sister, and worked for many years to undo the conditioning he'd forced on her.
  • Ax-Crazy: He has been known to "fire" Splicers under his employ, carving up "You're Fired" above and around them, and hang them on the walls when he's not sending them after Delta. He makes every other insane person in Rapture (i.e. just about everyone else) look tame by comparison.
  • Bad Boss: Following his descent into insanity, "Alex the Great" has assumed total control of Fontaine Futuristics and declared himself CEO; given that there's no way of creating new products and no paying customers anyway, most of his time is spent torturing his splicer "employees."
  • Berserk Button: Never, ever call him "Mister A" (or anything other than "Alex the Great"). Some poor Splicer under his "employ" found that out the hard way.
  • Body Horror: We don't see his transformation take place, but given that the monster inside the tank looks like a cross between a fetus and a squid, it wasn't pretty.
  • Crazy-Prepared: He might have been undergoing a horrific mutation and almost half-insane at the time, but Dr. Alexander was very careful in setting up a way for Delta to Mercy Kill him; first, he left several pre-recorded messages throughout the Fontaine Futuristics building, containing useful advice and essential passwords to restricted areas; secondly, he planted a cache of weapons and security bots to assist anyone who might come to the rescue; finally, just to make sure his rescuers would be sane enough to outwit his insane alter-ego, he programmed a bio-scan to exclude any visitors who weren't mentally up to the job.
  • Deadpan Snarker: "Congratulations, you've won a battle of wits with a home appliance!"
  • Evil Brit: Apparently English—or at least he speaks in a Received Pronunciation accent- but not actually a villain until massive doses of ADAM administered by Sofia Lamb drive him insane.
  • Flunky Boss: Controls everything in Fontaine Futuristics and gleefully flings everything he has at you, but once you've taken out all the mooks, he's practically helpless since he can't get out of the tank to fight you.
  • Gadgeteer Genius: Not only did he mastermind Rapture's security systems, but after his mutation began he also modified the branches of it around Fontaine Futuristics to provide help to anyone answering his Distress Call. After his mutation drove him insane, he also equipped numerous security drones with monitors and speakers to carry his voice and face- part of it, at least- to his "employees." He also helped create the Vita-Chamber.
  • Hopeless Suitor: One of his audio diaries indicate that he has something of a crush on Sofia Lamb- even referring to her as a "Secular Saint"- though he admits that her loving philosophy means that he can't be given preferential treatment.
  • I Cannot Self-Terminate: Gil's audio log begs Delta to kill his current insane deformed self, because he can't do it now.
  • Kick the Dog: In one of his earliest scenes, Alex the Great has his modified security drone electrocute a terrified splicer for calling him "Mister A".
  • Large Ham: In every single audio diary in the game, he's heard speaking as quietly and carefully as possible, so it's a bit of a shock to hear him start hamming it up as Alex the Great, chewing the scenery to a pulp and spitting it at Delta.
  • Mad Scientist: As one of Rapture's scientific elite, this is a given. He takes the madness up a notch as "Alex the Great," though he's no longer able to do much actual science.
  • The Man Behind the Curtain: When Delta finally meets Dr. Alexander's horribly mutated self, he's not much of a threat without the splicers he employs; true, he may be a gigantic monster with the combined powers of hundreds of different splicers implanted into his body, but his reliance on his tank prevents him from physically attacking, and the bright light means that he can't even see Delta clearly enough to fight back in any other way.
  • Meaningful Name: The man's nickname is "Gil," and he ends up as an obvious aquatic lifeform.
  • Mercy Kill: His lucid self requests this from you, while his insane self begs to be spared; the decision's up to you.
  • Sanity Slippage: By the time he recorded the messages, he was in the latter stages of this.
  • Shock and Awe: His personal security drone can zap things with electricity. He uses it to fry "disobedient" splicers and carve messages into the walls, as well as open doors occasionally.
  • Shrinking Violet: In most of the footage taken of him, Dr. Alexander comes across as nervous and painfully shy prior to Lamb's experiments: in his audio diaries, he speaks in a halting, shaky voice, sometimes barely louder than a whisper; in the "Rapture's Best and Brightest" photo, he's at the very back of the group, looking as uncomfortable and agitated as possible.
  • Sinister Surveillance: Watches everything in his domain through a modified security bot that displays his maddened red eye and can electrocute anything that annoys him.
  • Talkative Loon: After becoming Alex the Great, most definitely.
  • Tragic Monster: He turned into a insane, literal monster.
  • Tuneless Song of Madness: He didn't have to sing the Fontaine Futuristics jingle in order to drown out the password usage, but there you go...
  • Two First Names: Gilbert Alexander. Interestingly enough, his insane self uses his last name as his first one going by the diminutive "Alex".
  • Understatement: Whenever he sends something at you it's said as normal workplace dialogue. This includes stuff like telling you he's 'sending an old co-worker of yours who wants to meet up with you'. It's actually the first Alpha you meet, and it's pissed.
  • The Voice: Subject Delta never sees Gil Alexander's entire face at any point in the game except in old photographs. Unless you're playing the PC version of the game, and you're prepared to use noclip.
  • Weakened by the Light: Dr. Alexander's new body can't stand bright light, and naturally recoils when Delta switches on the overhead lights in his chamber.
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: After it was found that the attempt to transform him into a Utopian had failed, Lamb abandoned Dr. Alexander.

    Stanley Poole 

Voiced in English by: Bill Lobley Other Languages 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Stanley_Poole_5137.png
Click here for his in-game model 

"Took real guts to find Rapture like he did... makes it easier not to crack if I sort of... imagine that I'm him. It's a good thing I can't tell Lamb about that though. She'd probably say I got a secret need to fall into his arms and make wild whoopee!"


Stanley Poole was a reporter for the Rapture Tribune newspaper. He was hired by Augustus Sinclair on the behalf of Andrew Ryan to infiltrate the Rapture Family, and gather evidence so that Sofia Lamb could be imprisoned. It all went downhill for him from there.


  • Asshole Victim: As his acts consist of selling out Johnny Topside and Eleanor to become Big Daddy and Little Sister respectively, as well as killing all witnesses to his wild parties to avoid Ryan and Lamb's scrutiny, it's hard to mourn for him if the player decides to kill him, with the game foregoing the What the Hell, Hero? treatment for this occasion and even Eleanor, Lamb and Sinclair are not sad to see him go. The only reason people might spare him is for the ending and the trophies.
  • All for Nothing: He goes so far as to flood the entirety of Dionysus Park, just to cover up his crimes, and sells out Sofia's Daughter to turn her into a Little Sister, and spends years trying to hide it.... only for him to find out Dr. Lamb knew all along, proving his efforts were for nothing.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Let's just say that there are very few people in the game that haven't been backstabbed by him at some point. To wit: he's the one who had Johnny Topside arrested and converted against his will into a Big Daddy. He then betrayed Sophia Lamb's trust by hosting wild parties at Dionysus Park behind her back, and later sent Eleanor to be converted into a Little Sister to prevent the truth from getting out — he then kills everyone who showed up at his parties just to make absolutely certain there were no loose ends.
  • Cower Power: Poole spends most of his only level hiding in a booth while forcing Delta to clear up his dirty business.
  • Cruel Mercy: While it goes unaddressed, it's implied that Delta choosing not to kill him is only prolonging the inevitable. He may still have his health, but the booth he was holed up in has been opened remotely by Sofia Lamb, thus leaving him alone, unguarded and utterly terrified. He has to contend with the crazed Splicers roaming around who'll doubtlessly kill him for merely looking at them funny, and he has no weapons and hardly seems like the kind of person who could handle themselves in a fight, meaning his chances of living long enough to find a way out of Rapture before it's totally flooded are rather slim.
  • Dirty Coward: Poole's only real concern is keeping his ass out of the fire, and he's willing to go to the most repulsive lengths to ensure that nothing bad happens to him: this includes having Eleanor Lamb kidnapped and converted into a Little Sister, sabotaging Dionysus Park so that the entire population drowned, and ordering Delta to harvest any Little Sisters that might discover what he'd done. And when things start getting out of control, he quickly lapses into spineless begging.
  • Everyone Knew Already: Stanley Poole desperately tells Delta not to let Lamb know he was the one who drowned everyone in Dionysus Park to hide the fact he was spending her money on women, booze and plasmids. When Delta confronts him, Lamb laughs over the loudspeaker and tells him she knew already, and Delta can do whatever he wants to Poole.
  • Evil Uncle: When Sofia Lamb was arrested, she ordered Stanley Poole and Grace Holloway to take care of Eleanor; as such, Poole ended up being called "Uncle Stanley," and proved his credentials in the evil uncle field by having Eleanor kidnapped to prevent her from ratting him out.
  • Foreshadowing: A small one when you enter the loading screen for Dionysus Park before meeting Poole. The loading screen music is 'Here Comes The Boogeyman' by Henry Hall, a song about a dangerous yet utterly spineless monster.
  • From Nobody to Nightmare: Before Andrew Ryan and by extension, Sinclair, hired him to get dirt on Sofia Lamb, he was just a humble News reporter that got paid to not report on some things.
  • Functional Addict: Flashbacks show that Poole has been splicing and in the novel he regularly indulged in lots of drugs, but he's obviously been able to keep his habit under control for now.
  • The Hedonist: Upon Lamb's incarceration, Stanley assumed stewardship of Dionysus Park, and apparently made the place live up to its name by hosting wild parties every night (on her dime, of course).
  • Hate Sink: Ye gods, is there much to hate about Stanley: on top of being a smarmy, self-absorbed Jerkass with no motives beyond basic gratification (by which we mean Hookers and Blow), he's also an unrepentant mass murderer who has a nasty habit of betraying people at the slightest provocation, and when Delta finally confronts him, he pathetically begs for his life and tries to pass off his crimes as "nothing personal."
  • He Knows Too Much: From Poole's point of view everyone in Dionysus Park knew too much, so he found a way to kill everyone. He flooded the park, killing everyone there, and then sent Eleanor off to be converted into a Little Sister. This all turns out to be wholly unnecessary, as Sophia Lamb knew what Poole did the whole time and was just toying with him.
  • Hero-Worshipper: One of his audio diaries reveals that he's come to admire Subject Delta- or, as he was known when he was still a human being, Johnny Topside- after interviewing him for the Tribune. Poole also went on to frame him as a spy and have him imprisoned in Persephone, where he was transformed into a Big Daddy, so he obviously didn't admire Topside that much.
  • Hookers and Blow: When he got control of Dionysus Park, he went behind Lamb's back and held debaucherous parties fueled by sex and drugs.
  • Immoral Journalist: Even if his work isn't that immoral, the man certainly is.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: If Delta wishes to, he can smash Poole’s face in with his drill for selling him out, and even if he’s spared, it’s doubtful he'll make it out of the city; not only does his only cover no longer exist thanks to Lamb, but he’s unarmed and extremely cowardly, so it’s only a matter of time before he joins all the people he had killed at Dionysus Park, either from running into a pack of bloodthirsty Splicers, or from drowning as a result of Rapture completely breaching before he can find a way out.
  • Lean and Mean: He's quite thin, and also a self-centered coward who will sell anyone out for his own gain.
  • The Mole: Hired by Ryan to infiltrate Lamb's organization and sabotage it from witin.
  • Mole in Charge: When Lamb is arrested, she puts Stanley in charge of the Family along with Grace Holloway. That turned out to be a very poor decision.
  • Obviously Evil: Even before you find out what a bastard he truly is, his sleazy attitude and seeming desperation to cover something up don't exactly inspire trust.
  • Oh, Crap!: At the end of his level, Poole suffers a doozy of an Oh, Crap! moment when Sofia Lamb remotely opens the door to his booth and informs Delta just who was really responsible for his conversion into a Big Daddy.
  • Paid Harem: One of the flashbacks shows Poole during one of his parties, which he financed by using all of Lamb's money, and he has two girls next to him, obviously both slightly spliced, and he appears at least as he hopes to have his way with them both.
  • Paparazzi: He was a newspaper reporter when Rapture was still a city.
  • Pragmatic Villainy: Has no problem with Subject Delta killing Little Sisters, who look and act like kids. He, unlike Atlas and Sinclair, also has no problems with you not killing them, because he's not exactly in position to make demands.
  • Slime Ball: As a transparent liar, shameless opportunist, and reprehensible coward with a grotesquely overinflated sense of self-worth, a ludicrously hedonistic lifestyle, and a habit of betraying everyone who gets too close to him, he qualifies and then some.
  • Smug Snake: He tries to come off as a badass Magnificent Bastard while you talk to him. He's anything but.
  • The Sociopath: Shamelessly manipulative, as he blackmails Delta into erasing all evidence of his crime before letting him continue, the fact that he threw wild parties behind Lamb’s back and burned through her money in the process also shows a certain lack of impulse control, and he doesn’t even bat an eye at drowning his guests and sending Eleanor to be turned into a Little Sister to cover his own pathetic ass, and also sent Johnny Topside to be turned into an Alpha Series despite lauding him as a hero, all of which shows just how little human life means to him in comparison to his own. When cornered by Delta, he doesn’t even apologise for what he did, instead hiding in the corner whimpering and begging to be spared.
  • Uncertain Doom: He faces this if the player decides to spare him; the booth he's been hiding in is no longer safe due to Lamb remotely opening it, and if the Splicers don't kill him first, he'll end up drowning when Dionysus Park's seams finally give way from lack of maintenance.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Take anything he says with a small ocean's worth of salt.
  • Villains Want Mercy: Cowers in a corner and begs for mercy like a coward when confronted by Delta. He doesn't even apologize for contributing to the suffering that Delta and Eleanor endured. Delta is of course, free to give him exactly what he begs for.
  • Walking Spoiler: Many of the tropes regarding his character are ones you don't find out right away.

    Grace Holloway 

Voiced in English by: Sheryl Lee Ralph

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Grace_Holloway_8373.png
Click here for her in-game model 

"Ryan doesn't care and Fontaine's a damn crook, but Doctor Lamb cares. We're still people to her. She's offering free mental counseling on Sundays. When I go, I get the feeling she's got a plan for Rapture... and for me."


A lounge singer who was blacklisted by Andrew Ryan after singing protest songs against his rule, with her lover James being taken away. She became one of Sofia's most devoted followers, and was entrusted with keeping Eleanor safe when Sofia was imprisoned by Ryan. She failed in her duty when Stanley Poole betrayed Sofia and kidnapped Eleanor. Grace eventually saw Eleanor as a Little Sister being guarded by Delta, who broke her jaw when she tried to hug Eleanor, prompting Grace to believe that Delta was the one who kidnapped Eleanor and transformed her. Sofia gave her control over Pauper's Drop after taking over Rapture.


  • Anti-Villain: The sole reason why she has a grudge towards Delta is because she believes that he was the one who kidnapped Eleanor.
  • Badass Boast: "I remember you, monster. You stole Eleanor from me...twisted that baby girl into a thing so sick it can't even die... and now you come swanning into my neighborhood lookin' for me? Wrong turn, Tin Daddy. When we hang you from a streetlight, and you're choking out your last... I want you to remember my face."
  • Broken Pedestal: If Delta spares Grace, she begins to view Sophia Lamb as an Unreliable Narrator and questions everything she was told about him.
    Grace: I know that Doctor Lamb is no liar, but she's got to be wrong about you. It doesn't seem right now, letting you walk into that bush whack waiting outside. I can't call off the Family, but I can whisper a bit and improve your odds.
  • Celebrity Survivor: In-Universe example. She was a popular singer before Rapture collapsed.
  • Face Death with Dignity: If Delta chooses to kill her.
  • Heel Realization: If Delta spares her, she realizes that he is not a monster and provides him supplies to stop Sofia and rescue Eleanor.
  • Hypocrite: Not Grace, but her opinion of Andrew Ryan. Ryan promised her in Rapture she'd be free of racial discrimination, but when the shit hit the fan, Rapture became just as racist.
    • On the other hand, she repeatedly accuses Delta of being a kidnapper, despite repeatedly professing loyalty to Lamb… Who has been systematically kidnapping children from the surface to remake the Little Sisters. So either she's this, or she's been incredibly blind to what Lamb has been doing. Given her behaviour after Delta spares her, however, the latter does seem more likely.
  • It's Personal: She isn't just following orders when it comes to hunting Delta. She was tasked with caring for Eleanor and got a broken jaw for her trouble when she tried to hug her in Delta's presence after she was kidnapped and converted. She believes Delta was the kidnapper, too.
  • Law of Inverse Fertility: She's barren, and there's a barely-concealed subtext that the main reason she loves Eleanor so much is that she considered her the daughter she never got to have.
  • Mama Bear: To Eleanor.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Grace had been assuming that Delta was still a mindless automata. But if Delta spares her, it quickly dawns on her that she was dead wrong and that he is just trying to save Eleanor.
  • Parental Substitute: Eleanor went to live with her after Sofia's incarceration, and it's clear that Grace's love for the little girl was far more genuine than her mother's.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: Grace be given control of the poorest most run-down part of Rapture once Sofia took power, could easily be Sofia punishing her for failing to keep Eleanor safe.
  • Sassy Black Woman: She certainly loves to sass at Subject Delta, regardless of the fact he cannot even speak to her.
  • Shoot the Dog: What her death ends up being if Delta wants to punish Sofia Lamb in a good ending. It's a lot easier to torture and kill Dirty Coward Stanley Poole and euthanize the monster that Gilbert Alexander has become. Grace? Not so much.
  • Token Good Teammate: The only member of the Rapture Family who is not blindly fanatical.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Averted if Delta spares Grace. She's the only one of the three characters to thank Delta for his mercy, not only by simply saying so, but by giving him rewards such as security bots and supplies.
  • You Monster!: Her main accusation against Delta. If he spares her, she inverts the trope.
    Grace: You had me under a gun... yet you just walk away? No monster alive turns the other cheek. No monster does that. A thinking man does that.

    Simon Wales 

Voiced in English by: Richard Poe Other Languages 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Simon_Wales_5647.png

"Andrew Ryan left us wandering confused and alone amongst yesterday's wreckage. But Sofia Lamb shows us that we are not alone, we are together, as a family."


One of the architects that Andrew Ryan hired to design Rapture alongside his brother Daniel, he was struck hard by the depression that hit the city and blamed himself for leaks in the city that killed citizens. He found comfort in Sofia Lamb's teachings, and restyled himself as "Father Wales", spreading her message as the leader of a religious cult called the "Rapture Family" in Siren Alley.


  • Anti-Villain: The poor guy was driven mad with guilt out of a belief that he caused several deaths. He's found a new purpose with the Family, but he's also out of his gourd by the time you meet him.
  • Body Horror: His body is extremely deformed from splicing, turning him into a Crawler splicer.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: A souped-up Spider Splicer in clerical garb and a black hat.
  • The Dragon: To Sofia Lamb
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His brother Daniel, even though he rejects Sofia's philosophy. He becomes enraged when Delta kills Daniel.
  • The Fundamentalist: Very devout towards the Rapture Family.
  • Hero-Worshipper: Towards Jack, whom he believes is a god, with Sofia Lamb as his prophet.
  • Irish Priest: A very twisted one.
  • Made of Iron: He has more health than some Big Daddy variants!
  • Sinister Minister: A priest in the Rapture family.
  • Wall Crawl: One of his powers as he uses hooks and his own freakish strength.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Like most Splicers, made worse with his power over his "flock".

    Daniel Wales 

Voiced by: Graham Rowat (English)note 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/daniel_wales_3771.png

"But I was the black ol' sheep back there, never believin' a word o'the Jesus bollocks meself. Then Andrew Ryan says he wants Wales an' Wales for Rapture — a Cathedral with no God, befittin' the ascent o'man. Now I'm runnin' girls... and Simon thinks he's saving souls."


Simon's brother and his former partner in designing Rapture, Daniel felt none of the guilt his brother did when leaks killed several people around Rapture. He refused to follow his brother into Sofia's cult, and instead established himself as the head of the Pink Pearl Brothel in Siren Ally.


  • The Alcoholic: According to him, he deals with all of his problems by trying to drink them away.
  • Black Sheep: In Ireland, due to being an atheist who designed churches.
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: A souped-up Leadhead Splicer.
  • Cowardly Boss: He flees at the first sight of Delta, requiring you to chase him down to actually fight him. When you do fight him, he still tries to run.
  • Hypocrite: He won't let his prostitutes splice up, but is heavily spliced himself.
  • Jerkass: Even before he fell on hard times, he was kind of an ass.
  • Molotov Cocktail: One of his primary weapons.
  • Pimp Duds: As befitting of a man running a brothel; in addition to his aforementioned top-hat, he's also shown wearing a yellow smoking jacket with red lapels, a teal bowtie, shoes with spats, and red plaid slacks.
  • The Sociopath: The reason he didn't go insane with guilt like his brother is because he genuinely doesn't care about anyone but himself. He didn't care about the people he inadvertently killed, doesn't care about his prostitutes, and doesn't care about his brother. Dr. Lamb could never get her hooks in him because there was nothing she could influence; he was always utterly selfish and had no wish to change.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: Holds his brother in complete and utter contempt despite Simon dearly loving him. He assumes Simon sent you to talk to him when you first encounter him, and he throws a grenade as his "peace offering", says he can't believe he "shared a womb with such a sap" in an audio log reflecting on the paths they took, and when Simon sends him a bottle of wine with the vintage being the code to Simon's territory, he says in another audio log he should "send his wine through my system and send it back warm."

    Mark Meltzer 

Voiced in English by: Ray Porter Other Languages 

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/MarkMel_1613.png

"I can't sleep anymore. I lie awake, haunted by the watchful eyes of those poor lost girls... waiting for us to find them."


The protagonist of the "Something in The Sea" Alternate Reality Game who was incorporated into BioShock 2 by fan demand. Mark G. Meltzer was an ordinary middle aged American citizen who developed an interest in a series of kidnappings of children along European coastlines, which unknown to him were being perpetrated by Big Sisters. Unfortunately, during his investigation, one Big Sister managed to follow him and kidnap his own daughter Cindy. He then dedicated the rest of his life to getting Cindy back, becoming one of the few Muggles aware of the existence of Rapture and one of fewer that managed to travel there. By the time Delta is revived, Mark is shortly ahead of him, searching for Cindy.


  • Action Survivor: The guy survives in a world where even genetic super-beings are being killed by the dozen, armed with nothing but his pistol and willpower.
  • Badass Normal: He is unspliced, while in Rapture he only carries a pistol, and when the Big Sister captures him he still manages to get some shots off despite being distracted by his daughter.
  • Bittersweet Ending: He is captured by Sofia Lamb and is given the choice between death or becoming a Big Daddy and protecting Cindy. He chooses the latter. The player most likely kills him but can rescue Cindy. Or harvest her.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Not so much in the game, but he could have quite the dry wit in the "Something in The Sea" ARG.
  • Determinator: He tracks his daughter halfway across the Atlantic and then treks through Rapture implacably to find her. Nothing seems to be able to stop this guy. Except a Big Sister.
  • Hero of Another Story: There could easily have been a game centered about him and the fact that he is just an ordinary guy makes him more of an Unlikely Hero than Jack or Delta, considering the fact that one is genetically engineered and programmed to make his way through Rapture and the other is a Big Daddy. His logs serve to show, in the end, how well a normal human, as opposed to a Super Prototype sentient Big Daddy, would succeed if he were the protagonist. Hint: it doesn't end well.
  • Non-Standard Character Design: His audio diary portrait is the only one in game to be in colour, immediately setting him apart from the regular, monochrome portraits. He's also the only Big Daddy with a proper name in the base game.
  • Papa Wolf: Literally nothing will get between this man and his daughter. Even his own death.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In his final Audio Log, he lays a potent one on Sophia:
    Mark: ...I wasn't the first to find Rapture, you crazy bitch. And I won't be the last. You do... whatever you want to me... as long as I'm with Cindy... I'm ... I'm a happy man.
  • Splash of Color: His character portrait is the only one in the series that's in color as opposed to monochrome, emphasizing his nature as a Muggle and an outsider.
  • Tragic Monster: He has been turned into a Big Daddy.
  • You Are Worth Hell: He's a Big Daddy by the time you meet him, choosing to be with his daughter in at least some way rather than just be killed. You have to put him down if you want to get to his Little Sister.

BioShock 2 Multiplayer

    The Welder 

Jacob Norris

Voiced in English by: Steve Mellor

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jacob_norris.png

"That's it, fatcats: Revolution, right now... needle goes here, just a push and... ahhhh..."


A working-class Rapture citizen who joins the uprising against Ryan.


  • Defiant to the End: Discussed. He talks about how he doesn't care about being taken to Persephone, and is willing to go about "Writing his name in 40 foot letters" across Haephastus' core.
  • Facial Horror: His face in his post-splicing artwork is horribly deformed, seemingly sagging to one side around the mouth, and is covered in inflamed red patches. His nose is also completely missing, and the wound covered over with a piece of metal.
  • Laughing Mad: He slips into this during his final diary, indicating that he's well and truly gone off the deep end.
  • Sanity Slippage: His Audio Diaries show his steady mental decline due to overuse of ADAM, making him bolder and more aggressive towards the leading corporations of Rapture, Ryan especially. The final diary has him sing the final verse of 'Solidarity Forever' before breaking down into insane laughter.
  • Self-Made Man: Idolized Rapture's objectivist ideals until he realised Andrew Ryan's promises were bollocks and his friends were disappearing.
  • Working-Class Hero: Well, "hero" is pushing it, but he does represent the working class of Rapture who bought into Andrew Ryan's promises, then later joined the rebellion after seeing they were being left behind.

    The Housewife 

Barbara Johnson

Voiced in English by: Kari Wahlgren

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/barbara_johnson.png

"I'm not trying to 'keep up with the Joneses' here, I'm trying to stop them from killing us! I mean, I love Fred, I do, but if he won't wear the pants around here, I'll just have to pull them up over my pantyhose!"


A housewife who starts using ADAM against her husband's wishes. Her daughter is later abducted to become a Little Sister.


  • Frying Pan of Doom: Her kitchen's frying pan serves as her unique melee weapon.
  • Henpecked Husband: She doesn't think too highly of her husband Fred since he refuses to splice to help protect the family.
  • Housewife: Was this before all the splicing.
  • Mama Bear: In her final Audio Diary, she vowed to find Susie at the Little Sister's Orphanage, and personally kill Susie's kidnappers.

    The Athlete 

Danny Wilkins

Voiced in English by: Jeff Biehl

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/danny_wilkins.png

"Kid asks how I deal with the press griping about me: There's no "I" in team and all that. Well, the way I spell it there is! Wilkins does things his own way! That's what makes a champ!"


A star player of the Ryan's Raiders football team, Danny Wilkins started taking SportBoost plasmids to improve his game. As plasmids are most likely to do, this results in him going bonkers, narrating all of his murder sprees like a sports announcer describing a heated match.


  • Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: He's physically powerful and a star player for his team, but has a pretty huge ego and hot temper to go with these qualities.
  • Body Horror: A relatively subdued case for a Splicer - his veins are visibly bulging out of his forearms and he seems to be literally bursting out of his uniform from muscle growth.
  • Broken Pedestal: Joey Glatz, Danny's fan, calls him out for using plasmids. This resulted in Danny beating Joey to death on a plasmid-induced rage.
  • Jerk Jock: Driven insane by Plasmid use.
  • Sanity Slippage: He slowly goes insane from his Plasmid use, going from his usual boisterousness to beating people who criticise him to death with his bare hands while narrating his murders like a sports match.
  • Unstoppable Rage: The effects of ADAM on his psyche, which are very reminiscent of "roid rage".

    The Pilot 

Naledi Atkins

Voiced in English by: Anna Graves

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/naledi_atkins.png

"I want to be speed itself, right? The force rushing through things. Not the wind, but the velocity; not the tide, but the power drives it."


A fearless pilot who journeyed to Rapture as part of a grand adventure. However, when life got dull again, she turned to plasmids. Now, there isn't a dull moment in Naledi's life - even if the excitement is coming from taking away other lives.


  • Ace Pilot: At least back on the surface.
  • The Cameo: Appears briefly in the single player game's prologue as one of Lamb's supporters who attack Subject Delta. He quickly tosses her aside.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Even by Rapture immigrant standards, the Pilot thought a one-way trip to the bottom of the ocean would be a good place to get new thrills. She was right, but probably not in the way she wanted.
  • Genki Girl: Full of energy, and never wants to be idle or bored.
  • Thrill Seeker: She enjoys the rush of adrenaline she gets from adventure and danger.
  • Worthy Opponent: Her opinion of the Rosie Big Daddies. She mocks other splicers when killing them, but she respects Rosies and promises to remember them.
  • Wrench Wench: Had modified her bathysphere to be the fastest in Rapture, and literally has a wrench for a melee weapon.

    The Businessman 

Buck Raleigh

Voiced in English by: Patrick Godfrey

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/buck_raleigh.png

"Always some fly in the ointment. Life in Rapture's been gooder'n grits. Business is boomin' and me and Clara, hell, that woman's smile's warmer than a belly full of bourbon, wish I could bottle that and sell it."


A bourbon baron back on the surface, Buck traveled to Rapture to bail out of being arrested for tax evasion. After establishing his bourbon business in Rapture, it became a prime target for anti-Ryan militants, and soon after the attacks began, his wife Clara vanished. Determined to turn all of Rapture upside down to get Clara back, Buck turned to plasmids so he could look for her in even the most dangerous places in Rapture.


  • Acrofatic: Plays identically to every other character, up to and including using the Aero Dash plasmid.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Not nearly to the extant of Ryan, Fontaine, or most of the other business elites of Rapture, but he still fits the bill.
    Buck: Things are either mine... or not mine yet!
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Genuinely cares for his wife, Clara.
  • Golf Clubbing: His unique melee weapon, at least outside of the "Kill 'em Kindly" mode, which gives everyone a golf club and only a golf club.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: After a year, he finally finds Clara. She had joined Atlas and was gunned down by security bots while leading an attack on Buck's business. It's hard to tell what hit him harder: her death, or her betrayal.
  • Facial Horror: Raleigh's post-splicing model shows him with a massive tumour growing out of his right cheek, to the point where it's resting on his shoulder.
  • Fat Bastard: A ruthless businessman, and even came to Rapture to avoid going to trial for tax evasion.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: Very similar in appearance to Wilford Brimley, and his texture files even have "Brimley" in their filenames. Though it has yet to be determined whether or not splicing can cure diabeetus.

    The Performer 

Suresh Sheti

Voiced in English by: Jim Ward

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/suresh_sheti.png

"Today, I was approached by a golem in a diving suit. I looked into his mind and it was all screams and their echoes... a cold and hollow infinity whose sole occupant was a warped, painful howling... bleeding out into the indifferent void."


A mentalist who performed in Fort Frolic, drawing in scores of crowds with his already impressive skills being enhanced by Plasmids. When Frolic and the other theaters are shut down by Ryan, Suresh decides that he was getting bored of the stage anyways, and opts to "-take (his) talents directly to the streets."


  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: For all he's generally collected, he can be every bit as brutal as your average splicer in battle. Before he starts actively joining the war Suresh also privately expresses contempt for the majority of Rapture's citizens, comparing them to Pavlov's dogs and deriding how easy they are to control through Bread and Circuses.
  • Cane Fu: His primary melee weapon is a cane.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: In his final Audio Diary, he is shown to be legitimately horrified by the fate of Big Daddies.
  • Expy: The Deco Devolution artbook remarks that his design was partly inspired by Baron Samedi of Live and Let Die fame.
  • Laughing Mad: Suresh will occasionally break out into maniacal laughter when attacking other characters, or mocking their corpses.
  • Only Sane Man: Amazingly, even after being physically deformed by plasmids, his psychic abilities allow him to avoid the gibbering insanity of the other splicers. He's also more cool and collected than most of the multiplayer characters, although he's still as capable of being brutal in a battle.
  • Psychic Powers: He had them - or something very like them - even before splicing up, which he initially used for entertainment. They're also what allows him to escape the worst of the splicing-induced Sanity Slippage.
  • Sanity Slippage: Somewhat. While he's calm and collected compared to other Splicers he's as sociopathic as the rest of them, viewing the Rapture Civil War's battles as nothing but an opportunity to express his talents in new and exciting ways.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: His audio diaries give him a very eloquent, dramatic manner of speaking.

    The Fisherman 

Zigo d'Acosta

Voiced in English by: Mike Arkin

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/zigo_dacosta.png

"These bastards down here don't know it yet, but I am the sea made flesh. I'll wash through these halls reclaiming her sacred blood, filling me veins with her strength."


One of two characters available from the Zigo & Blanche DLC pack, which was initially available through pre-orders. A Spanish fisherman who worked in Neptune's Bounty. ADAM abuse has warped his mind to the point where he believes the sea is speaking to him and wants him to destroy Rapture.


    The Actress 

Mlle Blanche de Glace

Voiced by: Stephanie Sheh

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blanche_de_glace.png

"Oh, how I love this war! The aromas! The sweet roasting of flesh, and the exquisite nasal burn of sulfur. The air ripe with the moans of defeat, the bellowings of victory!"


The second of two characters available from the Zigo & Blanche DLC pack. A French actress who came to Rapture to captivate a new audience. When the theaters closed after the riots on New Year's Eve of 1959, she grew depressed and turned to ADAM abuse to cope. When the war starts, she begins taking part in it, finding it more enjoyable than the stage.


    The Playboy 

Oscar Calraca

Voiced by: Chris McKinney

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/oscar_calraca.png

"I've never known a problem can't be solved with the right kind of party."


One of two characters available from the Sinclair Solutions Tester Pack DLC. Oscar had several pet cats on the surface, but was not allowed to bring them to Rapture until he met Frank Fontaine, who smuggled Oscar's cats into the city for him. After Oscar got addicted to ADAM, he fed it to one of his cats, Mr. Boots, to make him grow tiger stripes, but it also caused him become addicted to it, and Oscar was forced to kill Mr. Boots after he tried to steal Oscar's ADAM.


  • Animal Motifs: A lot of his dialogue centers around cats, he had several of them as pets, and he spliced himself a set of cat claws to honor Mr. Boots' memory. His last name is also an anagram of caracal.
  • Batter Up!: His primary melee weapon is a cricket bat.
  • The Casanova: He used to throw wild parties all the time after moving to Rapture, and was quite the ladies' man.
  • Crazy Cat Lady: A rare male example.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Really, Oscar? What did you think would happen if you fed your cat what's basically liquid stem cells?
  • My God, What Have I Done?: He was genuinely remorseful over having to kill Mr. Boots.

    The Jailbird 

Louie McGraff

Voiced by: James Babson

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/louie_mcgraff.png

"I look at it like this: Everyone's a crook of some kind or anotha', and us guys who admit it? We got a leg up on dem that don't."


The second of two characters available from the Sinclair Solutions Tester Pack DLC. A former smuggler who worked for Frank Fontaine, he was eventually arrested and sentenced to Persephone for his crimes. He befriended another inmate named Knuckles, who disappeared from his cell one night and was apparently turned into a Big Daddy. Louie struck a deal with Augustus Sinclair to be let out early if he participated in field trials for Sinclair Solutions, so he could find Knuckles.


  • The Cameo: He appears in the single player game's prologue as one of the Lamb supporters who attack Delta, and is the one who nails Delta with the Hypnotize plasmid that allows Lamb to talk him into shooting himself.
  • Deal with the Devil: His deal with Sinclair comes off as this, given the latter's status as a Corrupt Corporate Executive.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He and Knuckles genuinely seemed to be friends, and he's going out of his way to find every Big Daddy he can, in the event that one of them is Knuckles, so Louie can put him out of his misery.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: Even he finds the idea of being turned into a Big Daddy to be an awful thing to do to someone.
    "Now I've done a lot of bad things to people, but I ain't never made no one scream like dat."
  • Obviously Evil: He wasn't a nice person, even before he came to Rapture. A lot of his dialogue highlights his Blood Knight status, and he still wears his prison stripes from his time in Persephone.
  • Sinister Shiv: His melee weapon of choice is a shank.


Minerva's Den

    Subject Sigma 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/subject_sigma.png
The protagonist of BioShock 2 DLC Minerva's Den and the Player Character, another Super Prototype Big Daddy.
  • Elemental Powers: Same as the two previous protagonists.
  • Firing One-Handed: For the same reason as Delta - the other's occupied by a Plasmid.
  • Genius Bruiser: He is C.M. Porter.
  • Heroic Mime: Justified, since Big Daddies can't speak.
  • Karma Houdini: Since there's only one ending to Minerva's Den, Sigma sees no punishment if he chooses to harvest the Little Sisters, aside from the lack of gifts.
  • Palette Swap: Has the same armor as Delta and all Alpha Series, but instead of Delta's bronze and blue coloration, his armor is dark silver with a greenish tinge.
  • Psychic Powers: His starter plasmid is Telekinesis.
  • Sole Survivor: Alongside Jack, Sigma is the only BioShock protagonist to survive his game and to get a happy ending. Delta, Booker, Comstock, and Elizabeth all end up dying. Though his is more of a Bittersweet Ending than Jack's, having to come to terms with the loss of his wife and all that happened to him in Rapture.
  • Super Prototype: He's an Alpha Series just like Delta, and he's arguably in better shape than Delta due to never having been bonded to a Little Sister.
  • Surprisingly Similar Characters: Much like Subject Delta he shared some similarities with Alex J. Murphy/RoboCop from RoboCop (1987) as both characters are Amnesiac Heroes who each Was Once a Man (as Sigma was once C.M. Porter) prior to turning into armored protectors by a corporation for its privatized metropolis.
  • This Is a Drill: The starting weapon, just like Delta.
  • Tomato Surprise: It is revealed at the end of Minerva's Den that Subject Sigma is the actual C.M. Porter; the C.M. Porter who has been assisting him turns out to be The Thinker.
  • Tragic Monster: Subverted in the end where he is back to an unspliced state.

    Charles Milton Porter 

Voiced in English by: Carl Lumbly

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/C_M_Porter_5114.png

"It's loss that brought me to Rapture. The loss of my wife, Pearl... The Thinker is all I've got, now..."


A brilliant mathematician, Porter worked for the Allies in London during World War II, losing his wife Pearl to the German bombings. He accepted Andrew Ryan's offer to work in Rapture, building The Thinker, the ultimate processing machine, which he hoped to use to resurrect his dead wife. He was betrayed by his partner Reed Wahl and imprisoned in Persephone, but eventually escaped and teamed up with Dr. Tenenbaum and Subject Sigma to liberate The Thinker and flee Rapture. Subject Sigma is eventually revealed to be Porter, with the one guiding the player actually being The Thinker.


  • Berserk Button: His angriest audio diary is about the time someone suggested he splice himself white to improve business. Considering the rampant racism towards African Americans at the time, this is to be expected.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: He's able to see through not only Ryan and Fontaine's schemes but also smart enough to stay out of Lamb's way upon guessing more or less what she's really up to. That's not even getting to his actions as Subject Sigma.
  • Black and Nerdy: He's black, and he's a genius who designed what is basically a supercomputer.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: He escapes Rapture with Tennenbaum, returns to his human state, and finally has a chance at moving on with his life, though he is not without his grief in the end.
  • The Lost Lenore: His wife Pearl.
  • Moving Beyond Bereavement: Porter's wife was killed in the London Blitz and he's secretly been unable to move on from his grief ever since then. As such, when he created the Master Computer known as The Thinker, he eventually programmed it to recreate his wife in perfect detail... but when he finally got it right, he realized that it just wasn't her. Instead, he had the Thinker find a way out of Rapture. After Charles is transformed into Subject Sigma and defeats his treacherous former business partner, the Thinker is eventually able to help him escape to the surface, where he is able to regain his humanity, pay his last respects to his wife and finally move on.
  • Mission Control: He guides Sigma in the style of Atlas and Sinclair. Subverted when it's revealed that Sigma is Porter and the Porter you've been listening to is the Thinker itself.
  • Necromantic: His main motivation for humanizing the Thinker was to bring his dead wife Pearl back to some degree with the Thinker's advanced approximation of Pearl's personality. Although the Thinker is successful in its emulation, Porter realizes that it isn't Pearl and stops.
  • Nice Guy: He's shown through the audio logs to be one of the nicest, most sympathetic people in Rapture. And also one of the most sane.
  • Only Sane Man: While he does have some deep issues involving the Thinker and his dead wife, the fact that he doesn't fall for Lamb's "solution" says a lot about his state of mind.
  • We Used to Be Friends: Him and Wahl. He stated that him and Wahl founded the Rapture Central Computing together and he once regarded Wahl as a brilliant thinker and respectable peer. However, soon after the founding, Wahl pushed Porter out of the organization years prior to the story out of greed over possessing the Thinker due to becoming paranoid because of his ADAM addiction. Porter now states that he doesn't care if Wahl makes it back to the surface or not, and would prefer that he rot in the ruins of Rapture.

    Reed Wahl 

Voiced in English by: Keith Szarabajka

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Wahl_Reed_2263.png

"In my limited time as its master, The Thinker has shown me so much. My outlook was... limited before."


The antagonist of the Minerva's Den DLC, Porter's former partner who betrayed him to take control of The Thinker alone, believing that it can be used to crack a perfect equation that can predict everything.


  • Arc Villain: Of the Minerva's Den Expansion Pack.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: For a skinny engineer, Wahl is remarkably strong even by Splicer standards when you finally fight him, as he can take almost as much damage as a Big Sister (though, since he lacks Big Daddy damage resistance and effect immunity, it's pretty easy to juggle him to death with your plasmids and weapons).
  • Boss in Mook Clothing: He is a reused Buttons splicer, with a hat.
  • Deadly Euphemism: "Sigma must be removed from the equation".
  • Evil Genius: Smart enough to have co-founded Minerva's Den with Porter...and evil enough to have sold Porter out in order to steal Porter's machine for himself.
  • Final Boss: Of Minerva's Den and if one plays the main campaign first, the entire game.
  • Foreshadowing: After realizing that Sigma is Porter, Wahl hints to Sigma that he knows it, by pointing out the inconsistencies of Porter suddenly returning from Persephone, the Hell Hole Prison over them all, and completely sane and normal.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Potentially in two ways.
    • His use and, in his own words, blind faith in the Thinker's predictive algorithim. The Thinker, and thus the algorithm, start conspiring against him.
    • If the player has a good hack build (something the DLC encourages) or just has a few auto-hack darts up their sleeve, Wahl will suffer an enormous amount of pain at the hands of his own bots and turrets.
  • Mad Mathematician: Minerva's Den is full of equations scrawled on the walls in chalk, paint, and even blood, all presumably Wahl's work in his efforts to find the "predictive equation", an equation he believes can be used to predict the future.
  • Must Have Caffeine: The floor of his office is littered with bottles of Hop-Up Cola, implying he's been using the drink's high amounts of caffeine to keep himself from sleeping on the job.
  • Sanity Slippage: Like every Splicer in Rapture, Wahl slowly went nuts after taking ADAM and became obsessed with The Thinker, believing he could make an equation that could predict the future with it.
  • Shock and Awe: His shotgun uses Electric Buck.
  • Shotguns Are Just Better: Wields a shotgun when you battle him.
  • The Turret Master: During his boss battle, he'll deploy Mini-Turrets to defend himself.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Despite his absurd health pool and punishing weapons, he lacks the effect immunity of Big Daddies and Big Sisters. Light him on fire, and he will run into the only pool of water in the area to douse himself. Use gravity well, and he'll be sucked in like everyone else.
  • We Used to Be Friends: Porter and Wahl had a good working relationship, and the former spoke highly of Wahl. However, they disagreed on what to do with The Thinker, causing a rift between them. Wahl became mentally unstable due to ADAM and falsely accused Porter of being loyal to Fontaine by giving Andrew Ryan a fake recording, which led to Porter's imprisonment. When Porter returns to Minerva's Den, he doesn't care about Wahl anymore and says he can rot in Rapture.
  • Villainous Breakdown: When Sigma approaches closer and closer, and he runs out of Mooks, he gets angrier and angrier, constantly telling Sigma to turn back and stop. Ending with him attacking Sigma in a battle he could have told himself would end in his death.

     Rapture Operational Data Interpreter Network (R.O.D.I.N.), aka The Thinker 

Voiced in English by: Michael Csurics

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thinker_bs2_portrait.jpg

"Scanning...designation...Sigma. Please, come in."

The computer created by Reed Wahl and Charles Milton Porter in Minerva's Den. It is a perfect Artificial Intelligence, maintaining the automated systems of Rapture and running Minerva's Den on its own. Porter, Tenenbaum, and Sigma want it in order to cure ADAM sickness. Unfortunately, Wahl controls it and desires to use it to crack the perfect predictive equation. It is sentient, and its true allegiance is unknown. It helps Sigma and Tenenbaum, by impersonating Porter while betraying Wahl.


  • Armor-Piercing Question: Delivers one to Porter when he orders it to stop the impersonation while enacting its personality replication of Pearl, his dead wife. Porter is extremely creeped out and overcome with grief as a result.
    "But what's the matter Milton? Don't you still love me?"
  • Barrier Maiden: Of all of Rapture. It's noted that many of the luxuries (automatic doors, mail) and utter necessities (electricity, security, keeping the underwater pressure from crushing the entire city) are all handled by The Thinker; if it goes down, everyone goes down with it. Porter even managed to stave off Lamb's Family by threatening to cut off resources to their areas if they don't back off; seeing as there are no Family members in the DLC, it worked.
  • Benevolent A.I.: Unlike basically everything else in Rapture, The Thinker is benevolent, and actively works against Wahl, and wants to help Tenenbaum make an ADAM Sickness cure.
  • The Chessmaster: Basically planned for the events of Minerva's Den to happen, and everything went exactly as planned in the end, the only hitch was Wahl figuring out he had been betrayed by it, and shutting it down, nearly killing everyone, and coming close to foiling its plans.
  • Foil: R.O.D.I.N. shares a lot of similarities with his Irrational Games computer predecessor S.H.O.D.A.N. Both are master computers who run the many of the systems of the cities they're housed in, both have similar sounding acronym names, and both impersonate a dead human to gain the player character's trust. But the Thinker seems to like humans whereas S.H.O.D.A.N. has a pathological hatred of humanity, and the Thinker is built from Steampunk technology while S.H.O.D.A.N. is built from Cyberpunk technology.
  • Foreshadowing: After the Thinker is temporarily shut off by Wahl, Tenenbaum takes over as Mission Control, hinting that it wasn't actually Porter.
  • Fun with Acronyms: Its full name is the Rapture Operational Data Interpreter Network, or R.O.D.I.N. Auguste Rodin was the artist who created the sculpture The Thinker, a replica of which is in the main lobby of Minerva's Den.
  • Living MacGuffin: Everybody in Minerva's Den wants it. Wahl has it. It itself wants to escape Rapture.
  • Madness Mantra: "Mine" and "Property of Reed Wahl", seen all over Minerva's Den.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Porter used it to replicate Pearl, his lost wife. It did not go well.
  • Robo Speak: Although it is sentient, it is not human.
  • Undying Loyalty: To Porter, having guided him through Minerva's Den and helping him to take down Wahl. Tenenbaum even flat out Lampshades this.
  • Walking Spoiler: Minus the 'walking' part. Knowing anything more about The Thinker besides that it's a supercomputer connected to Rapture will give away much of Minerva's Dens plot points.

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