Complete listed story — includes the ending
=== Setting ===
BioShock takes place in Rapture, an underwater city built in the 1940s by business magnate Andrew Ryan, who wanted to create a utopia for society's elite to flourish outside of government control. To protect and isolate Rapture, Ryan bans contact with the surface world. As Rapture flourished, wealth disparities grew, and con man Frank Fontaine used his influence over the disenfranchised working class to establish illegal enterprises and obtain power—enough to rival Ryan. With doctors Brigid Tenenbaum and Yi Suchong, Fontaine created his own company dedicated to researching plasmids and gene tonics. The scientists discovered that sea slugs could produce a substance called ADAM that grants superhuman powers by rewriting a person's DNA. As ADAM became addictive and demand skyrocketed, Fontaine secretly mass-produced ADAM through slugs implanted in the stomachs of orphaned girls, nicknamed "Little Sisters". Fontaine was killed in a shootout with police, and Ryan took the opportunity to seize his assets, including control of the Little Sisters.
In the months that followed, a man amongst the poor named Atlas rose up and began a violent revolution against Ryan, with both sides using plasmid-enhanced humans (known as "Splicers") to wage war on one another. To protect the Little Sisters, Ryan created the "Big Daddies": genetically enhanced humans surgically grafted into gigantic lumbering diving suits designed to escort the sisters as they scavenged ADAM from dead bodies. Tensions came to a head on New Year's Eve of 1958 when Atlas ordered an all-out assault on Ryan and his supporters. The conflict turns Rapture into a war-torn dystopia, resulting in societal collapse, countless deaths, many Splicers becoming disfigured and insane from ADAM abuse, and the few sane survivors barricading themselves away from the chaos.
Plot
In 1960, the protagonist, Jack, is a passenger on a plane that crashes in the Atlantic Ocean. The only survivor, Jack makes his way to a nearby lighthouse; inside is a bathysphere that takes him to Rapture. Jack is contacted via radio by Atlas, who helps guide him through the ruined city. Atlas requests Jack's help in saving his family, who he says are in a docked bathysphere. When Jack first encounters the Little Sisters, Atlas urges him to kill them to harvest their ADAM. Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum intervenes and insists Jack should spare them, providing him with a plasmid that can remove the sea slug from their bodies and free them of their brainwashing. Jack works his way to the bathysphere, but Ryan destroys it before Jack can reach it. Infuriated, Atlas has Jack fight his way through various districts toward Ryan's lair, forcing Jack to contend with Rapture's deranged citizens along the way, such as the surgical doctor J.S. Steinman and artist and musician Sander Cohen.
Jack enters Ryan's office. Ryan reveals the truth of Jack's origins: he is Ryan's illegitimate son, sold by Ryan's mistress as an embryo to Fontaine, who had Tenenbaum and Suchong rapidly age Jack into adulthood and turned into an obedient assassin, capable of accessing any of Rapture's systems locked to Ryan's genetic code and thus ensure Fontaine's victory in the war. Jack was smuggled to the surface with false memories of a normal life, waiting to be called back to Rapture when needed. Ryan takes control of Jack's actions by asking, "Would you kindly?"; a phrase that has preceded many of Atlas's commands as a hypnotic trigger, forcing him to follow any orders without question. Jack also realizes he was responsible for the plane crash, having read a letter onboard containing the same trigger phrase.
Ryan chooses to die by his own will and compels Jack to beat him to death with a golf club. Atlas reveals himself to be Fontaine, having faked his death and used "Atlas" as an alias to hide his identity while providing a heroic figure for the poor to rally behind. With Ryan dead, Fontaine takes control of the city and leaves Jack to be killed by hostile security drones. Jack is saved by Dr. Tenenbaum, who helps remove Fontaine's mental conditioning, including one that would have stopped Jack's heart. Jack pursues Fontaine to his lair, where Fontaine transforms himself into a hulking humanoid creature by injecting himself with a large supply of ADAM. The Little Sisters aid Jack in draining the ADAM from Fontaine's body and eventually kill him. The ending depends on how the player interacts with the Little Sisters:
If the player rescues all of the Little Sisters, Jack takes them back to the surface with him and adopts five as his daughters. Tenenbaum happily narrates how they go on to live full lives under his care, eventually surrounding him on his deathbed.
If the player harvests any of the Little Sisters, Jack turns on the Little Sisters to harvest their ADAM. Tenenbaum condemns Jack as he leads a group of Splicers to take over a nuclear warhead-armed submarine. Depending on how many of the Little Sisters are harvested, Tenenbaum's narrative changes from sad and mournful to angry and harsh.
BioShock 2
=== Setting ===
BioShock 2 takes place in the city of Rapture, an underwater metropolis hidden from the world. Rapture was founded in the 1940s by billionaire Andrew Ryan to establish a city free from religious influences and government regulation. The city's citizens began "splicing"—genetically modifying themselves using ADAM, a substance derived from sea slugs. ADAM was used to create "plasmids" that enable superpowers, such as the ability to create lightning or control fire. Class conflict and civil war were exacerbated by the side effects of ADAM abuse. Modified and conditioned children, called "Little Sisters", collected scarce ADAM from corpses and recycled it under the protection of armed and armored "Big Daddies". Rapture descended into civil war and became a crumbling dystopia populated by Splicers, the spliced remains of the citizenry. In the aftermath of Ryan's death during the first BioShock, the dissident collectivist Sofia Lamb and her followers, known as "the Rapture Family", assume control of the city.
Plot
BioShock 2 begins on New Year's Eve, 1958. Subject Delta, a Big Daddy, patrols Rapture with his Little Sister Eleanor. Sofia Lamb, Eleanor's mother, separates the pair and forces Delta to kill himself. Delta awakens in 1968, resurrected by a Little Sister under Eleanor's direction. Delta is informed by Brigid Tenenbaum, the custodian of the rehabilitated Little Sisters, that because he has a physiological bond with Eleanor, he will die unless he finds her. Helped by Tenenbaum's ally Augustus Sinclair, Delta makes his way to Eleanor, who is trapped in Sofia Lamb's stronghold. Lamb plans to use ADAM to transfer the minds and memories of all of Rapture's inhabitants into Eleanor, to create a selfless leader. Traveling through the city, Delta encounters members of Lamb's Rapture Family and can choose whether to kill or spare them.
Delta arrives at the containment chamber where Eleanor is held, but Lamb captures him and severs his bond to Eleanor by temporarily stopping Eleanor's heart. Delta begins to weaken as the bond cannot be re-established. Eleanor transforms herself into a Big Sister to free Delta. Together they head for an escape pod Sinclair prepared to escape the city. They find that Lamb has converted Sinclair into a Big Daddy and are forced to kill him. Eleanor and Delta make it to the escape pod, but Delta is mortally wounded by a trap set by Lamb.
The ending is influenced by how the player interacted with Little Sisters and the fates of the Rapture Family's members. Eleanor can either save her mother or leave her to drown. Delta succumbs to his wounds; Eleanor either absorbs his ADAM, personality and memories and leaves Rapture with the Little Sisters to better the world at large, or forcibly extracts Delta's ADAM and becomes bent on world domination.
BioShock Infinite
=== Setting and characters ===
BioShock Infinite is set in 1912 and takes place in a floating steampunk city-state in the sky called "Columbia", named for the female personification of the United States. The city of Columbia was founded by self-proclaimed prophet Zachary Hale Comstock, and funded by the United States government as a floating world's fair and display of American exceptionalism in the 1890s. Tensions rose between Columbia and the government after the city independently intervened in the Boxer Rebellion, and Columbia ultimately seceded from the United States and disappeared into the clouds. Comstock transforms the city into a theocratic police state, with Comstock worshipped as a prophet, and the Founding Fathers of the United States venerated as religious icons. Institutional racism and elitism are widespread in the city, with minorities serving as a labor underclass of Columbia. By the events of the game, Columbia is on the verge of civil war; the Founders of Columbia are opposed by the Vox Populi, a resistance group led by Daisy Fitzroy who fight for the rights of the marginalized.
Columbia is home to "Tears" in the fabric of space-time. These Tears reveal alternate universes. Some individuals exploit the insight offered by the tears to create new weapons and technologies, while several others replicate futuristic media heard from the Tears, bringing anachronistic elements into Columbia.
The player controls protagonist Booker DeWitt, a U.S. Army veteran and disgraced member of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency scarred from a life of violence. Faced with mounting gambling debts, he is sent to Columbia to find a young woman, Elizabeth, who has the ability to open Tears. Confined in isolation in Columbia since childhood, Elizabeth has been groomed as the city's future leader and is guarded by Songbird, a large, robotic bird-like creature who has served as both her friend and warden. Two individuals, Robert and Rosalind Lutece, direct Booker to Columbia and appear throughout his travels. Though they appear as twins, they are revealed to be the same person from two different realities, having figured out how to communicate through and subsequently cross realities.
Plot
In July 1912, Booker DeWitt arrives in Columbia, where he is soon pursued by authorities who recognize him as a "False Shepherd" who is prophesied to attempt to corrupt Elizabeth and overthrow Columbia. Freeing Elizabeth from her tower, Booker narrowly evades Songbird. Commandeering an airship, Booker lies that he will take Elizabeth to Paris; when she realizes they are going to New York City to fulfill Booker's debts, Elizabeth knocks him unconscious and flees. Booker awakens to find the airship commandeered by Daisy Fitzroy, who offers to return the ship if Booker helps her arm the Vox Populi.
Booker and Elizabeth reunite and join forces to secure weapons from a local gunsmith. Traveling through Tears, they arrive in a world where Booker is a Vox Populi martyr and open warfare has erupted in Columbia. Elizabeth kills Fitzroy to prevent her from killing a Founder boy. Booker and Elizabeth regain control of the airship; however, Songbird attacks as they attempt to flee, and they crash back into the city. Elizabeth and Booker discover a conspiracy behind the city's founding: Comstock, who had been rendered aged and infertile as a result of his frequent exposure to Tears, obtained Elizabeth from another reality and then killed his wife and the Luteces to hide the truth of the child's origin, framing their deaths as assassinations. Comstock then isolated Elizabeth in Columbia, constructing a large Siphon to control her power.
Elizabeth is recaptured by Songbird and is tortured and brainwashed back into obedience to Comstock. Pursuing her, Booker is brought forward in time to 1983 by an elderly Elizabeth as Columbia attacks New York City. The elderly Elizabeth returns Booker to 1912 with information on how to control Songbird, in hopes he can save her younger self. Booker rescues Elizabeth, and the pair pursue Comstock to his airship. Upon meeting Comstock, he demands that Booker explain Elizabeth's past to her; enraged, Booker drowns Comstock in a baptismal font. Booker denies knowledge of Elizabeth's past, but she asserts that he has merely forgotten. Booker and Elizabeth direct Songbird to destroy the Siphon, unleashing Elizabeth's full powers.
Elizabeth opens a Tear and transports them to the underwater city of Rapture. The newly omniscient Elizabeth explains there are countless alternate worlds and versions of Booker and Elizabeth; their reality is one of an infinite number depending on their choices. Elizabeth reveals that Robert Lutece approached Booker on behalf of Comstock to acquire Booker's infant daughter, Anna DeWitt, in exchange for erasing his debts. Booker later attempted to renege on the deal and take Anna back; however, Comstock narrowly escaped through a Tear, which severed a tip of Anna's finger as it closed. Comstock then raised Anna as his own daughter, Elizabeth; her severed finger, which caused her to exist in two realities simultaneously, is the source of her ability to create Tears. Robert Lutece, angry at Comstock's actions, convinced Rosalind to help him bring Booker to the reality where Columbia exists to rescue Elizabeth.
Elizabeth explains that despite Comstock's death in their reality, he will always remain alive in alternate universes, since the Luteces have enlisted the Bookers of numerous different universes to try to end the cycle. Since stopping Comstock requires preventing his birth, Elizabeth takes Booker back in time to a baptism he attended while in the Army, following his participation in the Wounded Knee Massacre. She explains that, while Booker rejected the baptism, in the universes in which he accepted, he was reborn as Zachary Comstock. Booker, joined by other universes' Elizabeths, allows them to drown him in the river, preventing Comstock's existence. One by one, the Elizabeths begin to disappear, with the screen cutting to black on the last.
In a post-credits scene, a Booker awakens in his apartment on October 8, 1893. He calls out for Anna and opens the door to her room before the screen cuts to black.
Sources and content license
Source and revision history ↗ · Exact listed stories combined in catalog order. Sources retain their stated license; formatting and headings adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, BioShock. Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, BioShock 2. Section headings and formatting adjusted. Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, BioShock Infinite. Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license