WMG / BioShock

aka: Bio Shock 2

This page covers fan theories for BioShock 1 and BioShock 2; however, BioShock Infinite has its own page due to having a different setting.

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Thinker from Minerva's Den served as prototype for Metal Gear Peace Walker's AI.

Personality Duplication Function specifically.

Future installments will build on the four classical elements when designing their cities.

• Rapture was water, Columbia was air. Future cities will be earth (deep underground, perhaps in a giant cave, making use of the darkness) and fire (even deeper underground with lava being a constant hazard)
  • Fire will be a space station very close to the sun.
    • And the accompanying Miracle of Sound songs will end with "...and I dream of the earth..." and "...and I dream of the sun".
    • The fifth and final game will be cosmos (sometimes considered the fifth element), and that will be a space station in interstellar space.
    • You mean System Shock?
    • The other take on the "Fifth Element" Aether, fits there too.

Subject Delta is a time travelling Jack

• Jossed, since Jack's eventual death is shown in the final cutscene, and Delta dies at the end of BS 2 very far away from the hospital scene where Jack dies.

BioShock takes place in the Magic: The Gathering multiverse

Because, let's face it, it's an extreme coincidence that the two Big Bads represent the worst of Black and White. Meanwhile, the sea slugs that make ADAM have something to do with Phyrexia.

"No Please" is the automatic response to "Would You Kindly."

We just don't hear it because Jack is supposed to be a Heroic Mime. Remember in the audio log? Of course Jack didn't want to kill the puppy, but think about it; how did Fontaine immediately know that Jack disobeyed him? He didn't say the code phrase back.

• Expanding on that, perhaps Jack has also been programed to not remember himself saying the phrase. So although he and by extension the player don't ever him say it, he has been saying it every time the 'would you kindly' phrase has been used.

Andrew Ryan is Quark, who has visited 20th century Earth before.

He wouldn't have a very difficult time returning, as time travel is a fairly regular occurrence in Star Trek. As for his motives, remember that his brother Rom became Nagus and the Ferengi were already undertaking a number of reforms to their society. Rom would probably continue on this course and make Ferengi society more like the Federation way of life, and strengthen relations with the Federation. After all, he was specifically selected by Zek because he wasn't a traditional profit-centric Ferengi like Quark. Consider the effect this would have on Quark; he would watch in horror as his own brother destroyed everything about Ferengi society that Quark had believed in and built his life around. So, Quark decided to get revenge on humanity by trying to ensure that humanity never abandoned capitalism.

Now, I realize this would be massive character derailment, but consider that other Ferengi depicted in the series have been shown to be quite vicious, vindictive, and completely amoral when isolated from their society e.g. many TNG Ferengi and the space pirate Ferengi in Enterprise. Although this has never been formally addressed in canon, it would seem that Ferengi go insane when cut off from the comforts of their capitalistic culture. Since as far as Quark was concerned, his culture was destroyed forever, he would probably have gone completely insane. His only motive at that point was payback against those who tore down his culture, the human race.

First, he would have to be able to live among humans unnoticed. Given Quark's extensive black market connections, he wouldn't have difficult time finding someone who could perform the necessary genetic and surgical alterations to disguise him. Then he acquired whatever advanced technology he could get his hands on to take to 20th century Earth in an attempt to revolutionize human society in a way that would ensure that they would continue to support capitalism in the centuries that followed. This included advanced genetic engineering technology that could grant the empathic and telekinetic abilities seen in some species to humans. This technology became the basis for the radical genetic alterations seen in the Splicers. In addition, he brought other advanced tech that would make it possible to build an underwater city with computerized security and defense systems.

Because time travel can be dangerous and unpredictable, he was unable to control exactly which time he could travel to, so let's say he was targeting sometime in the late 19th-early 20th century when collectivist movements began gaining momentum. Now, his actual trip back in time didn't go as planned, and he ended up with much of the advanced tech he brought back damaged, but enough of it survived that he was able to use his own knowledge of it's working to recreate it with early 20th century equipment and materials. He wasn't able to prevent the Russian Revolution of 1917, but he was able to establish an objectivist movement which then laid the foundation for Rapture. His human name was intentionally chosen based on Ayn Rand's name and her works were the inspiration for his vision for humanity's future. His goal at that point was to set up a free market society which would be able to survive a nuclear war, and then goad the USA and Soviet Union into destroying each other. Obviously, he no longer had 24th century weapons available, or he would have been able to wipe out the USA and USSR on his own. Unfortunately, this meant that he wouldn't be able to fully isolate Rapture from the influences of the surface world, otherwise he would be unable to manipulate the surface powers into engaging in nuclear war.

It was his attempts to infiltrate the US and Soviet governments that left Rapture vulnerable. OSS caught wind of his operation and assisted mafia backed smugglers in their business of providing contraband goods to the citizens of Rapture. This is what led to Fontaine's rise to power and the eventual conflict the caused the collapse of Rapture's society.

Rapture is not located underwater; the views from the bathysphere and from the observation windows are elaborate tricks used to dazzle a casual observer.

• If it had been underwater, it is doubtful that whales and giant squid would swim so close or that the building exteriors would be free of your typical underwater growths. Also, there is no evidence of the adverse effects of being underwater (air pressure and so on) affecting the residents. All of the water leaking in all over the place is part of the illusion.
  • No, the water that "leaks" in is real—it's piped in from somewhere to form "leaks" to enhance the illusion of there being water outside. It's not illusory water.
  • The effects of living underwater could have been major problems for the people living in Rapture before everyone went crazy; they're just too far gone by now for it to be noticeable. The people living in Rapture didn't go psychotic long before the start of the game, either, so they could have been removing plant life and barnacles from their buildings up until a few years before the main character arrives in the city.
  • Debunked in BioShock 2. You play as the first Big Daddy and there are scenes in which you can walk on the ocean floor.
    • However, you're encased in a huge suit of powered armor, with only a little window into the world. If the conspirators can project images into every window in Rapture, surely they can do the same to your helmet's visor! (Yeah, yeah, and we might all be brains in jars, I know.)
    • Still Jossed by the ending. You can physically see the ocean from the cutscene outside the ballast escape pod.
  • Err, what about the fact that you're swimming in the goddamn ocean at the beginning of the first game? Then you step into the lighthouse, and go to the bathysphere. Therefore, you are definitely underwater. In fact, you're already underwater when you enter the bathysphere, albeit, not too far. And don't you dare say it was All Just a Dream.
  • Rapture was just a hallucination caused by an android trying to drown you in an aquarium, really it is 1912 and you're in a flying city. http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/14258733/bioshock-3/videos/bioshock_trl_081210.html?show=hi
    • Also Jossed. Word of God says that BioShock Infinite's Colombia (the flying city) is set in the same universe as Rapture.
    • Same universe, maybe, but Word of God also says it's a different timeline.
  • What about near the beginning of the game when you're walking down the glass tunnel and the tail section of Jack's plane crashes into the tunnel, breaking it and pouring water inside?

Rapture IS underwater, and close to R'lyeh.

The slugs that produce the ADAM that rewrites your DNA to let you perform magic (in an underwater city and with the side effect of insanity) are derived from fragments of Lovecraftian Eldritch Abominations that have integrated themselves into little girls (similar to The Dunwich horror and the tentacle rape genre), combined with the side effects of being anywhere near Cthulhu. Big Daddies are Deep Ones (Bouncer), and those with the Innsmouth taint (Rosie) magically bound into service by Andrew Ryan. Fontaine didn't want Rapture; he wanted the Necronomicon, the thing that allowed Ryan to harness alien sciences and build an entire city at the bottom of the ocean.

• Which leads to some interesting speculation regarding the main character after he becomes a Big Daddy.
• Well, Gil Alexander's mutated form does look an awful lot like Cthulhu.

Rapture isn't near R'lyeh, but it IS in a Lovecraftian universe

The universe created by Lovecraft encompasses far more then just the usual suspects like Ry'leh, Cthulhu and the Deep Ones. However, the unexplained existence of strange abominable slugs who allow for mutations beyond the logical possibilities of human DNA, and their introduction to Rapture inevitably leading to insanity taking over the populace and ending Rapture's Glory Days, do sound strangely Lovecraftian. Those slugs were indeed Things Man Was Not Meant to Know...

• Possibly confirmed by the viral website for the sequel - one of the pieces of paper says that one of the kidnappings took place in Innsmouth, RI.
  • This troper agrees with this theory, and would like to make an addition. The ADAM slugs are the gibletized remains of a Eldritch Abomination. after all, even dead gods still dream.
• Also, one of the idle Little Sister quotes in BioShock 2 (when she's with another Big Daddy, to be precise) is;

"God is sleeping Mr. B, in the water. Wait 'n see."

• Which is a pretty obvious reference to Cthulhu. This is also relevant to the previous WMG.
• The "luminescent biomass" that apparently acts as the original source of ADAM (generating the mutations in the sea slugs), isn't too hard to read as an Eldritch Abomination, particularly given the statement in the audio-log found in the Persephone Prison Colony that the recorder could feel something watching him in the water.

The Big Daddies act as Rapture's Maintenance crew

In the initial descent to Rapture, we see a Big Daddy-sized creature repairing one of the tunnels. Additionally, while Splicers get much less common as areas are cleaned out, there is always a fixed number of Big Daddies in any given area, meaning that they're coming in from somewhere. There's also the fact that they're wearing giant, self-contained diving suits. When an individual Big Daddy isn't defending a Little Sister, he's making repairs or removing underwater growths from the outside of Rapture's various buildings.

• There is actually substantive evidence suggesting this. The two primary BD weapons? A giant drill (useful for cleaning off the outside of Rapture), and a rivet gun, which could be used to patch leaks. Not to mention that, in at least one area of Rapture, you can see dead Big Daddies sitting on the ocean floor, OUTSIDE of Rapture. Now what are they doing out there?
  • But what about the Rumblers, you ask? Demolition crew. As for the mini-turrets, they're just added firepower for the sake of firepower. After all, Rosies carry proxy mines, which wouldn't have much use outside of killing someone, so the Big Daddy creators clearly aren't above that sort of thing.
  • We aren't looking at this closely enough; the Big Daddies aren't who the equipment was designed for. It started out as maintenance equipment, and was co-opted by the Bigs to help them "protect" the innocent girls that they mind control and turn into ADAM processors. Like a lot of horrible things, this wasn't part of the plan originally, but became institutionalized when it went out of control. Which is why we see infrastructure dedicated to Big Daddies and Little Sisters.
  • More accurately, it was co-opted by the people who created the Big Daddies and Little Sisters, who are most certainly sick fucking bastards. The Big Daddies themselves are more or less mindless automata.
• Pretty much confirmed in the beginning stage of BioShock 2, where a Rosie is clearly seen repairing a leak from the outside. Keep in mind this takes place some ten odd years after Rapture went to hell in a hand basket.
• One fanfic[1] suggested an explanation: whenever the Big Daddies see a leak, they obsess over the danger it presents to the Little Sisters, who can still drown.
• It's possible. As shown in the first 5 minutes trailer, a Big Daddy is seen repairing something, and later fixing a billboard.

Andrew Ryan is still alive.

In Ryan's office is a Vita-Chamber, sealed up but apparently functional. The Vita-Chambers work based on Ryan's DNA. Not a big leap to think he cloned himself after you left and escaped/went after Fontaine/is building a new Rapture/etc.

• Except that if you examine it you'll discover that that Vita-Chamber was specifically shut off (the only such in the game). Ryan intentionally let himself die, on his own terms, in hopes that this display of Jack's lack of free will would cause him to rebel against and kill Atlas/Fontaine. Also, there's the whole "betraying everything he stands for" thing, which may've grown too much for him.
  • If you listen to one of his last radio messages, he says 'Now that I have seen you, know that I cannot fight you...' Given the twist that happens RIGHT AFTER THAT, he did it because he couldn't bear to kill his own child. He knew he couldn't manipulate Jack for long, and that Atlas had the upper hand, and he chose to die forever rather than shoot his own son.
  • In retrospect, the Vita-Chamber's instructions say that he will be cloned at the NEAREST AVAILABLE CHAMBER. What's to say that Ryan didn't decant at another chamber (the chamber just outside of Ryan's office, if I recall) and flee Rapture?
  • I've perused some of the plot guides from GameFAQs, and supposedly Vita-Chambers don't work that way. It seems there aren't any of the chambers near Suchong's apartment, so if you die there, you get a game over instead of a regeneration. Also keep in mind that Ryan had access to bathyspheres and other subs - if he wanted to leave Rapture, he had ample opportunity to do so.
    • The same applies to the final boss, you get a message stating that you cannot save and there are no Vita-Chambers nearby, so if you die you have to start over from the autosave.
    • In this case, one does have to keep in mind Gameplay and Story Segregation. It's likely that the only reason you can't resurrect in those areas is because a loading screen separates Jack from the nearest Vita-Chamber. Ryan would not have that problem.
    • There's one near enough to Ryan's office though. If you die in Ryan's office, you pop out at the Chamber near the Bathysphere. Also, who says he wanted to leave? Ryan still believes Rapture can be saved. He wanted to manipulate the player into killing off Fontaine, leaving him with no genuine opposition.
• Look at it this way—the sequel has to have a villain, and Sander Cohen probably isn't up for it. That leaves either Ryan, or you in the evil ending, and while the latter would be a cooler twist, developers seem curiously squeamish about making evil paths canonical.
  • Jossed by the previews; Big Sister is quite clearly the villain. There may very well be a twist about her role, but Ryan isn't necessary as an opposing force.
    • It doesn't say that he's not alive...just that he's not *the* villain. Though it would completely wreck the scene of his death in BioShock considering how he went out of his way to make his death a giant Mind Screw for Jack. Also, Big Sister runs Rapture now, so if he were alive, he apparently has no power over the city anymore.
    • Actually, a recent issue of Gamepro states that the Big Sister is a villain; just not the main villain. She is most likely going to play the part of muscle and act as his/her enforcer. Who, then, is the main villain? Personally, this troper has his money on someone we've met before (though he has no idea who that might be, since most of the characters from the first game, are, you know, out of commission...)
    • News these days seem to say that the main baddie of BioShock 2 is some sort of cult leader that the Splicers and Big Sisters follow who wants to kill you and bring Rapture back to its former state.
• I could imagine him singing Still Alive.
  • Oh god, now I can't get Ryan singing that out of my head. Thanks.
• Even if he did die 'for good', BioShock 2's resurrection of Delta 10 years after he died proves that Vita-Chambers do not have to be used immediately. Ryan could have paid off a Splicer or convinced a Little Sister or something to revive him after the situation in Rapture had calmed down.

The Big Daddies are actual fathers

It's never mentioned who they actually are, only that recruits will be easy to find. Since they had a lot of difficulty getting Big Daddies to like the Little Sisters, they may have tried using men who already have young daughters, since they would be more receptive to being around (and protecting) young girls. Part of the Big Daddy creation process would then include a plasmid that tricks them into believing that all of the little sisters are in fact their own children, which can explain their intense devotion towards protecting them.

• This theory could make sense, as in the sequel you see the Little Sisters in a cleaner and more sympathetic light, you yourself being a Big Daddy.
• Except that, in one instance, you see a couple who committed suicide after seeing their daughter as a Little Sister.
  • That doesn't mean anything, except for the husband in that particular family wasn't chosen to be a Big Daddy. With the above theory that plasmids make each Big Daddy believe each Little Sister is his own daughter, you wouldn't need to nab both the father and the child from the same family.
• It's also shown in the factory that creates the Little Sisters that the Big Daddies get their food when the sister gives out her ADAM. There's a button marked with a Little Sister symbol, and a Big Daddy symbol. The Sister button gets you hurt (symbolizing that a needle just jabbed you) and then when you activate the Big Daddy button, chip bags fall out. Note however: you cannot simply push the Big Daddy button over and over, you have to activate the Little Sister button, and THEN you can get the bag of chips. Being told "Keep this brat safe or you'll starve to death." is another way to keep them on their toes regarding others in Rapture.
  • Actually, the buttons are labeled with a Big Daddy and standard representation of a man (or a woman, I don't recall which). This area is for training the Little Sisters to associate Big Daddies with reward (hence the chips), and anyone else with punishment/pain (hence the, well, pain). If you look, both buttons are at an inconvenient height for an adult, but perfectly placed for a child.
  • The Big Daddy button will also re-dispense chips, it just takes a little time to reset. I'd been blown up a lot by the rocket turrets and was out of first aid kits at the time, ducked into that room to get out of sight of the splicers, and I frobbed the button until it barfed up enough chips for me to completely heal. After zapping myself with the other one when the Big Daddy didn't drop chips the second time...

• I always assumed that the Big Daddies were Fontaine loyalists or other people Ryan didn't like. Andrew Ryan is not kind to his enemies.
  • Many inmates of Persephone were apparently turned into Big Daddies.
• BioShock 2 gives credence to this theory in the form of Mark Meltzer, who came to Rapture specifically to rescue his daughter, who had been turned into a Little Sister. He was arrested for trespassing, and he was given a choice: to be executed, or to become a Big Daddy bonded to his daughter. Upon killing him (unknowingly, as when you meet him he seems to be just another Big Daddy - but his corpse is labeled), his daughter reacts the same as every other Little Sister; crying over their dead Daddy at first, and then accepting the player as their new Daddy, completely forgetting their former one. You gotta feel for the guy, after all he went through to get her back.

Fontaine is still alive

We saw the Little Sisters stab the hell out of him...but that doesn't mean a giant plasmid mutant like he became is necessarily dead. The red glow under the ocean and the kidnappings of the young girls are all Fontaine trying to get more ADAM sources again. In the good canon, Jack took all the Little Sisters with him, so Fontaine is trying to find them and starts snatching little girls of the right age assuming they could be the same.

• The teaser trailer shows what appears to be an older Little Sister holding a Big Daddy doll. The doll is still on the site. Two of the kidnapped girls have the same last name - one with a family, one from an orphanage. They all look very similar too.
  • According to Game Informer, Fontaine Futuristics will be visited, especially the place where the ADAM is processed from the Little Sisters. Doesn't mean he's alive, the Big Sister could have easily gotten it running herself, but even so, it's there.
• As a alternative method of survival, he could have used the Vita-Chambers. He knows they exist and work, he has the genetic key to Rapture, and seemed to have a back up plan for everything. It's not hard to imagine that he attuned them to his genetic code while he was preparing for his battle with Jack. Having them used against you in the second game would be a nice twist on things.
  • Long since Jossed by the actual plot of Bioshock 2

The bad ending is canon

The alternative to the above - Jack, having slaughtered all the remaining Little Sisters, needs to replenish his ADAM and has started snatching little girls from the surface. The red glow under the sea is a crazed Jack preparing his invasion of the surface world.

• The latest updates discuss the potential of the glow being a submarine. Dun dun DUN!
  • It's a Big Sister running the sub.
• Jossed. The plot of BioShock 2 only works assuming Jack didn't destroy/take over the world in the seven year gap between the games. Plus, Jack is no longer present in Rapture in the second game.

Sander Cohen is a series of clones, and will be making a return in BioShock 2

If you look closely, all of the dead splicers in Cohen's Quadtych are... Sander Cohen himself! There's also a dead Sander Cohen in the "I want to take the ears off!" dressing room. Also, if you kill Cohen in Olympus Heights, then go back to Fort Frolic and trash his Quadtych, he'll appear (apparently back from the dead) to fight you.

• Maybe as a favor to his old friend, Ryan programmed the Vita-Chambers to resurrect Cohen too? But he's not enough of a raving lunatic to keep attacking you over and over after you kill him the first time?

BioShock shares the same universe as Metal Gear.

• Portable Ops establishes the basis for Big Boss's cloning into Solid, Liquid and Solidus Snakes. This is in the late 1960s. Surely an expert understanding of DNA had to come from somewhere. In Rapture scientists can mutate DNA so that Jack can shoot FIRE out of his hands, showing that expert understanding. Now, if Fontaine's forces smuggled Bibles from outside Rapture, surely it wouldn't be too difficult for a couple of Rapture scientists to come up with the Plasmid technology, smuggle it out and sold their secrets to the US or the Soviet Union. Also to note is the stress on both game series on megascale mechanical engineering. Who knows - scientists who sneaked out from Rapture earlier could have gone to the Soviet Union and incorporate that drill idea for a giant ICBM tank...
  • Thinking about this, a few of the characters in Metal Gear could have their abilities explained by features of BioShock. MGS3 for example: Volgin has an electroshock plasmid, The Sorrow can see ghosts through ADAM exposure, The Pain uses an insect swarm plasmid, The Fear is a spider splicer with a natural camouflage gene tonic, The Fury is a modified Big Daddy...

Jack is Mister Rogers

He wears a sweater (a bloodstained sweater), puts himself in danger to rescue little girls from a life of terror, and witnessed a truly terrible place where people are treated as objects and either killed or turned into monsters. Its pretty obvious that after his experience in Rapture he would have to give some thought as to how to properly raise the Little Sisters and how society can avoid having another Rapture happen. So he took on the name of Mister Rogers and worked to teach children how to be good neighbors. However, while his new life is dedicated to peace and understanding, he's still every bit of a badass he was in Rapture. That is why he always wins in the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.

• This is awesome and is now officially canon for both the game and reality.
• Agreed. To the troper who made this WMG (whose name has, sadly, disappeared from the edit history), I award you a Made of Win.
  • To my knowledge, they're trying to make it so either ending could work, like in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Also, didn't Jack get his vocal cords drilled out? Don't get me wrong, I think this is the best theory ever, but I'm 80% certain he didn't get them back.
  • Well, IRL Mister Rogers was a minister, if I remember correctly. Maybe Jack!Rogers struck a deal with/strongarmed God into fixing him up.
    • There are loads of different ways he could've fixed his voice box after winning, from the extra Rapture medkits he had in his pockets to doctors back home.

The Big Daddies are Heavies in diver suits.

Like the Heavy, they're big, tough, simple-minded and carry really big guns. The Heavy is also a defense class, which explains why the Big Daddies are so protective of the Little Sisters. Speaking of which, the Big Daddies/Heavies most likely see the Sisters as Medics- like Medics, Little Sisters have fast healing powers that everyone wants and carry big needles.

Ryan Industries got help from Vault-Tec when constructing Rapture.

Rapture is an underwater city that was built on the idea of protecting private industry from 'parasites' and to test objectivist ideals and was supposed to be able to function for a long time. Vault-Tec vaults are underground vaults built to protect it inhabitants from nuclear war, to conduct various social experiments to see how various groups of people react in different conditions, and to function for up to 200 years without outside support. Its quite possible that Vault-Tec helped build Rapture as a prototype underwater "Vault" that would let its inhabitants survive a nuclear war while having access to fresh fish and water (since any radioactive fallout would be diluted by the entire ocean before it reached the occupants) and used their technology to build the various life-support systems and extra durable alloys. Vault-Tec probably offered much of their work for free In exchange for collecting data on the occupants via the cities advanced system of security cameras. which greatly appealed to Ryans love of cost-cutting. Also, while Rapture may have 'failed' as a viable vault, its discovery of ADAM probably helped to further genetics research for stuff like the Forced Evolutionary Virus

The "First Big Daddy" is Jack

Tenembaum just gave him fake memories of waking up and leaving Rapture, whether with a family or a splicer army, while she put the finishing touches on his new suit. After all, Fontaine did hint that she's not all that right in the head.

• Jossed. The plot of BioShock 2 clearly shows that this theory wouldn't fit.

Jack isn't actually Ryan's son, or the child that Fontaine and Suchong grew and programmed... he's just an escaped mental patient who does what people tell him to.

While 'Jack' did obey Fontaine's and Ryan's orders when he was given the 'Would you kindly' phrase, he also obeys Dr. Langford to get the rose, Sander Cohen to kill some people to get their pictures, Peach Wilkins to risk his life to get a camera and take photos of Spider Splicers, and Tenenbaum to have himself turned into a Big Daddy simply to get through one door when he could have tried using dynamite instead... all without one of them using the code phrase. Its quite possible that the 'real' Jack tried hijacking the plane only to have a demented mass murderer eat him and wear his clothes. Then 'Crazy Jack' went into Rapture and pretty much filled the same role as the 'real' Jack would have, that's why Fontaine failed was because his supposed puppet wasn't really a puppet... just some crazy guy who kills people as soon as look at him unless they ask him to fetch stuff. 'Crazy Jack' is probably a drug addict since he has no qualms with sticking random needles into his arms. The reason the Bathyspheres let him move around is because the so called 'sensors' that excluded anyone except Ryan from using them were made by the lowest bidder and just let anyone move around... Atlas could move around to help you and Sander Cohen could mess with them as well. The heart troubles from the Code Yellow phrase was just the natural result of all that splicing and eating cheap food off of burned corpses catching up with him (Tenenbaum's attempt to remove programming from his brain that was never there in the first place might have been a factor as well). And Ryan wasn't actually controlling Crazy Jack during the cutscene... Crazy Jack was just playing around until Ryan asked him to beat his head in.

• But then how would he be able to use the Vita Chambers?
  • He doesn't. He's just imagining them because he's utterly insane. That's why nobody mentions or uses them.
    • Suchong mentions the Vita Chambers in a recording, but he thinks they're a half-baked idea. They may have indeed been yet another failed experiment, but Crazy Jack nonetheless believes that they help him.
    • If he saves the Little Sisters, it's not because of any sudden attack of conscience, but because he's a psychopath who wants more playthings when he returns to the surface.
• So, SO jossed by everything. Jack obeys Langford and Sander and the like because even without use of WYK, he is trained to be subservient. This idiotic idea is jossed by Fontaine and Tenenbaum both knowing what Jack looks like due to having raised him, and recognizing him. By him being able to unlock the bathyspheres to get into and travel around Rapture, which only people related to Ryan can do. By your body moving against your control when direct WYK commands are used (specifically "Would you kindly lower your weapon" where you do it without player input, meaning without player character control), thus proving it is in effect on Jack. By the ending cutscene being from Tenenbaum's objective outside perspective. By Bioshock 2, particularly Tenenbaum mentioning Jack's daughters living safely with him (and her having his wrench, suggesting they are still in contact), Sophia’s direct mention of Jack and his programming, and the Vita-Chambers always having been successful and working BEING A PLOT POINT. Why would you even suggest this? Just to be unpleasant, gross, and contrarian?

The true best ending is the player turning the game off after Fontaine orders Jack to prevent Rapture from self-destructing.

It's fairly obvious that Jack's susceptibility to Fontaine's mind control is an in-universe representation of the player's desire to follow Fontaine's orders in order to progress in the game. It's been noted that the last third of the game, when the player is supposedly "free" from Fontaine, is noticeably lower in quality and really only involves the player switching allegiances to Tenenbaum. This is because, while Jack may be free from the code phrase, the player is still accepting the requirements provided for him to progress. The only way to free himself from Fontaine is to voluntarily give up the desire to progress by switching off the game, and letting Rapture be destroyed.

• Alternately, he bucks Fontaine's control and shuts off the game just before killing Ryan; when he reaches the room just before Ryan with the recordings and such that cause him to realize how Atlas has been controlling him, he stops right there and does not proceed to Ryan's office. Perhaps, realizing it's just triggered by words, he turns off the radio and then politely asks himself not to kill Ryan, wiping his orders and preventing Atlas from sending him any more.

Tenenbaum did not realize who Jack was until the last minute

Tenenbaum and Suchong built Jack's mind control, so if I had to write down a list of three people in the entire world who would know who Jack was and what the command phrase was, one of them would be dead at the start of the game. It seems odd that, as determined as she was to get him to help the little sisters, she wouldn't force him to do so—unless, of course, she didn't realize that the person she was speaking to was the boy whose mind control she had set up. Presumably, she doesn't figure this out right up until he breaks into Ryans office, at which point she realizes that the only explanation for his deeds to this point is him having Ryan's DNA. Or perhaps she doesn't realize it until the little sister rescues him from the office and she has a chance to examine him up close. After that point, ordering him to rescue them wouldn't do any good because she cures him of the conditioning before the next time he'd run into one (and she has to do that or Fontaine can keep using him). I suppose this makes her more than a bit slow in the head, but she's a science person, not a people person.

• She most likely sent those little sisters to save him from Ryan's office. I think she probably realized around the same time Ryan did (likely while Jack was cut off in Fort Frolic). Even if she knew sooner, though, I doubt she'd have used WYK to force him to do anything, since Tenenbaum's whole character arc was how she saw her former experiments (including Jack) as humans who shouldn't be controlled.

Atlas and Tenenbaum let Jack choose what to do with the sisters to prove a point

An alternative to the above. BOTH Tenenbaum and Atlas know that all they have to do is say the magic words and Jack will do as they say. Both strongly urge him to take a certain action against the first and all subsequent little sisters, but even as they see you moving to obey the other, neither will order you to stop. Why? Tenenbaum thought of Jack as a son, just as much as she considered the sisters daughters, and really, really wanted to believe that, at least to the extent that he had any free will, he could be a good person. So she wanted him to make the decision to help the sisters on his own. Atlas, meanwhile, wanted to rub in Tenenbaum's face how her moral high ground wasn't shared by the rest of the world and, most especially, her "son", so he wanted Jack to choose the path of selfish expediency on his own. Although the sisters' lives were in the balance, neither would be well served by ordering Jack to do what they wanted, and both knew it. The contest was set up by almost spontaneous unspoken agreement the minute the choice came up. Besides, both knew that if they tried to give an order the other could try to go over their head, and it would devolve into a shouting match which would almost surely reveal the truth to Jack (which Atlas, at least, didn't want). I suppose if not for that last detail Atlas would have been almost as well served by ordering Jack to defy Tenenbaum, but he had more to lose from exposing the secret than she did.

• Considering that Tenenbaum PROBABLY had no idea who Jack was on their initial encounter, having had no knowledge of Fontaine's use of Jack as a time bomb, she probably realized it too late to have an affect.

---

Jack is hallucinating both endings

He really got killed when Fontaine became more plasmid then man. Jack was actually lying on the ground, imaging that he was saving the little sisters or taking over the world, while he slowly died. He never escaped and never beat Fontaine. I mean,Fontaine is basically Superhuman in every way,no man could beat him on the first try,even with the amount of guns Jack was carrying, but Jack probably got the last laugh when Fontaine got killed by the little sisters in a revenge attack. Sadly, though, they were a little too late.

• This actually could explain why nobody seems to know exactly what happened to him after Fontaine's death. If he dies after that titanic battle, he won't lead splicers in an attack on a nuclear sub nor will he lead the little sisters to freedom. Which, now that I think about it, explains where Tenenbaum is during that sequence. He's imagining what Tenenbaum would say to him, given his previous actions in-game.
• There are a fair amount of Big Sisters in BioShock 2, and they're basically teenage Little Sisters, so it's quite possible none of them were saved. However, Subject Delta never goes back to any of the areas that Jack visited, so unless we find out what happened to those places, we can't really know that fate of the Little Sisters. It's possible all the Little Sisters that Jack saved were just saved by Tenenbaum, if Jack died.
• If Jack was unable to defeat Fontaine because he was superhuman, then you'd better guess again, 'cause Jack is too. The only real difference between Fontaine and Jack was Fontaine was stronger, but was unable to use weapons. And Jack can use a Vita-Chamber, so how exactly would he die if he could just come back and wither down Fontaine's health? Plus, Jack had a grenade launcher, a Tommy-Gun, a revolver most probably designed for killing bears, a device capable of LITERALLY THROWING ELECTRICITY, a crossbow, a very large-caliber shotgun, and a wrench, as well as the ability to fling every single element of nature from his hands at will. Yeah, Fontaine's going down like a corpse with cement-block shoes.
  • Adding onto that, Tenenbaum mentions her former little sisters, presumably Jack's girls, being safe on the surface; she wouldn't have been able to escape in the first place unless she had Jack with her, since Fontaine promised to kill her once he was finished with Jack, and Jack is the only one with Ryan's dna, meaning he's the only one who can unlock the subs to take her to the surface.

---

The turrets, security bots, and cameras are run with genetically-engineered brains, not just "steam forming allegiances"

Think about it. If it were purely mechanical, you wouldn't be able to hack them, especially with the green liquid that the first game used. The hacking method is to blank its mind out, so that it sees Jack and anyone with him as friendly, and anyone else as an enemy.

• In a sense this WAS the original plan. Early concept art and dev interviews all but confirm that the minigame was originally created with the plan of it being a drug that made the organic elements of the shops, turrets and such happier, something that was given once the right amount of money was given. Hacking it would lower the demands of the little mutant inside. Ultimately it was abandoned with a LOT of early design stuff, most of it because it was VERY similar to System Shock (Originally it was going to be the sea slugs that caused the downfall of Rapture, much like The Many in System Shock.

Jack isn't "hacking" the cameras and bots, but fixing them.

Like the VitaChambers, the cameras and bots are designed to recognise Ryan's DNA. When things went out of control, Ryan set them all to "kill everyone but me", to keep the splicers from roaming freely throughout Rapture. But they managed to reverse them to "kill nobody but me", which is why they attack Jack and nobody else. Jack is simply restoring them to their intended settings.

Big Daddy is an ancestor of Iron Man

They look so similar to Iron Monger in the movie that it probably just isn't coincidence. One of Tony Stark's ancesstors (most likely his grandfather) worked for Ryan and helped develop the Big Daddy. However, he soon sneaked out after seeing that Rapture was going to pieces. This would explain how Tony built his first suit because he knows from his grandfather how to build a Big Daddy (which is essentially a mech-suit) with parts 50 years old.

• Depending on when the movie takes place, it might have been Howard himself. Alternatively, Howards father lived on Columbia, and was a coworker to Fink before he eventually got fed up with him and left. Not before seeing the tear Fink used in the creation of Songbird, though.

Sander Cohen is the Phantom

Perhaps the Phantom would emerge years later, and in secret, as Cohen. What they both share in common.

• Both are deformed and could be seen wearing a mask
• Both are Mad Artists]].
• Both effectively run the theaters they occupy

Differences acknowledged:

• Different backstories. If Cohen was indeed the Phantom, then the past we know of from him, as well as his audio diary portrait, will be a fabrication.
• Cohen's sexual orientation is ambiguous, and he was not known to have had a romantic relation with, let alone try to seduce, a person of the opposite sex.
• The phantom murders only those who try to get in his way. Cohen seems to murder or torture for the hell of it, though he especially gets mad when his work gets disrupted or if you just piss him off like Fitzpatrick, Rodriguez, Finnegan and Cobb apparently did.

The Third BioShock Villain will be a Corrupt Church Knight Templar duo

Remember when Andrew spoke of how if a man's sweat is entitled to his brow. He mentions the church along with the US (His former ideals) and the Russians (Sophia's ideals), so the church's representative would be two brothers who shall follow the same fates as Cain and Abel.

• Not quite sure. Sophia Lamb also had a great number of religious ideals and extremism in addition to her collectivist beliefs.
• For the religious duo, they believe only God deserves the sweat on the brow, theirs included. The difference how one gets sweat off the brow. The Abel version believes only their sweat belong to god and that the society should be relatively closed off to outsiders but is a heavy supporter of ADAM (which he believes is God's blood). Cain on the other hand wants to use outsiders as slave labor to get the sweat. Its more complicated then it's sounds and the message isn't exactly God Is Evil.
  • If one counts BioShock Infinite as BioShock 3, this actually comes very close to Confirmed given Columbia's Prophet, Father Comstock, and his relationship to Infinite's protagonist Booker DeWitt.

The Third BioShock Villain will be a Nihilist

He believes in nothing and manipulating people is his only joy in life.

• Except this is basically Fontaine.

The sea slugs that create ADAM are close relatives of Elysia chlorotica

Elysia chlorotica is a species of sea slug that steals chloroplasts from algae to make its own food. It can also pass the genetic material for chloroplasts down to its children, though they have to eat more algae to do the same as their parents. The ADAM slugs are part of this family, except they merely have a rather unstable genetic code, which was how Dr. Tenenbaum was able to make plasmids out of their genetic material.

ADAM is The Virus.

There's still plenty of ADAM available after seven years of a dependant, mostly deranged population has lost the ability to easily manufacture more? And mutations have apparently been getting steadily worse? Perhaps ADAM, if not regularly exposed to more, begins to take over the body.

• Lamb was making more Little Sisters by kidnapping children from coastal cities; by the time Subject Delta wakes up, there are enough to go around.

ADAM comes from Adam.

Like LCL came from Lilith. The evil-ending Eleanor (or possibly even the good-ending version) may also have ended up creating/joining SEELE. Feel free to come up with other implications.
* BioShock 2 even had an Assimilation Plot.

• When the Little Sisters talk of ADAM-infected Splicers being Angels, they weren't being delusional. They were actually almost Angels, having consumed ADAM's blood. Perhaps Rapture is a SEELE experiment and Ryan and Fontaine were manipulated by them, until both went rogue ala Gendo. The knowledge for alien sciences to construct an underwater city is based from the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, the Splicers and consumers of ADAM didn't turn into Tang or Kaworu, because they consumed the mass-produced low-quality version that only resulted in insanity and ugly disfigurement. It would be further into the future where one could perfect the best host for both cultivating both ADAM and Lilith in the same entity: the Evangelions and Rei.
• The Big Daddies are prototype Evangelions, powered by the synchronization between them and their Little Sister hosts (if the Big Daddy and Little Sister are actually biologically related, then the sync would be even more powerful). The scientists realized that a better way to make superior versions of Big Daddies is through bonding a maternal psyche in a cybernetic ADAM clone, and synchronization with her child born after Second Impact, and hence, infected with greater quantities of ADAM.

The Vita-Chambers are able to self-repair themselves.

The reason that the Vita-Chambers are still active and working after so long without anyone doing maintenance on them is because their resurrection field affects themselves and automatically fixes any damage or wear and tear they endure. This was built into it by the designers so that they don't have to pay anyone to fix them and better helps them keep the Vita-Chamber technology a secret (since its self-repairing then they don't have to tell anyone how to fix them and therefor it would be an uphill battle trying to figure out how they work). As a side effect, people like Ryan or Lamb can't order their minions to smash the Vita-Chambers and rob the protagonist of their ability to resurrect and anyone trying to program their own DNA into the system would have a hard time figuring out how to do so.

The Big Daddies are Tragic Monsters

because their entire purpose in life is one giant Escort Mission.Imagine playing the "protect the Little Sister" missions in BioShock 1 and 2, for the rest of your life.

Sander Cohen survived the events of the first BioShock

After completing his Quadtych, it is ultimately up to the player if they wish to kill him or not and the reason why we didn't see him in BioShock 2 is because Subject Delta didn't go anywhere near Fort Frolic thus never meeting up with the still alive Cohen.

• You can still hear his laughter sometimes in Dionysus Park...
  • On the other hand, Sofia may have killed him and used his Adam in her Assimilation Plot. In fact, that might explain why Alex the Great wound up so horribly wrong.

Sander Cohen was killed by Jack, but was revived by a Vita-Chamber

During the events of BioShock 1, the Vita-Chambers would only revive someone with Andrew Ryan's genetic code. However, consider the following three factors:

1. Sander Cohen is a powerful Houdini Splicer, whose ability to teleport and throw fireballs allow him to travel quickly and safely throughout the city.2. While Cohen is clearly insane, he appears to be relatively well grounded (for a splicer, of course). So while he occasionally freaks out and kill people if he feels they don't appreciate his work, he often retains his composure and is alert and lucid, unlike like most citizens of Rapture, completely lost in their own little worlds, aimlessly wandering the corridors muttering their respective Madness Mantras to themselves.3. There are hints in the game which suggest Cohen and Ryan were romantically/sexually involved.

Taking these points into account, It's possible that even after the city fell into chaos and Ryan locked himself in his office, Sander could still periodically teleport into Ryan's office if he felt like it, and as long as Ryan didn't say anything unflattering about Sander's new "Plaster Period" Cohen would have no reason to kill Ryan.

Therefore, it is possible Sander was able to use the Vita-Chambers if he was in the possession of Ryan's "genetic material".

Ryan and Lamb each represent a type of online gamer.

Ryan's objectivist ideals entail that you sacrifice all charity, kindness, etc. for the sake of progress and personal gain. This is not unlike your average spawn-camping, kill-stealing, glitching/cheating jackass who does whatever it takes to win and rank higher on the leaderboards.

Lamb's ideals sacrifice individuality, free choice, etc. for the sake of unity. In essence, she is a Stop Having Fun Guy trying to enforce "Fox only! No items! Final Destination!" for the sake of Competitive Balance.

Eleanor Lamb will be the central character of BioShock 3.

2K will also pull a Mass Effect and have you transfer over your game-completion data from BioShock 2, thus influencing who Eleanor is and what she does in BioShock 3. After all, you've just spent the entirety of BioShock 2 helping define Eleanor's morals and then turned her into a Plasmid powerhouse, it would only make sense for something like that to have an impact on the next BioShock.

• Jossed.

Biochock 3 will involve plasmids being used on the surface.

Eleanor's comment in the good ending that it would be easy "to misjudge them", indicates that she believes she won't be accepted by the surface dwellers. This will indeed come to pass, as Eleanor will be captured by the military in order reverse-engineer Plasmids from her DNA and will be forced to divulge the location of Rapture, which will be enthusiastically plundered by the world's governments (possibly starting up a war between the US and USSR over who can get there first). The game will take place after Eleanor has started up La Résistance to stop a power-mad new regime from repeating the mistakes of Rapture.

• Sorta confirmed...though not involving the plotlines here at all and takes place above the surface.

BioShock 3 will be much more survival-horror-y than its predecessors.

BioShock 3 will be set at some point in the early-to-mid seventies, with Rapture's food/water/ammo stocks near zero and the overwhelming bulk of its population too far gone to make more. Most of the Splicers will have become cannibalistic and some of them will be mutated to the point of being barely recognizable as human. Additionally, Rapture continues to decay and large parts of it will be increasingly submerged as the Big Daddies cannibalize the architecture for parts to fix the salvageable areas.

• Jossed.

Taking all bets for BioShock 3's protagonist.

• Eleanor!
  • Having Eleanor as a protagonist would lead to several gameplay issues as she will start off with several powers rather than earning them as the game progresses.
• A member of the CIA/KGB/Military/a mercenary group who happens to find Rapture.
• Tenenbaum, on a quest to stop Evil Jack from detonating the nuke and starting a war with the surface (Nobody said it had to continue on from BioShock 2).
  • I like that theory. BioShock 2 is a continuation of the good ending, BioShock 3 continues the "you're a heartless dick" ending.
• Cindy Meltzer, assisted by Tenenbaum, out to take out Evil Eleanor. Big Sister on Big Sister action!
• Jossed, but those would have been cool.

The ADAM-producing slugs don't live in the stomach; they're actually in the uterus.

This Troper admits the following theory is messed up and sacrilegious and also probably Nausea Fuel, so I'll put most of it in spoiler tags. There's the parallels with one of the best biomodification phlebotinum out there, embryonic stem cells. ADAM stem cells work by creating a pseudo-placenta that nourishes the ADAM parasite, and mimicking what is basically a supercharged version of foetal development which produce an even more powerful version of said embryonic stem cells rivalling nanotechnology. Also, being close to ovaries also allows the ADAM to hijack the ovaries (The process of egg production, called oogenesis, begins in the female foetus, but soon comes to a halt at birth, which means that in theory little girls already contain a limited number of fertilizable gametes) thus allowing for more compatibility with the resulting alien stem cells and the XX chromosome of their human hosts. Extraction is through, you guessed it, controlled abortion, which for gameplay purposes has to be censored. The Little Sisters remain cheerful because they undergo Laser-Guided Amnesia after the extraction.

Another reason why it only works on little girls? Because their uterus still contains rich sources of nourishment, but the slug isn't yet disturbed in its new home by the onset of puberty; mainly, menstruation. When they hit puberty and begin to shed their uterine lining, the slug becomes hostile to the changing environment and the resulting reaction drive the hosts mad with aggression, which is why they are made into Big Sisters to cope. The reason boys aren't suitable slug hosts is because they don't have one. And now I'll go make myself taller for ruining this fandom with my horrible mind. Apologies!

• This Troper had a much less squicky version of this WMG. Instead of actually being in a uterus, the slug just utilizes the hormones to its advantage whatever those may be. during puberty, the slug has to fight an uphill battle with the body producing said hormones naturally. Also while we're on the subject of the reproductive system (And since the WMG tags don't seem to be working for me) Fontaine didn't splice away his balls. He has the Armored Shell tonic equipped and a side effect/feature of the tonic is to cover genitalia with a natural cup made of whatever Armored Shell is made of.
• Just posted in Headscratchers where someone else had a similar idea. Short story: nah. One of Tenenbaum's diaries explains that the Little Sister needs to regurgitate the ADAM-laced blood/goo/whatever in order to mass produce it. Judging by us not seeing Big Daddies molesting their Little Sisters in order to get the ADAM out of them, we can safely assume that that's one place the slugs most certainly aren't.
  • The process could be censored, though.
    • You can't respond to every rebuttal with 'But censorship.' If something is said and shown directly in the game, that's the thing that is happening. It is stated more than once, by characters who have no reason to be lying, that the slugs are in the stomachs.

Eleanor is Frank Fontaine's daughter.

Check out the wall painting in Fontaine's office. Doesn't the kid look familiar? Admittedly, the exact gender of the kid is up in the air, because the painting isn't very distinct, so it actually could be young Frank, but this is Wild Mass Guessing, dammit.

• The woman in the painting doesn't look anything like Sofia. I always kind of assumed the painting was some sort of practical joke, since Frank is an orphan with no attachment to his parents so he can't be the child, and we know he didn't have a family so he can't be the father. Can't you picture him watching people look at it in confusion and laughing when they ask who he is in it?

Tenenbaum has been using extremely powerful prototype plasmids for a while now to keep herself alive in Rapture, and she's still sane because she implanted herself with an experimental ADAM slug.

It may be far-fetched, but let's consider the evidence- one, surviving in Rapture for the events of both BioShock 1 and BioShock 2 takes a lot out of a person and this troper thinks it highly unlikely that most people could make it without plasmid assistance.

Two, Frank Fontaine himself highlights this by saying, "If you survive World War II and Rapture without so much as a scratch, you got more than leprechauns watching over you."

Three, Tenenbaum was one of the few people there in Rapture practically since the beginning. Since she had the authority to start up the Little Sister program and all that, it's not unlikely she was able to develop certain abilities in the field of plasmids, for survival's sake. A person with her authority should have no trouble getting her hands on, say, a plasmid that makes your body indestructible or a plasmid that psychically repels Splicers.

The bit about the ADAM slug is also possible because Tenenbaum practically made the Little Sisters herself, and if anyone would know how to implant those slugs into someone who's not a Little Sister, it's her. As for why, it's revealed in the sequel that people with Little Sister ADAM slugs and the like, such as Eleanor Lamb are immune to the effects of Splicing, and by dabbling in some forbidden science, which is within her ken, naturally, Tenenbaum is able to remain immune to the effects of plasmid use while being able to stay alive in a nightmarish place like Rapture.

Subject Delta is Eleanor's literal father.

We are never told who Eleanor's father was, only that Sophia seemed to have no time for romance after arriving at Rapture. Subject Delta, in his persona as Johnny Topside, came to Rapture for as yet undisclosed reasons. Word of God said that Subject Delta's past was supposed to heavily parallel with Mark Metzer's. Eleanor also seems to regard subject Delta as her true father. With this in mind - we can connect the dots. Delta is Sophia's estranged husband. After the Lambs vanished to Rapture, he, like Metzer, searched the world for his daughter, eventually discovering Rapture and becoming a key player in the civil war. He, like Metzer, was also turned into his own daughter's Big Daddy.

• Halfway Jossed. There's an Eleanor-Vision that was removed from the final game showing this, but the developers didn't want Subject Delta's backstory to get too developed.
• There's also another deleted Eleanor-Vision saying that she isn't his birth-daughter.

The Third BioShock game will be about Tenebaum

Or more specifically her own adventures a little before, during, and a little after BioShock 2, detailing how she got out of Rapture with her flock of little Sisters.Possibly going somewhat by the WMG two up (the one about her using prototype plasmids), she could be a midway between Jack and Delta in terms of power and strength. Though such a game would regretfully be far more linear in morality choices, or reflected more on interactions with other NPCs more than the Little Sisters.

• Jossed.

Security Chief Sullivan killed Suchong

Sullivan was one of the few people in Ryan's adminstration who seemed to notice how screwed up things were, and BioShock 2's loading quotes reveal he was the one who discovered Suchong's body. Feeling guilty over his own actions, and wanting to prevent more damage from being done by the mad scientist, he murdered Suchong and faked an audio tape to implicate a Big Daddy. Furthermore, when we discover Suchong's body the drill seems stuck there, which would seem improbable if the hulking Big Daddy did it.

• Judging by Delta and Sigma, the Alpha series Big Daddies have hand-held drills they can swap out for other weapons, which could have been left in Suchong.

Letting out Gil is not a good idea

After fulfilling his promise to "Live Outside", his body continues to mutate, making his a gigantic monster that wanders the Atlantic, eventually settling down for hibernation as his body continues to twist and his mind slowly degenerates. A long time later he is awoken by a satellite to the head, confused, he ends up coming ashore in New York and wreaks havoc on the city and its populace, including a few douches with a camcorder.

• But what about the Parasites, you ask? Insect Swarm, level 10 or so.

Letting out Gil is not a good idea, part 2

Alternatively, after escaping, he falls into a deep sleep. There he continues mutating until he becomes a completely inhuman Eldritch Abomination. He (or "it", now) unconsciously mutates all the Splicers so much that they take on entirely new Lovecraftian forms and think that they're an ancient alien race. Then they found a city called T'Leth from the ruins of Rapture, and many decades later, emerge on the surface to do battle with soldiers that can somehow throw grenades underwater.

• Aliens that use Molecular Control are actually just Splicers that have invented a new Tonic that allows them to continue using a few plasmids despite ADAM abuse stopping them from doing so. MC Control and MC Panic are Hypnotize 2 and a variant of Enrage, respectively.

The endings in BioShock 1 branch off into different storylines.

For the good ending, Jack and his Little Sister pals live long lives and BioShock 2 happens. But with the bad ending, Jack launches the sub's nuclear missiles, that hit both China and the USA, making them think that the war between them had begun. With this war, both nations fire their entire nuclear stockpile, bathing the world in nuclear fire. A few Splicers remain, and they become Feral Ghouls, mainly Glowing Ones and Reavers.

• China didn't gain nuclear weapons technology until 1964, four years after the game and the bad ending take place.
  • More damning, in Fallout the bombs fly on October 23rd 2077.
• Soviet maybe?

Jack has an ADAM slug.

Little girls are the only subjects that can be implanted with slugs to successfully yield up to thirty times the amount of ADAM and gain super healing. It's never stated why other hosts wouldn't be "viable". Perhaps they merely didn't multiply the ADAM output. Jack was implanted with a slug that produces ADAM at an almost worthless rate. The ADAM built up in his body during his entire year on the surface was all blown on Electroshock. However, caffeine and nicotine can cause it to generate Eve. More importantly, even though his cells couldn't regenerate like the Little Sisters, they gained the immunity to the symptoms of splicing that the Sisters have, leaving him free to splice at his leisure without fear of insanity or mutation. This was Fontaine's insurance policy against Jack's plasmid-induced super aging driving him insane while on the surface. If you like, this slug also slowly grew back his vocal cords after the Big Daddy conversion, thus undoing the major continuity error of every postgame fanfic ever.

• In the book, it's stated that boys given the slug all die. Also, Jack's vocal chords are back to normal during the final fight anyway, so it's possible the star who gave you the needle could also have given him some medical ADAM (which regrows tissue) while he was taking off the armor.
• Maybe Jack's unique vat-grown super soldier physiology could have given him an advantage that allowed him to survive having a slug.

Rapture is developing a sustainable food chain consisting entirely of ADAM.

Little Sisters take in the old ADAM, serving as scavengers and decomposers. It's entirely possible that they can subsist entirely on this. Their waste product (recycled ADAM) is distributed among Big Daddies (just because only the Alpha series gets properly weaponized plasmids doesn't mean they're not all heavily altered) and possibly used by whoever's in charge (Ryan or Lamb or whoever) to bribe splicers. Splicers and occasionally Big Daddies and Little Sisters become food for larger, tougher splicers. Big Sisters are the top predators. Incidentally, they make a lot of sense viewed from this perspective. The "increased aggressiveness" of older Little Sisters was just them getting hungrier, as pubescent kids do, and beginning to see the splicers as Happy Meals with legs. They don't care about keeping ADAM in the food chain (like lions don't care about making food for dung beetles) or protecting the Little Sisters (at the very least, it's not a primary objective). They attacked Delta because he was a delicious four-course meal. Then the Big Sisters throw up ADAM for whoever's holding their leashes, the ADAM is given to splicers who start killing each other over it, and the cycle begins anew. For all we know, none of them even need food. Delta's gluttony aside, it's hard to see how Big Daddies would eat. The only necessary inputs are more people because I refuse to accept the possibility that splicers aren't sterile.

• So ''that's why the Big Sisters only go for you when you've finished off all the Little Sisters- they don't have permission to touch the Little Ones, but waiting for anyone lucky enough to defeat the kid's Big Daddies and siphon off their ADAM then taking it from him/her by force is fair game. The only reason the one in the tutorial carried off the little sister was because she had no other protector with her.
  • If splicers aren't sterile, why would Lamb need to steal kids from the surface? They don't have protection, there would already be children around for her to convert into Sisters. The splicers would probably gleefully turn over unwanted toddlers in return for more ADAM factories.

People who are naturally psychic aren't affected by the psychological side effects of splicing.

Suresh Sheti (from BioShock 2 multiplayer) seems to be one of the few sane splicers. Furthermore, his diaries imply that he had telepathy long before splicing. Perhaps because he is already used to mental abilities, the splicing didn't affect his mind.

• Or, it could be that Suresh Sheti wads functionally insane and just hearing voices in his head and thus he was crazy to begin with, Crazy Is Coolthat is.

Using Vita-Chambers have some additional effects.

Such as reducing the effects of alcohol and increasing metabolism speed tenfold! How else could Jack/Delta down whole bottles of moonshine and only get drunk for about 20 seconds with no hangover afterward, and devour potted meat by the refrigerator-full and not feel bloated or sluggish?

• Its also possible that Jack and Delta have super metabolism. As a science created assassin, and bodyguard, it would make sense that extra measures were taken for their survival, like excellent aim, and gaining advantages from food and water (like eve from coffee).
• Jack at least was rapidly aged, and growing really, really fast probably increased his metabolism a lot. Think about how much regular growing kids need to eat, now think about that times ten. Also, the coffee is just laced with EVE since there are no laws against putting drugs in the beverages.

Delta has a built-in can opener.

Think about it. Jack couldn't eat canned food.

• Now that you mention it, part of the drill looks an awful lot like an automatic can opener.

Delta was still under Big Daddy conditioning/mind control, but his orders were always vague and few, allowing him to emulate free will

With Eleanor unknowingly being the one in control, in the end, Eleanor never told Delta to kill or spare anyone, and thus the objective she gave him (rescuing her) was one of only a handful of solid orders she gave, and on those occasions, he was basically free to come to his own conclusions as to whether to kill a potential future threat to his little sister, or not waste the time, this "Save Eleanor" logic could extend to the choice of saving or harvesting the little sisters, saving them to make her happy (or your conditioning for Eleanor extends to them too, unknowingly), or harvesting them to increase your odds of saving her.The conditioning wasn't truly broken until Sophia broke their pair bond.But most of all, the irony it brings to the table on Sophia's arguments about Delta being a monster of the Self, as well as the common ground it gives him with Jack, is why I like to imagine this.

Eleanor improved Delta when she brought him back to life.

This is based in part off the in-game Alpha Series, as well as the opening cutscene. We only ever see Delta using the drill officially and we only see Alpha Series using Machine Guns, Launchers, and Shotguns. In other words, the things you don't need to aim precisely. This implies that the Alpha Series suffered from inaccuracy, be it from poor vision or poor thinking capacity, thereby rendering them unable to use precise weaponry. Also, when Alpha Series "use" their plasmids, they merely shoot out an impercise field of ice, fire, or electricity. Delta, however, can use all the properly-sized weapons he finds, even the Spear Gun, and can aim his plasmids at what he wants to hit. If we assume Delta was no different from any other Alpha Series, then the jump to believing Eleanor improved his genetic code isn't that hard to make

• Orrrr it could be that (as was explained in-game) the Alpha Series went insane when the pairbond experiments on them failed. Delta was the first success.

ADAM was tested on Adam.

The Healing Factor provided by the ADAM slug in his stomach is why he is able to stay along Jamie for so long without turning into chunky salsa. This fact, combined with the Little Sister mental conditioning and exposure to Impressive Pyrotechnics led to an unusually deep fascination with rapid pressurized disassembly of large objects.

The telekinesis plasmid works by sonic manipulation.

Ever wonder why there is always a distorted humming sound when in use? It's not there to help you, it's how your powers work. Try using a telekinesis on a object that's behind a shop window and you will find it won't move, the simplest reason is because the medium of air need for your powers is blocked by the glass. The Dummied Out Sonic boom plasmid makes the connection with sound even clearer, it behaves exactly the same as a telekinetic throw and even has the same audio and visual effects.

The plot of BioShock 3 will be as follows.

The Big Bad of BioShock 3 will be Orrin Oscar Lutwidge, who was a character who was featured prominently in the "There's Something in the Sea" viral campaign that preceded BioShock 2's release and by the end his final fate is left ambiguous. While he may have died his body isn't accounted for, and his background reveals he not only once went to Rapture but expressed a desire to return to it. Having already been noticably mutated by splicing in his original visit to the city, Lutwidge wouldn't immediately be considered an outsider (and thus, not marked for death) by it's inhabitants but because he hadn't had the opportunity to abuse ADAM as much as they had due to leaving he retains much of his mental abilities (if not sanity). Using his genius engineering talents, he is able to save the city from completely falling apart following the departure of both Ryan and Lamb, uses his charisma to get the remaining splicers to name him the new leader of Rapture, and as a huge fan of Lewis Caroll, he turns Rapture into a creepy "Alice in Wonderland"-themed environment. And rather then trying to make Rapture an ideal free-market or collectivist society like Ryan or Lamb respectively, Lutwidge (who was less sane then either of them) turns it into utopia for the insane, where splicers give free reign to their psychotic tendencies, making them more dangerous and upredictable then ever.

Chesire Cat: We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad.

Alice: How do you know I'm mad?

Chesire Cat: You must be, or you wouldn't have come here.

And then, as Rapture is basically on its last knees, the US Government and Soviet agents show up to crash the "tea party" just as Ryan always feared. Which is when Lutwidge's Evill Plan is revealed, he wanted them to find Rapture and eventually had outside contacts clue them off. And using superpowered splicers loyal to him he plans to take both invading forces out and seize their vessels and resources to "bring the party to the surface" and make the bad ending of the original BioShock a reality.

• This is the best BioShock 3 idea ever
  • You win TV Tropes!

Johnny Topside, a.k.a. Subject Delta, was the inspiration for the creation of Big Daddies.

Johnny Topside was a diver who discovered Rapture by accident. Most people in Rapture were probably terrified that someone from the surface could ever find the place and get in, especially if Rapture had been around long enough for a generation of children to grow up with the scare tactics at Ryan Amusements drilled into their brain (even Ryan himself thought that ride was too much). Suchong noticed this when it became necessary to design a protector for the Little Sisters, so he used giant, angry diving suits to play on the citizens fear of the outside. Delta's suit may even be the very one he came to Rapture in.

Andrew Ryan was right!

At first. Rapture fell apart because he betrayed his own Objectivist principles and became mad with power, cutting off trade with the surface, not letting people leave, banning religion and placing belief in the "Great Chain" in its place (which Lamb pointed out in one of their debates, was essentially a faith in itself), and generally running the show like a despotic dictator. He could have found a way to preserve trade with the surface without giving away the location of his city, he could have let people practice their religion privately, or else leave if they felt their were being oppressed.

• His Objectivist principles also had a hand in the downfall of Rapture, particularly when he chose not to regulate ADAM, allowing Fontaine to grow wealthier and more powerful while turning the population into superpowered psychopaths.

Jack was in some way related to Raz

• Given that both possess powers such as telekinesis (which they would pick up along the way), and both have fathers voiced by Armin Shimerman.

Medkits are made from ADAM

When Tenenbaum first discovered ADAM, all that she knew of it was that it had healed a crippled man's hand. Logically the first thing she, and her financial backer Fontaine, would have done would be to use the ADAM to create a new medical wonderdrug, sell it to the public and put the profits into further research. This would also neatly explain how spider splicer organs function like medkits; The organs are ADAM rich and, thanks to whatever cocktail of tonics and plasmids make a spider splicer, ready to be turned into a rough equivalent of a standard medkit.

Delta is fed intravenously

Looking at his model, Delta has red and blue tubes on his back, presumably for supplying him with ADAM and EVE without him having to stop in the middle of a fight to recharge his ability to use plasmids. It's likely that he has a similar system for supplying his body with nutrition. Because Big Daddies are out in the field so much, it's also likely that this system allows for normal foods to be ingested. Thus when Delta eats and drinks the various food items you find throughout the game, he is not taking off his helmet to do so, but is instead shoving them into his suit's feeding system.

Andrew Ryan is Ayn Rand's Alternate Universe Spear Counterpart

Not only are their names very similar (not to mention similarly anglicized), but they have similar back-stories - i.e., emigrating from the Soviet Union, then becoming disenchanted with America. Rapture is Ryan's version of Rand's bibliography.

• While not explicit, the end of BioShock Infinite basically confirms this.

All the "Shock" games have elemental and extremist motifs - meaning that Levine's future projects can be predicted.

System Shock takes place in a space city where The Singularity causes a disaster, BioShock takes place in an underwater city where Objectivism causes a disaster, BioShock Infinite takes place in a flying city where ultranationalism causes a disaster. Ken Levine's next project will be either a crossover with Fallout taking place in a giant underground vault or a some kind of geothermal city planted in a volcano where where either a Government Conspiracy causes a disaster, or an Animal Wrongs Group causes a disaster. His general theme seems to be "extremism is bad", so everybody will eventually get a turn. But given how much venom he put into his anti-transhumanism and anti-capitalism tracts, the ultranats better get hit hard.

Medic is Tenenbaum's brother

The vaguely cartoony art style, the 1960's setting, the level of technology, it all points to the simple truth that Team Fortress 2 and BioShock share a universe. Two German siblings pursue careers in the field of medicine, forming a friendly rivalry with one another in their youth. But as the years pass, they drift away from each other, and head down darker paths. One to the city of Rapture, the other to the sinister world of mercenaries. Which leads to...

Jack is Gman.

In the Half Good/Half Bad ending, Jack becomes a splicer. What if he, instead, went on the ship that those men were on when the splicers killed them, and then went back to land? Along the way, he discovers a way to become a Time Lord and from there controlled many peoples lives (For teh lulz, I assume), including a certain...

• But you could say that with anyone, couldn't you? "Master Chief goes to Halo, finds way to become Time Lord, becomes Gman."

Eleanor Lamb is Jack Ryan's half-sister

We don't know who her father is, but she does have dark eyes and hair, mist likely taken from her father. There are many dark-haired and dark-eyed men in Rapture, but if Sophia's daughter was Ryan's daughter, it would be good political leverage, and Sophia could make Eleanor the rest ruler of Rapture. She most likely didn't know about Jack, so she thought Eleanor would be the only child.

• When you look at the pattern of people Ryan has dated in the past, you see some trends. Jasmine and Diane were both taller than him and blonde. Traits they share with Lamb.
• But Sophia and Ryan hated each other, why would they...

After the Rapture and Colombia timelines, the final BioShock will take place IN SPACE!

Because once you've done stories about failed utopias in the sea and the air, space is the logical last place you can set a game.

• What about underground?

After Anarcho-Capitalism, Collectivism, and Nationalism, the final BioShock will deconstruct the horrors of...

• Luddism, of the Adeptus Mechanicus variety, venerating scientific development while ironically stifling it
• Idolizing criminals, with a Roaring-Twenties-style city full of shockingly corrupt officials and gangsters who walk the streets with impunity.
  • Well, there's already been a [[Video Game/game like that...
    • It could be all this and several more, if the game involves hopping around various cities in various timelines.

Brenda is related to Andrew Ryan

This troper noticed that, in the fight area before you go to the Medical Ward, sometimes when the splicers come through the wall upstairs, a female splicer will say "You killed my Charlie!". The splicers in the Kashmir Restaurant are Charlie and Brenda, and this can occur even if you killed Charlie and Brenda. The logical conclusion: That Brenda is somehow related to Andrew Ryan, and can use the vita chambers.

• The splicers who repeat the lines have picked up bits of the memories of Charlie and Brenda from ADAM recycling.

ADAM has turned all splicers into clones of strong personality types

That's why they all look and sound alike, the original of each was killed and their ADAM harvested, when it was injected into another person it began transforming them into copies of the original.

The "Best" Good Ending of BioShock 2 is actually horribly awkward.

When Elanor absorbs Delta so that her "Father" would always be with her, she may not have considered what it would mean when she has to go to the bathroom or more intimate activities.

• I generally got the impression it's a little less literal than Delta hovering over her shoulder in her mind reminding her to go buy tampons. More "with her" in that his moral compass and memories are passed on to her in his ADAM.
• Eleanor said that Delta would be there "when I need you." So even if his consciousness is still alive and self-aware in her head, it would only be when she called him up. Unless she was somehow never toilet-trained and has no idea how sex works, I don't think she's going to be needing advice in THOSE sorts of situations.
• I don't think it literally means his conscious mind is there with her. More likely, she is absorbing his memories and thoughts through his ADAM, much like taking a physical keepsake from a loved one so he'll metaphorically always be there.

Jack changes his last name when he goes to the surface

His fake last name was Wynand. After leaving Rapture, he takes the name of Tenenbaum, Ryan (unlikely, though we never do know Jack's personal feeling on the guy) or Jolene.

Some of the little sisters used to be boys

For some reason, the slugs only work with little girls, and there was a severe shortage of little sisters. After the orphanage's supply of girls ran out and kids started to get kidnapped, boys as well as girls were taken, given a sex change via the miracle drug ADAM then put through the same little sister mental conditioning, so half the newly orphaned children wouldn't go to waste.

• Alternately, the boys were put through the same rapid aging as Jack and then turned into big daddies.
  • Untrue; the book pointed out that boys rejected the sea slug, although Tenenbaum and Suchong could never work out exactly why.

One of the side effects of ADAM was tipping the male/female birth rate ratio

That's why there's an orphanage dedicated specifically to girls- there are many more girls born than boys in Rapture. This is also why the ADAM slugs work with girls and not boys- girls are predisposed towards ADAM/EVE for some reason.

• Actually, the prequel-book pointed out that it was devoted to girls simply because Fontaine wanted to get hold of female orphans to be experimented on as Little Sisters. Orphan boys were not provided for, even though they did exist.

Sander Cohen isn't nearly as insane as he appears.

He's still an amoral hack artist with a few screws loose, but no more than say, Andrew Ryan. Basically, it's like this:Mediocre an artist as he was, Cohen had one natural skill that did help him out: his paranoia (gained from all those 'doubters' surrounding him). When Rapture started to go rapidly downhill, Cohen was astute enough to realize that he was the media face of Andrew Ryan's Rapture, putting him squarely on the chopping block. So he runs off to Fort Frolic and ramps up his crazy act (he was always eccentric, but now he takes it way past any norm). By establishing himself as a crazy governor of a far off corner, too dangerous and loopy to be messed with, he effectively takes himself off the hook for having to pick a side in the civil war. Fort Frolic, especially the atrium, are in very good shape compared to a lot of areas elsewhere in Rapture. The quadtych is his masterpiece because it shows his greatest pupils/betrayers slain. The message of the whole piece is "I'm Sander Cohen, here's what happens when you fuck with me." He has control of the splicers in Fort Frolic without the benefit of Ryan's pheromones, implying that his splicers either legitimately like him or fear him so much they'll do what he wants. Cohen can even travel between parts of Rapture (like to his apartment in Olympus Heights).

He may not be completely sane, but he's also not totally mad. Barring Jack's intervention (if any) Sander Cohen is pretty much the only person who seems genuinely happy in Rapture. 

ADAM has a quantifiable purity, effected by harvesting method, that plays a role in splicer degeneration.

Early on in BioShock 1, after Jack gets his first plasmid, a pair of splicers show up and dwell on checking him for ADAM before running to avoid 'toeing it with a Big Daddy'. Later on in Fort Frolic, a recording discusses making a 'splicer cocktail' from the dead. From this, it's probably possible to scavenge ADAM from the dead in some crude way (probably like drinking the blood or something). The problem is that getting ADAM this way gives it to you "dirty" in some fashion. When a little sister absorbs ADAM through her slug, it filters or otherwise purifies it. 

This tainted ADAM is far more corrupting to body and mind then the pure stuff. The reason Jack doesn't get all spliced up even after the events of the game is due to him getting his ADAM exclusively from little sisters (one way or the other). The few occasional ghosts Jack does see are leftover from ADAM he got that wasn't quite done purifying. The problem for your average Rapture citizen is the only ADAM typically available for use is the dirty stuff on that dead guy over in the corner (which is probably even worse since he's just the last guy on the conga line of splicers to have that particularly ADAM in them). There's good pure stuff around, but it's in a Little Sister who has a pretty big bodyguard.

The Tommy Guns used by the Leadhead Splicers in BioShock 2 are modified

As insane as the splicers are, they could possibly have retained enought skills to tinker with their guns a bit. Having failed to put Jack down in the first game, they may have concluded that their tommy guns needed bigger bullets, and modified them to shoot 50 caliber rounds.

Cohen really is a brilliant composer, he's just a lousy lyricist.

Compare "Rise, Rapture, Rise" with Cohen's Scherzo #7. (And can you really picture Cohen playing nice with a collaborator?) On the surface, Cohen was also writing for the theater as a moneymaking endeavor and from the look of it, it was pretty much total dreck; successful at first, but ultimately repetitive and forgettable. If that was the work he was known for, no wonder nobody took him seriously as a serious composer. Part of the lure of Rapture was the freedom promised to create art without fear of the censor; even pre-murder statuary, it's possible he was making work a little edgier than could be respectably performed, or at least thought that's why his unbearable musicals were tanking. But he just swapped out one yawning public for another one that happened to also be a literal captive audience, and started having to write literal propaganda with lyrics he subconsciously knows are trash, aimed at children and the general public. The frustration that made him crack was the fact that he still couldn't force anybody to appreciate what he'd written or to appreciate his music on its own merits rather than the work of Ryan's right-hand man that you'd better hum along to or else. Though he does obviously try.

• Given the quality of his scherzo, it's obvious that he's a good composer despite being a bad lyricist. But then again, given how unscrupulous he was, it's possible that he just plagiarized that scherzo.

Sander Cohen has prosthetic legs

He lost his legs before coming to Rapture, and after receiving prosthetics, his movement remained very limited for a long time. He says he admired Finnegan's "carriage" not simply because he found him attractive, but largely because he envied Finnegan's agility and freedom of movement. After coming to Rapture, he became paranoid that people were mocking him for his handicap, and this contributed to his insanity.He ultimately became a Houdini splicer so he could get around faster. By the time BioShock takes place, he's gotten used to his prosthetics and can walk well enough, but his mobility used to be so limited that, if he ever tried to jump, he'd just fall flat on his face—hence his poem that "when I hop, I never get off the ground." Fitzpatrick openly made fun of Cohen for the loss of his legs, so, after going completely insane, Cohen plastered Fitzpatrick's legs to the piano bench as poetic justice.

2 Jack and Eleanor are the Protagonist and Antagonist of BioShock 3

I have no idea which is which right now, but here's a few points for each as a heroJack:

• Physically the weaker of the two by a extreme margin, making for a better boss fight, as Jack has to outwit the more powerful Eleanor to defeat her.
• Possibly more popular, as BioShock 2 isn't that well-recieved compared to the original.

Eleanor:

• Jack came to the world first, and is more likely to have Mooks, while Eleanor's evil incarnation seems to be a power-hungry Blood Knight compared to the Take Over the World goal of Jack, finding Mooks for her will be difficult.
• Delta as a Spirit Advisor.
  • Considering the whole Alternate Timelines hook of Bioshock Infinite, perhaps this would involve Good!Jack and Good!Eleanor teaming up to take on Evil!Jack and Evil!Eleanor. Although there may still be debate over what the relation between the two should be: a standard Big Bad controlling The Dragon, a Big Bad Diumvirate, or even being Co-Dragons to the real Big Bad?

Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum and Dr. suchong based some of their research from the notes of Dr. Frankenstein.

Jack Ryan is...Jack Ryan

After leaving Rapture, Jack decided to put his skills to good use. He eventually ran out of EVE to power his plasmids (and he certainly wasn't going back to Rapture to find more), but his tonics still left him incredibly badass. So, he eventually became a CIA agent, and thus, the Ryanverse began.

• Or he drinks a shit ton of coffee every day to gain more EVE.

Pokemon naturally produce ADAM

It's what allows them to use element and evolve. Because they evolved with it (Darwinian style, not Pokemon style), they are immune to the detrimental side effects

On a side-note, Everstones contain a chemical the neutralizes ADAM (enough to stop evolution, but not enough to remove their powers). If only we could get some to Rapture.

Tenenbaum was sterilized

A rather unpleasant thought, but... How would a concentration camp inmate get to witness Nazi experiments without being a subject? Sterilization was one of the specific areas of interest for Nazi doctors that was non-fatal and would take a teenage girl as a test subject. It's an awful thing, but... wouldn't it explain a lot about Tenenbaum's complex psyche?

Happy to see them go

The reason why Rapture (and in its timeline/verses, after a while, Columbia) was never really sought out or its vanished people searched for was simple. After this diaspora, other people of talent emerged from the shadows of these shallow overachievers, while others noted that all the people who insisted on their way or the highway just went away. In short, Ryan pulled away the most hardcore of the absolute worst preening jackasses, and most just noticed that their lives involved a lot fewer very difficult people. Now in each timeline/verse, they could easily come to regret this, but for a time, offices, schools, neighborhoods, etc. must have seemed asshole-free.

The Cohen's Laughter and Scherzo Easter Egg in BioShock 2 is really...

1: One of Lamb's experiments. Lamb's goal is to use ADAM to implant the combined memories of Rapture's finest minds into Eleanor. We know from the "Best and Brightest" photograph that Cohen was considered as such by someone at one point and also that Lamb used Gil Alexander as a test subject. Maybe what we heard was some poor mook splicer who was successfully turned into a Cohen carbon copy as a test run.

• Or Canon!Jack never killed him and it was Cohen himself, whatever floats your boat.

Eleanor did not re-key the Vita-Chamber to Delta, she tricked it into thinking Delta was Jack

The wiki sais "The Vita-Chambers are still functional during the events of BioShock 2. The protagonist, Subject Delta, is revived in a Vita-Chamber at the beginning of the game after he had been killed 10 years earlier. This is accomplished when a Little Sister, acting on behalf of Eleanor Lamb, re-keys the Chamber (and thus the entire Vita-Chamber network) to correspond with Delta's genetic code signature."

If it were really that easy and they were that well known, everyone would be trying to do it. The non spliced at least. The properties of the chamber were probably not that well known, or easily hacked, and their purpose was not clearly explained to the people, marketed as a therapy\relaxation device.

The wiki also mentions that they were in the trial period and only attuned to Andrew Ryan and his relatives at the time, and though they were a common sight, they had not advanced enough to revive other people,and would only revive trauma-induced death.So by the time the first game came around, he was probably too paranoid to key in anyone else." Thus, they would only teleport/revive Ryan, or someone with a similar genetic code This is the reason only Jack, who is Ryan's illegitimate son, can resurrect at these chambers."

Atlas himself can not get around this, and it would seem no one else knows enough to replicate the effects of the chambers. So if they are not really well known, and no one knows how they work how does Eleanor learn enough about them to hack them? Why does Sophia know about them as well, I should also probably ask. If the rapture populace knew, they would defiantly be trying to hack them for their usage. Unlike, security cameras, the protections on those would have been pretty high, and hard to hack, along with being remotely connected and capable of teleporting things, making it hard to exparament because too much tampering would have put them on alert. So there is room for error.

So rather then re-key a forging the genetic key, she tampered with it and Delta enough for the Vita-Chambers to accept Delta as a Ryan relative.

For something to be able revive people from the dead (specify by trauma)) it would need to be able to replicate the blood, skin, and bone tissue, making anyone who receives it need to be a genetic relation to lower the chance of rejection. That shouldn't be a problem for Delta, because he is grafted to the suit, but I do not think genetic memory is the only memory it keeps.

Trauma related injuries can potentially result in memory loss. So I think Vita-chambers would also keep a mental record of what the user was last doing, to prevent amnesia in its users.

Delta is almost a blank slate though, who follows orders, and a lot like Jack in that respect. So when the Vita-chamber revived him, it couldn't find a genetic memory, it went back to the last mental memory back it had, and the closest similar one. Additionally, the last time Jack was in rapture before leaving he was in a big Daddy suit.

So the chamber assumed Delta was Jack, and that's why the player can play as Delta, we never left the old mindset.

The slug is useble on girls because of how their brains are designed

"Some research has shown that in girls, the region of the brain that helps control language and emotion – called the caudate – tends to be larger. (This part of the brain becomes especially active when someone looks at a photo of a sweetheart.)"

What if the larger caudate is attractive to the slugs because it aligns better with their instincts. The bonding between little sister and big daddy occurred because she healed him, and the slug was first found because it healed a man.Additionally, little boys have more testosterone when they're born, though the level drops until they hit puberty, but is still a lot more then girls. Its possible the testosterone in boys is a repellent to the slugs, making the girls more attractive as hosts.

Little sisters are highly resistant to splicing mutations because the ADAM is rewired to their gut neurons.

Animals have neurons everywhere. In humans they're mostly found in the brains, but in some invertebrates the neurons for digestion have more prevalence over the nut in their skull-less noggins. By symbiotically implanting the slug into the intestinal tract from a young age, the slug now thinks like a human intestine, and processes toxins like a human intestine, including ADAM variants, instead of travelling throughout the body trying to find its brain and mutating hell along the way.This also explains why Vigors from Infinite are less mutative - even though the ADAM is mostly digested, it gives the stomach enough time to process the new chemicals and bond with the slug cells at the gut rather than the veins.

Big Daddies actually can be female, they're just indistinguishable from the males

We know that early concept art for Bioshock 2 included the possibility of "Big Mommas," a detail that didn't make it into the final game. The only female characters that are known to turn into Big Daddies are the three female multiplayer characters in Bioshock 2 whose canonical status is debatable at best.

But think about it, they might not have ever explicitly identified a "Big Momma" in either of the first two games, but how would you tell the difference? The process of turning a person into a Big Daddy involves splicing and permanently sealing them into a rather bulky diving suit. They also undergo surgery to their vocal chords that remove their ability to speak in any coherent fashion.

The bulky suit would easily conceal their body shape (even assuming it remained in any recognizable form underneath)and every known model of Big Daddy has had their face concealed. The vocal chord surgery also makes it impossible to recognize their voice as male or female. Furthermore there's never any particular reason given why only men can go through the procedure.

In short, once the process is finished, how would you be able to tell the difference between a male or female Big Daddy? Between the bulky suit and distorted voice it would be more or less impossible. This is also why the term "Big Mommas" isn't used in either game. Because it's impossible to tell, and the name "Big Daddy" stuck with the people in Rapture, that is simply the term they are all known by regardless of the test subject's original gender.

What would Bioshock 4 be about?

Here's my two cents: It takes place in the early 90s, and recently, somewhere in the northern Atlantic Ocean, ships have been disappearing without a single trace. Soon enough, a Special Forces unit, with our main character as a member, is sent in to investigate the disappearances. However, what they end up finding is both amazing and horrifying. Remember when Ryan said "My city will thrive?" Turns out he was right. Rapture has been rebuilt by the Splicers into a straight up stronghold, using materials from the stolen ships. Not just that, but, through creative use of ADAM, the city has been pretty much restored, therefore making Light Is Not Good in full effect. Even worse is that the city is now governed by what amounts to a caste of Ubermensch, who were created when the Splicers started... breeding. And not only that, but Rapture has made utterly massive leaps in weapons and military technology. And they fully intend on waging war against the surface. Our protagonist is separated from his group when a high-tech Big Daddy attacks them. Now he must find a way to get back to the surface and warn the rest of the world before it's too late.

Yet another Bioshock 4 prediction

The fourth game will be another return to Rapture, this time playing as Tenenbaum or as someone working for Tenenbaum. Brigid is coming back in an attempt to save as many people as she can with the ADAM-sickness cure developed at the end of Minerva's Den. Much like in BS 2, the moral choices in this game will be something along the lines of 'does this person really deserve to be saved after all they've done?'Eleanor, Jack, and Porter could be mentioned in vague terms, but wouldn't appear, to leave it up to viewer interpretation which ending is canon. There will be an Elizabeth easter egg to retcon Ba S.

Jack's advanced aging never stopped

Just like what happened with Snake in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots; Jack dies an old man at an exceedingly young age. To make it even more depressing, he most likely lived between ten-to-twenty years until his eventual death in the Good Ending.

• Jossed by basic math and observation skills. The hands of his daughters seen at the end of the game are clearly older women. Considering they went through college, got married, and had children, they're probably in their forties. Also, it's clear Jack doesn't rapidly age unless he's being actively dosed with Lot 111 by Suchong. He was 19 when he was one, and 24 (looking at his passport) at 4, so it obvious has slowed down to a normal rate after he was sent away from the city (most likely, it went 1-19, 2-22, 3-23, 4-24).

Jack customized his Big Daddy suit.

Why do we still see Jack's bare hands and sweater sleeves, even though he's wearing a Big Daddy suit? We don't actually see him put on the suit, as it's an immediate effect for gameplay's sake. So there's nothing to say that he didn't cut part of the sleeves off and ditch the gloves so he could use his weapons and Plasmids more easily. He acquires all the other essential traits of a Big Daddy, so the Little Sisters don't notice or care that this particular Big Daddy's hands are a bit different than the others'.

Jack got his (Canonical) good morals and altruism from his mother, Jasmine Jolene

Well, even though we don't get to see much of Jasmine herself, it would appear that, she has good intentions and morals, even putting aside her attempt at selling off her fertilized embryo, just so she could get financial independence from Andrew Ryan. It's very likely that, she had good intentions, and was morally righteous. After all, the only other person who could have psychologically influenced Jack to be capable of good morals was Tenenbaum.

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