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[[Describe Topic Here|Would you kindly describe BioShock here]]?
 
''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' is a [[Video Game]] series developed by Irrational Games (also known as 2K Boston for a short while before reverting back to the old name). The entire series is a [[Spiritual Successor]] to the ''[[System Shock]]'' series, and as such are technically [[First-Person Shooter|First Person Shooters]], but deviate in many ways.
 
Settings take place in alternative histories with a heavy dose of [[Zeerust]]. The backstories of the setting are elaborated upon in [[Apocalyptic Logs]] scattered about. There are usually heavy ethical or philosophical themes in the game as well.
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There are three games in the series so far:
* ''[[Bio Shock 1 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 1]]'' - Released in 2007. After his plane crashes over the Atlantic Ocean in 1960, Jack discovers the underwater city of Rapture, an Objectivist utopia built by Andrew Ryan that has descended into chaos after the residents got their hands on the superpower giving substance [[Psycho Serum|ADAM]]. With the help of [[Rebel Leader]] Atlas and [[The Atoner|former]] [[Mad Scientist]] Brigid Tenenbaum, Jack has to stop Ryan and his army of Splicers to escape Rapture. But it won't be easy, Jack with have to harness the power of ADAM himself, which can only be harvested from the "[[Powered Byby a Forsaken Child|LittleSisters]]" running around Rapture, and they are protected by huge armored bodyguards called [[Giant Mook|Big Daddies]]. A [[Prequel]] novel titled ''[[Bio Shock Rapture (Literature)|BioShock: Rapture]]'' was released in 2011.
* ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' - Released in 2010, but developed by 2K Marin instead of directly by Irrational. Eight years after the events of ''[[Bioshock (Video Game)|Bioshock]]'', in 1968, Rapture has been taken over Sofia Lamb, a staunch Collectivist who hates the [[The Evils of Free Will]] and has set up a cult centered around her daughter Eleanor. The player controls a [[Super Prototype]] Big Daddy, Subject Delta, who is woken up by the Little Sisters and asked by Eleanor to rescue her from her mother.
* ''[[Bio Shock Infinite (Video Game)|Bio Shock Infinite]]'' - To be released in 2013, and set in a different continuity than the first two games. A Pinkterton agent named Booker DeWitt is sent to the lost floating city of Columbia to rescue a girl named Elizabeth. Unfortunately the city has erupted in a massive civil war between the Ultranationalist Founders and the rebellious Vox Populi, and Elizabeth is guarded by the giant clockwork robot Songbird.
 
[[The Wiki Rule|Has a Wiki]] [http://BioShock.wikia.com/wiki/BioShock_Wiki here].
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=== [[Bio ShockBioshock]] includes the tropes: ===
 
* [[Adam Smith Hates Your Guts]]: Justified, since Rapture's regulation-free economy means that shopkeepers can charge people for weaponry to defend themselves during a civil war. Subverted, since you can hack most of the game's vending machines to get yourself greatly reduced prices. In an audio diary, Andrew Ryan even complains that hacking of the vending machines undermines Rapture's capitalist values. It also shows up in places where businesses ''will'' rip-off their customers, like a fancy theater or lounge - a snack bar, even when hacked, sells for the "low, low" price of $80.
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* [[Arc Words]]: {{spoiler|Would you kindly?}}
** "A man chooses. A slave obeys."
* [[Arrows Onon Fire]]: One of the alt-fires for the crossbow shoots flaming bolts
* [[The Artifact]]: In its original phase of development, the first ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' had insectoid beings rather than altered human beings, called Gatherers, Protectors and Aggressors. These eventually became the Little Sisters, Big Daddies and Splicers, respectively. Leftovers of this naming scheme can be found, however: The Little Sister's vending machine is called "The Gatherer's Garden," and you can find a few logs or plasmid descriptions referring to "aggressors."
** And there are the "Protector Trials" DLC in ''2''.
** According to several logs, Big Daddies were officially called 'Protectors' and were nicknamed by scientists only after Gilbert Alexander developed 'bond conditioning' to maximize the Protectors' efficiency.
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* [[Bee-Bee Gun]]: The Insect Swarm plasmid, a particularly gruesome example. "Bees! I hate bees! I'm allergic!" In the sequel, the fully-upgraded plasmid ''turns slain enemies into proximity-activated beehive bombs''.
* [[Berserk Button]]: Don't touch a Little Sister while a Big Daddy's around, unless you want to end up on the business end of a huge drill {{spoiler|-such as what happened to [[Evilutionary Biologist|Dr. Suchong]]-}}or nailed to the wall with a rivet through your brain.
* [[Big Bad]]: In the first ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'', Andrew Ryan, followed by {{spoiler|Frank Fontaine}}; in the second, Sofia Lamb. Despite player suspicions and audio recordings of him basically stating he's about as ruthless as Frank Fontaine ''and'' an unscrupulous company, {{spoiler|Sinclair isn't this.}}
* [[Big Brother Is Watching]]: Rapture is dotted with security cameras, and if one gets a long enough glimpse of you it dispatches combat drones to put you down. On the upside you can hack said cameras so that enemies trigger the drone attacks. The sequel ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' features this trope even more directly as it sometimes has voices warning you over the loudspeaker that "Big ''Sister'' is Watching You!", along with graffiti warning that "LAMB IS WATCHING".
* [[Big Eater]]: Disposable food items are used instantly and there are no consumption limits. This is okay for, for example, a Pep Bar, but reaches the point of "grotesque superpower" when Delta or Jack manages to bolt down an entire potted steak or drink a whole bottle of moonshine, three Arcadia Merlot bottles and a shelf of vodka roughly one second per bottle, or chew their way through an entire storeroom full of supplies just because they can - especially Delta, who's wearing a ''sealed diving helmet''.
** Mitigated somewhat by any sort of alcoholic drink, if you drink two or more in quick succession you'll experience some serious beer goggle effects.
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* [[Blatant Item Placement]]: Averted. Much of the weapons and ammo you pick up are either scattered around as a result of a civil war, or found in stashes in offices or weapons lockers. Other things like your [[Improvised Weapon|improvised weapons]] are constructed out of mundane materials.
* [[Bloody Handprint]]
* [[Body Horror]]: Abundant. Splicers are marred by bloated tumors or lesions or twisted limbs, and looking at some of the Big Daddy suits it's impossible to imagine a normal person fitting in them. This is because the person in question has [[Squick|had their flesh removed and organs welded into the inside of the suit.]] Spider Splicers have decayed even further in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' and barely look human anymore, while the new Brute Splicers are so beefed up on gene tonics that skin and muscle grew over their clothing.
* [[Brass Balls]]: Both games uses this as a name for an achievement in some way. The first game has 'Brass Balls' which requires you to finish the game on Hard difficulty without using any Vita-Chambers. The second game has 'Big Brass Balls' which only requires you to complete the game without using any Vita-Chambers.
* [[Brainwashed and Crazy]]: Hardcore Objectivist Andrew Ryan, desperate to win Rapture's civil war, resorted to pheromones to control his population, with the justification that if Atlas won they'd be no better off than slaves anyway.
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* [[The Conscience]]:
** Bill McDonagh, Rapture's General Contractor, has been described as Ryan's conscience, though unfortunately for everyone Ryan ignores him, leading McDonagh to unsuccessfully try to solve Rapture's problems at their root.
** In ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', {{spoiler|Subject Delta serves as Eleanor's conscience, [[Karma Meter|for better or for worse]].}} Sometimes Sinclaire becomes this to Delta.
* [[Convenient Color Change]]: When you successfully hack a turret.
** Also when you use the Hypnotize plasmid and when you piss off the [[Elite Mook|Big Daddies]].
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* [[Cruel and Unusual Death]]: Getting shot to pieces by a machine gun or taking a wrench to the frontal lobe are probably the least painful ways to die in Rapture. At least they beat being burned, drilled, electrocuted, drowned, telekinetically hurled, and/or beaten to death.
* [[Cue the Sun]]: The better endings take place as dawn breaks.
* [[Death Is a Slap Onon The Wrist]]: A light slap at that thanks to the Vita-Chambers scattered throughout the levels. The sequel acknowledges this when the villain admits that the best she can do is slow you down {{spoiler|and attempts to get rid of you permanently by destroying all the Vita-Chambers in the area via crush depth.}} Unless, of course, you turn them off for an achievement run.
* [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything]]: The player can create improvised Molotov cocktails by using the Incinerate! plasmid on alcoholic beverage' bottles, and then trowing them with Telekinesie.
* [[Downloadable Content]]: A small pack of additional plasmids and tonics was released shortly after release along with one of the patches, while the [[PSPlay Station 3]] version had DLC containing three challenge rooms and a [[New Game+]] mode. The sequel has just had some additional content for the multiplayer released. Reception has been mixed, mainly as many of the additions were already on the disc and just needed to be unlocked.
** ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' also features two single-player DLC packs: the Protector Trials, in which you play as a nondescript Alpha Series in different scenarios protecting a Little Sister gathering ADAM, and Minerva's Den, a self-contained story featuring new weapons, enemies, and a new protagonist.
* [[Downer Ending]]: The Bad Ending of ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'', and dear ''God'' the two Bad Endings of ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]''.
* [[Driven to Suicide]]: Lots of little vignettes suggest this - two corpses embracing on a mattress next to a pile of pills, a body slumped against a bloodstained wall with a shotgun at its feet, a family gathered around the television with an empty bottle of cyanide tablets on the table, residents and prison inmates who escaped from the madness with the help of a rope...
** In the opening of ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', Lamb uses a mind control plasmid to force Delta to commit suicide. Fortunately, he gets better.
* [[Drunk Withwith Power]]: Every splicer, up through and including {{spoiler|Fontaine}}. Ryan and Lamb had noble ideas, too, but became controlling despite their insistence they were doing it for the greater good. A very old story.
* [[Dynamic Entry]]: Big Daddies like to do this with their drill charges, [[There Was a Door|walls or no walls]]. And in the opening scene of ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', Delta arrives to save his Little Sister from threatening Splicers by ''landing on one''.
* [[Dystopia]]
* [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]:
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* [[Enemy Scan]]: Using a special research camera to photograph enemies (somehow) grants you a damage bonus against them, as well as unique abilities or Plasmids. The sequel awards points for creative use of weapons and Plasmids.
* [[Escort Mission]]: The last level in the first game before the final boss is one of these. {{spoiler|Wearing a Big Daddy suit, you have to escort a Little Sister through a level full of Splicers trying to kill her.}} It's easier than it sounds; it may not actually be possible to "fail." And in the sequel, {{spoiler|it pretty much becomes ''[[Inverted Trope|a reverse-escort mission]]'' when Eleanor Lamb puts on the Big Sister suit.}}
** ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' had a number of optional missions that required you to protect a Little Sister while she harvested ADAM. They weren't strictly necessary, but granted you lots of bonus ADAM.
* [[Evil Laugh]]: The [[Monster Clown|Circus of Values]] kiosks. Made all the more creepy by being a flat monotone.
* [[Evilutionary Biologist]]: Averted. Though the catchphrase of the plasmid jingles is "Evolve Today!" and ADAM is based on genetics [[Gone Horribly Wrong]], nobody really seems concerned with becoming a superior human through them. Plasmids are just another market commodity or weapon, and little more.
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*** This does [[Fridge Logic|make a sort of sense]]: the barrels most likely contain oil, and the slicks probably leaked from them.
* [[Extreme Omnivore]]: Both protagonists will apparently eat pretty much anything that vaguely resembles food. Chips you've fished out of a trashcan? Sure thing! Coffee you found ''in a toilet''? Down the hatch. Bonus points to Delta, who manages to eat everything in his path without once taking off his sealed diving helmet. Then there are Spider Splicer Organs, which (with enough "research, see Enemy Scan above) can be used as first aid kits. One can only imagine what you do with them.
* [[Face Death Withwith Dignity]]: {{spoiler|Andrew Ryan}} in the first game and {{spoiler|Grace Holloway}} in the sequel do so (if you choose to kill {{spoiler|her}}). {{spoiler|Stanley Poole,}} [[Dirty Coward|on the other hand...]]
* [[Fate Worse Than Death]]: You see many examples of this around Rapture, but the biggest of all is probably becoming a Big Daddy, a mindless being whose only purpose is to slavishly protect their Little Sister. It's a ''very'' one-way process too.
* [[Finger-Snap Lighter]]: The Incinerate! Plasmids.
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* [[Freeze Ray]]: The Winter Blast plasmid, natch.
** Also, the Chemical Thrower when loaded up on Liquid Nitrogen. Perhaps moreso, since it fires a continuous stream of freezing, rather than the Plasmid's 'blasts'.
* [[Fun Withwith Acronyms]]: Averted with ADAM and EVE, which, despite being always written out in all caps, are never revealed to stand for anything.
* [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]: In the story, ADAM is used to activate and maintain one's ability to splice; in the game it's treated more like a form of currency for plasmids and upgrades that are otherwise available free of charge.
** In the [[Apocalyptic Log|Audio Diary]] "Today's Raid," Diane [[Mc Clintock]] mentions having "snagged 31 rounds of buckshot, 4 frag grenades, a shotgun, and 34 ADAM." It may have implied 34 ''units of'' ADAM, and this (even the low number is noteworthy), combined with its market value, indicates that ADAM was a very high commodity for barter [[Gameplay and Story Integration|in the story as well as in gameplay]]. Andrew Ryan offers 1000 Adam to the splicer who kills Jack.
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* [[Genius Bruiser]]: All three protagonists have good hacking and puzzle-solving abilities, in addition to being good with firearms.
* [[Gentle Giant]]: The Big Daddies are quite gentle when escorting their Little Sisters, and will carefully help them into and out of their tunnel hatches, or carefully scoot them out of harm's way if there are obstacles. [[Papa Wolf|But if you get too close,]] they'll nail you to the ''wall.''
* [[Giant Mook]]: Big Daddies fall somewhere between this and full-blown boss encounters in their own right. Also, the burly new Brute Splicer in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]''.
* [[Grievous Harm Withwith a Body]]: The corpses of enemies are extremely effective weapons via telekinesis.
* [[Grande Dame]]: The "Lady Smith" splicers. "You call that tenderloin? If you serve that in any respectable hotel in New York, they'd laugh you out of town. We've got to have ''standards'', even in troubled times."
* [[Gratuitous Foreign Language]]: Due to the multicultural society, various characters from non-English speaking backgrounds sometimes let their foreign language show.
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* [[Gory Discretion Shot]]:
** A form of ''Non''-Gory Discretion Shot in the form of all-concealing green mist is used the moment you actually harvest a Little Sister.
** Interestingly, in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', you have an opportunity to see what happens when somebody else attacks and harvests a Little Sister, and they too are surrounded by an evil-looking pea-green fog.
* [[Harder Than Hard]]: The [[Play Station 3]] port, in addition to the Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulties, has Survivor, which is described on the difficulty selection screen as "every bullet counts." They mean it. In this mode, enemies can do some serious damage to you and nearly all of your plasmids consume a lot more EVE. And to add to the fun, two of the trophies forces you to play the game on this difficulty. The first trophy requires you to simply finish the game. The second trophy requires you to finish the game '''without''' using Vita-Chambers. Said trophies are respectively called [[Ironic Echo|"A Man Chooses" and "I Chose The Impossible"]] Though not the same difficulty, the [[Xbox 360]] version similarly has Achievements for just finishing the game on Hard ("Seriously Good At This") and without using any Vita-Chambers ("Brass Balls").
* [[Hate Plague]]: The Enrage plasmid lets you throw a squishy, organic [[Conflict Ball]] at foes, turning them into berserk team-killers.
* [[Healing Factor]]: The Little Sisters, justified due to the ADAM in their system. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BMmUEaAKSI Deconstructed in the second game:] overly fast healing of broken bones often means [[Required Secondary Power|they don't set properly]], so they have to be re-broken several times to be put back into place.
* [[Heroic Mime]]: Jack, the protagonist of the first game, has exactly two lines in total, both in the opening cutscene. Lampshaded in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', with one of Father Wales' audio diaries describing Jack as a silent and mysterious Messiah figure; "Then, though he spake not a word..." The second game's protagonist, being a Big Daddy, straddles the line between this and [[The Unintelligible]]; distorted but vaguely-human grunts and roars, and not much else.
* [[Hidden Elf Village]]: Deconstructed. If Andrew Ryan's fear of discovery by the surface nations hadn't made Rapture into one of these, there would have been no black market for Frank Fontaine to control. For a captain of industry, Ryan [[You Fail Economics Forever|was blind to basic economics]] - demands ''will'' be supplied, laws only make them more expensive.
* [[Hide Your Children]]: Pointedly averted; whether to kill the Little Sisters is the primary moral decision the player is given. There are no other children around though, meaning no boys at all.
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* [[Hyperactive Metabolism]]: There are a number of comestibles that will restore your health and [[Mana Meter|EVE]] meters, but only by a very small amount. Eating snacks such as potato chips and cream-filled cakes gives you health, while drinking coffee gives you EVE, and eating a "pep bar" gives you a smidgen each of health and EVE. Meanwhile, smoking cigarettes will give you a bit of EVE at the cost of some health, while drinking alcohol will give you a bit of health at the cost of some EVE. The gene tonic Extra Nutrition will give you more health from consumables, and the gene tonic Booze Hound causes you to gain EVE instead of losing it when drinking booze.
** There is, however, a mild disincentive to drinking alcohol for health—drink too much in too short a time and the corners of the screen will become fuzzy and your movements will become drunken wobbles for a minute or two.
** ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' superficially expanded the set of consumable items, adding not only more mundane food items like canned goods and cola but vitamins, aspirin, fresh water, and something called "Doc Hollcroft's Cure-All", which restores both health and EVE despite being, as an audio diary on the website reveals, a placebo.
* [[Hyperspace Arsenal]]: Maybe there's a gene tonic that gives people personal pocket dimensions.
* [[Hypocrite]]:
** Andrew Ryan. ''Nominally'' an [[Useful Notes/Objectivism|Objectivist]], but he ends up nationalizing industries, restricting free speech, killing ideological opponents and ultimately (according to Diane McClintock) believing more in power over others than his nominal philosophy.
** In ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', Sofia Lamb practices her philosophy [[Deconstruction|in a brutally consistent fashion]] {{spoiler|until the end of the game, where she's quite happy to doom The Family to a watery grave while she makes her escape on a submersible}}. This is actually justified as she had no intention of actually saving the people of Rapture, she only wanted a stable rapture so she could extract the Adam without a war raging.
** As you start getting closer to {{spoiler|Fontaine}}, he starts complaining about your "betrayal", insisting that "nobody told you nothing but lies" and referring to himself as "family".
* [[Hypocritical Humor]] / [[Irony]] - many of the splicers really don't know what they have become
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* [[Item Crafting]]: The first game lets you do this with "U-Invent" machines.
* [[It Got Worse]]: The running theme of the series.
* [[It's All About Me]]: Andrew Ryan. Frank Fontaine. Pretty much everyone in Rapture, really. [[Ayn Rand (Creator)|That's kinda the point, though]].
{{quote| '''Andrew Ryan''': In the end, the only thing that matters to me, is me. And the only thing that matters to you, is you.}}
** As regards Ryan in particular, it's hinted by the audio diary "Fontaine Must Go" and the fact that his name is plastered all over the city's signage that his motives in building Rapture were less to do with creating a haven for the world's elite, and more to do with creating a haven for ''himself'' where he could milk the inhabitants for all they're worth... one way or another.
* [[Karma Meter]]: The first one attempted it with the Rescue/Harvest choice for dealing with Little Sisters, and even the game's director admitted the black or white choice was a poor implementation. It was also incredibly harsh: harvest just two out of 21 Little Sisters and you get the evil ending. The sequel seems to go through the motions by giving you the same choices again, just twice, ''but'' there are also three characters whom you can choose to kill or spare, which also affects the ending, giving a total of four; Mother Theresa, baby-eater, [[Judge Dredd]], and [[I Did What I Had to Do]].
* [[Kill'Em All]]: More or less the Bad ending for both ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' and ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]''; it's actually quite a [[Karmic Death|karmic ending]] since in both games, the ending reflects your actions during the game.
* [[Large Ham]]: Some audio diaries come to mind. For example, ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQls88y-i6w/ Pierre Gobbi is practically chewing on the scenery when expressing his unhappiness about the watered-down wine.]''
** Wine to a Frenchman is [[Serious Business]].
* [[Last Chance Hit Point]]: On Easy or Normal, any attack that should kill you (i.e. taking a rocket to the face with only about 10 health left) only bumps you down to 1 health, and you have to take an additional hit to die. ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' takes it even further by [[Mercy Invincibility|making you invincible for about 1 second after being brought down to 1 health]]. This is disabled on the highest difficulty, however, which makes things a lot harder.
* [[Lego Genetics]]: There's simply no way that all those superpowers Jack gains could interface with his DNA so easily. The same with all the splicers, but they certainly went crazy enough.
* [[Lighthouse Point]]: Where Jack starts out and where the second game ends.
* [[Lightning Bruiser]]: It's quite a shock to discover just how fast a Big Daddy can [[Bullfight Boss|charge across a room]] and flatten you. On the bright side, you get to play as one in the sequel and are just as swift and brutal when you lower your drill and charge.
* [[Look Onon My Works Ye Mighty and Despair]]: Rapture, what was to be an Objectivist utopia, and now is decidedly not.
* [[Mad Scientist]]: Dr. Suchong et al. Tenenbaum skirts the line mainly by [[My God, What Have I Done?|realizing what she's doing]] and becoming [[The Atoner]].
** Played with in the case of Gil Alexander who was sure that his next experiment will render him insane. {{spoiler|He's right.}}
** Sofia Lamb is a rare example of a Mad Social Scientist.
* [[Magic Byby Any Other Name]]: There's a plasmid equivalent of just about every standard RPG magic power, as long as you have the EVE.
* [[Magic Genetics]]: There probably isn't a real "shoot lighting from your hand" gene, and ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' shows why we should be thankful for that.
* [[Malevolent Masked Men]]: Splicers often wear Mardi Gras-ish masks. Possibly justified, as it's stated in Audio-Logs that everything really went to hell in Rapture on New Year's Day. And considering some of their appearances otherwise...
* [[Mama Bear]]: The Rosebud Splicer's main reason for the descent into madness and the violence that follows appears to be her search for her missing daughter.
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** Lamb is a rather fitting name for someone starting a seemingly benevolent, pacifistic religious movement.
* [[Mind Over Matter]]: The Telekinesis plasmid. "Pick up big stuff with your mind. Throw them at your enemies. What else do you need to know?"
* [[Mix and Match]]: [[Zeerust]] [[Science Fiction]] + [[Survival Horror]] + Art Deco + Anarcho-Capitalistic Dystopia = ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]''
* [[Monster Clown]]: "Fill your ''Cravings'' at the Circus of ''Values!'' ''[[Evil Laugh|Hahahahahaaaa]]!!''
* [[The Movie]]: Expected eventually (still in pre-production as of Fall 2010), directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (''[[Twenty Eight28 Weeks Later]]''), written by John Logan (''[[Gladiator (Filmfilm)|Gladiator]]'', ''[[The Aviator]]'', ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Filmfilm)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]''), and filmed using greenscreen techniques from ''[[300 (Film)|Three Hundred]]''. Whether or not it will [[Video Game Movies Suck|suck]] remains to be seen.
* [[MST3K Mantra]]: According to the ''Making of [[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' DVD, one of the early difficulties in designing Rapture was that, being on the sea floor, the city would have to be designed in a certain way in order to cope with the natural spreading and movement of the sea floor. Eventually, [[Word of God|the artistic developers]] simply ignored the issue and designed it as any normal city would be. They do say, however, that the final design is apt because [[Fridge Brilliance|like the idea of a Objectivist-run city, a city built on the seafloor just isn't feasible]].
* [[Multiple Endings]]:
** In the original, if you rescue all the Little Sisters you find rather than harvest them, {{spoiler|you bring them up to the surface with you, where they live normal lives before [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|all returning to comfort you on your deathbed.]]}} If you instead harvest them all, after beating the last boss {{spoiler|1=you gorge yourself on ADAM, lead an army of Splicers to the surface, and seize a submarine armed with nuclear weapons}}. As a nod to the choice, the Splicers in the sequel argue over which path Jack took.
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* [[My Dad Can Beat Up Your Dad]]:
** The chatter from the Gatherer's Garden kiosks. More specifically, "My daddy's smarter than Einstein! Stronger than Hercules! And he can make fire with a snap of his fingers! Are you as good as my daddy, mister? Not if you don't come to Gatherer's Garden!"
** The Little Sisters you adopt "I got the best Big Daddy" from ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'':
*** "Daddy's giving you [[Circling Birdies|stars and birdies!]]"
* [[Neural Implanting]]: Wouldn't you know it, [[Psycho Serum|ADAM does that too!]]
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** Also, there's little point since the whole city is literally falling apart anyways.
* [[Not So Different]]:
** There's no real difference between Fontaine and Ryan by the time ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' takes place as [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope|both of them have gone far off the deep end to achieve their goals]].
** In the sequel, {{spoiler|Lamb's version of "the greater good" is ultimately as monstrous and terrible as Ryan's philosophy, and she's just as willing to cast those ideals aside (and screw the rest) when it comes to saving herself}}.
* [[Not Wearing Tights]]: A lot of [[Stock Super Powers]] are thrown about, but the closest anyone gets to a superhero costume are armoured diving suits or masks, and they're not of the "cool" variety.
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* [[Plot Coupon That Does Something]]: ADAM, and the Little Sisters who produce it.
* [[Posthumous Character]]: You learn a lot about some characters from all the plentiful audio diaries you recover, hearing about their life in pre-crapsack Rapture, their hopes and dreams, their role during the civil war... and then you find their corpse. In the sequel, certain characters from the first game manage to cast their shadow over everything despite being dead for 10 years or more.
* [[Powered Byby a Forsaken Child]]: The Little Sisters (originally children of about 5-8 years old) were set up as mobile factory-reservoirs for ADAM by implanting ADAM-producing sea slugs in their stomachs, and brainwashing them into gathering additional ADAM from corpses. Now, the scientists who set up this whole grisly situation harvested non-lethally by making the Little Sisters regurgitate the ADAM and sending them back into the streets to continue gathering, but apparently, that's not enough for the Splicers, because their perferred method (and yours, if you take the evil path) is to rip it from their forsaken bodies and kill them just to earn a little extra juice.
* [[Power Perversion Potential]]: The world of ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' incorporates body-altering tonics that can do anything from beef up your fighting ability to allowing you to shoot fire out of your fingers, and can all bought and sold on the open market. Imagine what other kinds of tonics must have been feasible. And given Andrew Ryan's insistence that the market be completely free and unregulated, some of them most certainly ''did'' become avaliable to the public.
** Not just imagine- one of the ghosts in Arcadia is 'spliced up in ways you can't imagine."
** medpacks heal anything from skinned knees to STD's.
* [[Psycho Serum]]: Once again, ADAM. The only ones not affected are the Little Sisters, who are instead hallucinating a luxurious dream world instead of the corpse-strewn, decaying madhouse they're wandering through.
** And it is revealed in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' that even they are being affected, but at a slower rate. Hence, Big Sisters.
* [[Psycho Strings]]: Most of the score consists of stringed instruments, which can flip from melancholy to maddening in an instant.
** Bacground music in ''2's'' [[Red Light District|Pink Pearl]] consists entirely of this.
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'''Jim:''' ''Now'' you're talking, Mary! }}
* [[Punk Punk]]: Has shades of [[Diesel Punk]] (In Era), [[Bio Punk]] (In Technology), [[Steampunk]] (In Asthetics), and [[Ocean Punk]] (In Location and city function)
* [[Punch Clock Villain|Punch Clock Villains]]: In ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' (1) the splicers are only after you because of the bounty Ryan put on your head; they aren't real villains and care very little about you. They are just consumed and driven by a drug addiction.
** And in ‘’2’’, they are only after you because they think you're trying to kill or corrupt their messiah.
* [[Ragdoll Physics]]: Telekinesis lets you use debris, furniture, even dead bodies as weapons. You can even use the plasmid to yank a Splicer's mask off and beat them to death with it. In ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', the speargun's reusable ammo can be TK'ed out of an attacker and thrown right back in.
* [[Rich Bitch]]: One sort of female splicer has a snooty upper-class accent, complains about the quality of the tenderloin (which doesn't exist), and threatens to "send the boy out to give you a good thrashing". It's creepier (and at times funnier) than it sounds.
* [[Right Hand Versus Left Hand]]: Several of Rapture's citizens have tried to assassinate Andrew Ryan, two of which were Anya Andersdotter and the engineer Kyburz. When Anya turned up in Kyburz's office in an attempt to pry information from him, Kyburz believed she was a spy trying to trick him into revealing his own plot and turned her in to Ryan's men. In an audio diary he admits that he isn't sure about her, but can't take the risk this far into his own plans.
* [[Recycled in Space]]: ‘’[[Bio ShockBioshock]]’’ is ‘’[[System Shock]]’’ [[Inverted Trope|not]] [[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE]]!
* [[Red Light District]]: [[Meaningful Name|Eve's Garden]] in Fort Frolic. "Come bite the apple!"
** The sequel has Siren Alley, which bears a strong resemblance to [[The Big Easy|New Orleans']] French Quarter. The area is a battlefield between the Wales brothers, one of which manages a hotel-turned-whorehouse, while the other has [[Badass Preacher|found religion]] and put up some religious murals depicting events from ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]] 1''.
* [[La Résistance]]: How Atlas' followers view themselves.
* [[Respawning Enemies]]: Each level is slowly repopulated with Splicers over time, but the respawn rate is low enough that it's not too annoying. On the other hand, the Big Daddies respawn almost immediately, which would be more annoying if they weren't totally harmless when left alone, not to mention useful with the right plasmids.
** In the sequel, the enemies respawn more quickly, and enemies can spawn in locations that would be impossible to reach without [[Offscreen Teleportation]].
* [[The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized]]: The attack-you-on-sight, mutated, insane Splicers that follow Fontaine are indistinguishable from the attack-you-on-sight, mutated, insane Splicers that are loyal to Ryan, or the [[Overly Long Gag|attack-you on sight, mutated, insane Splicers]] that belong to the Family. Though at least the latter are well-behaved regarding the Little Sisters.
* [[Rule of Symbolism]]: Lots of religious symbols show up in the game; the most obvious example is the name of the city, [[Caught Up in Thethe Rapture|Rapture]], supposedly a reference to the [[wikipedia:Nitrogen narcosis|"Rapture of the Deep"]].
** There's also a few [[Crucified Hero Shot|crucified corpses]] to be found, either in Ryan's foyer for his "spy collection," in medical facilities pinned to operating tables, or near the docks with a smuggler strung up just right. The last case was probably intentional, since he was smuggling religious contraband.
** Also the substances you need to use the plasmids are called Adam and Eve. Adam is used to buy them and Eve is used to repower then.
* [[Scare Chord]]: The soundtrack has random ones thrown in to mess with you (bordering on ([[Playing Withwith a Trope|playing with]] [[Musical Spoiler]]). Also, your plasmids have specific noises they make when you switch to them, and Electrobolt's is a scare chord.
* [[Scenery Gorn]]: Rapture. ''All of it.''
* [[Scenery Porn]]: The bathysphere ride into Rapture in the first game, and the underwater strolls in the second.
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* [[Second-Hour Superpower]]: The plasmids from both games.
* [[Shout-Out]]: The helpful automated voice in Fontaine Futuristics stutters and sounds like a [[System Shock|very familiar AI]].
** Speaking of said A.I, one of the achievements for ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' is called 'Look at You, Hacker.'
** Also, one of the Big Daddy classes is called a Rumbler, which was also the name of the [[Giant Mook|Giant Mooks]] from ''System Shock 2''.
** "[[Dead Rising|53,596 zombies were killed in the making of this game.]]"
** "Grab a [[Half Life|crowbar]] or somethin'!"
** The 'Baby Jane' splicers, are most probably a reference to the novel/1962 film ''[[What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?]]?'', which involved an aging, psychopathic ex-child star, trying to get back into show business. The splicer even quotes one of the lines from the film:
{{quote| '''Baby Jane:''' I used to be beautiful, what happened to me?}}
** It was probably unintentional, but Dr. Suchong sounded a little like a villain from ''[[Jonny Quest]]'' in not just his ethnic origin, but in that he inadvertently {{spoiler|causes his own demise...}}
** The Little Sisters' glowing [[Village of the Damned (Film)|eyes]].
** The "Would you kindly" conspiracy board you see just before meeting Andrew Ryan is a reference to the movie [[The Usual Suspects]].
** "[[Portal (Video Gameseries)|Bring Your Daughter To Work Day]]". Oh, she gets tested, alright.
** Certain splicers can be heard shouting "[[Pulp Fiction|...and you shall know thy name is the LORD...]]" when idle.
** From the ride down to the city in the bathysphere, the film starts with an ad: "Fire at your fingertips!", for the incinerate plasmid. That was how [[Ayn Rand (Creator)|Dagny]] [[Atlas Shrugged|Taggart]] described cigarettes. And the ad shows a man lighting a cigarette.
** The credits for ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' include the message [[Azumanga Daioh (Manga)|"Go Team Sea Slug!"]]
** When you use Incinerate while carrying a Little Sister, she will sometimes misquote the [[The Wizard of Oz (Filmfilm)|Wicked Witch of the West]].
** There is a keycode opened by a code 0047. You learn of this from the recording made by certain [[Hitman|Tobias Riefer]].
** Along the same vein is a keycode 0451- the first lock and keycode you encounter, actually. This is a reference to a long-running number that dates back to the [[System Shock]] days, used in both the original and the Irrational-developed sequel as the first door codes you find, as well as [[Deus Ex (Video Game)|Deus Ex]] (both the original and the sequel- again, the first door codes you find.) The number itself is a reference to Looking Glass Software's old office door code, which in turn was a reference to [[Fahrenheit 451]]. ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' inverts the number, but it's still the first lock you encounter.
** Danny Wilkins, one of the playable characters from ''Bioshock 2'''s multiplayer, is a football player. He wears a purple jersey bearing the number 4, like Brett Favre as a Minnesota Viking during the game's development.
** One of the books lying around in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' is titled [[Discworld (Literature)|Applied headology]].
* [[Sinister Scraping Sound]]: The sound Splicers makes when they drag their weapons. And the sound the Spider Splicers make whenever they move.
* [[Smoke Out]]: Nitro Splicers carry smokebombs to do this, whenever the player gets too close to them.
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** Some of the Splicers evidently made contact with those missionary smugglers, and will sing "[[Ironic Nursery Rhyme|Jesus Loves Me]]" while idle, or moan [[Amazing Freaking Grace]] to themselves when they're lurking out of sight.
** The award for the most ironic song in the game would have to go to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=938DUvtFbxU The Best Things In Life (Are Free).]
* [[Spanner in Thethe Works]]: No matter how clever your plots are, no matter how totally you control everyone in Rapture, and no matter how [[Magnificent Bastard|magnificent]] you are, never underestimate a swarm of Little Sisters' ability to screw you and your plans up.
** Early in the sequel, a Thuggish Splicer literally sticks his lead pipe (no pun intended) into a set of gears to jam a door, and you have to pull it out with Telekinesis to proceed.
* [[Spiritual Successor]]: To ''[[System Shock]]'' and ''[[System Shock]] 2''. Almost all of the game mechanics are identical to the latter. In fact, in interviews with Gamasutra [[Word of God|developers have stated]] their starting plan was "''System Shock 2'' did pretty well, let's make ''System Shock 2'' again."
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** The Waders model Splicer is a parody of Evangelical Christians that criticizes their questionably excessive worshipping.
* [[Talkative Loon]]: It can be worth sneaking up on a Splicer just to hear what they're saying to themselves. Or not.
* [[Teleporters and Transporters]]: A Teleport plasmid was planned, but due to [[Sequence Breaking]] concerns was never implemented. The Houdini Splicers however, can pop out of thin air to hurl fireballs at you before disappearing again, only to reappear in some other location. The ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' multiplayer states that it's actually an [[Invisibility]] Plasmid, but it doesn't explain how Houdinis can move to otherwise inaccessible areas or move in and out of a room without opening a door.
** It's played with in the sequel, where you can find an Unstable Teleport plasmid in a sealed room. Attempting to pick it up causes it to move from place to place out of the room to the business lobby. At that point, it telports the player to various strange spots around the map, while humnorusly chasing a Splicer out of the room it originated from, before dropping you off in a darkroom with a Gene Tonic and some EVE Hypos; once you pick up the Tonic, you warp back to the lobby.
* [[Teleporting Keycard Squad]]: If you crawl through an air duct or unlock a door to a supply cache, chances are there's a Splicer or two waiting for you when you return.
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** Exemplified in the Big Daddies, who live only to protect the Little Sisters. They will ''never'' start a fight. [[Papa Wolf|They're happy to]] [[Lightning Bruiser|finish]] [[Bullfight Boss|one]], though.
*** Though they will freak out and try to kill you if you get too close to their Little Sister. Or cause them even a slight amount of damage by accident. It's ''possible'' to get a Big Daddy to start a fight, though it's by no means hard to avoid doing it.
** Thanks to Sofia Lamb's propensity for brainwashing and genetic manipulation, this pops up a ''lot'' in the sequel. {{spoiler|Mark Meltzer and Sinclair both get turned into Lamb-controlled Big Daddies, and Gil Alexander ends up as an insane, megalomaniacal [[Brain In Aa Jar]].}}
* [[Trick Arrow]]: The crossbow's second alt-fire are bolts attached to electrified wires called "trap bolts".
* [[Uncanny Valley]]: Intentionally invoked in the original, where everything from the Splicers to the Little Sisters just looked ''wrong'' even if they weren't horribly mutated. The sequel discards it, making the Little Sisters more adorable (since, after all, you're conditioned to protect them) and the Splicers less inhuman - which only makes them ''more'' horrifying by accentuating their mutations and deformities.
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** [[Wingding Eyes|X his eyes!]]
** Daddy's giving you [[Circling Birdies|stars and birdies!]]
* [[Unusable Enemy Equipment]]: {{spoiler|Towards the end of ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]] 1'', the player has to dress up like a Big Daddy. Jack has to walk around the level collecting scattered parts of their outfit. He cannot take more than one intact part of the suit from the dead Big Daddy he starts the level near, and for good reason: Big Daddy parts are permanently fused to the body.}}
** In the sequel, Alpha Series' use upgraded weapons. You can only loot them for ammo, not trade your vanilla grenade launcher for one with the shield or a two-shot shotgun for a six-shot one.
* [[The Un-Reveal]]: We never actually see what Big Daddies look like under their helmets; as if taunting us with this trope, ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' begins from the POV of a Big Daddy prototype who is commanded at one point to remove his helmet, and he complies{{spoiler|, right before ''shooting himself in the head''.}}
* [[Utopia Justifies the Means]]: Ironically, Ryan turns Rapture into a police state in order to protect his Objectivist Libertarian dream city. Meanwhile Sofia Lamb of the sequel is an even greater believer in this trope, being an collectivist taken [[Up to Eleven]], desiring to do "good" for a people she views mainly as tools.
* [[Video Game Caring Potential]] / [[Video Game Cruelty Potential]]: Set Splicers on fire! Watch as they run toward a pool of water, then electrify them! Bash their faces repeatedly with a wrench! Freeze them, ignore their pleas for help, and shatter them into chunks of icy flesh! Toss them like ragdolls! Rig medical stations to poison them! Lure them into waiting turrets! Impale them to scenery through their faces! This is ''encouraged'' with the sequel, where you progress faster with [[Enemy Scan|enemy research]] by killing foes with new and inventive applications of your weapons and plasmids.
** The Little Sisters are the only completely harmless enemies in the game. You can rescue them and turn them back into little girls... or kill them for ADAM. The potential for both is ramped up in the sequel while you play as a Big Daddy - you can "adopt" another Daddy's partner, run around the level with her riding on your back, protect her while she harvests some ADAM for you, and finally rescue her from her living nightmare, or viciously betray her trust.
*** The game presents the Little Sisters as a moral choice, but the way it reacts to those choices makes it less moral and more practical - if you harvest one, you get more ADAM right now. If you rescue one, you get less ADAM immediately - but for every three Little Sisters you rescue, you get a gift at the nearest plasmid vendor containing only a little less ADAM than you would have gained by harvesting, plus a couple plasmids or gene tonics, including a few you can't get any other way. So the only real reason to harvest Little Sisters is just because you're a bastard.
*** In the last level of ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', there are many splicers that are so far gone they just rock side to side. You can still kill them.
**** [[Mercy Kill|why wouldn't you?]]
* [[Wall Crawl]]: Spider Splicers just skip the walls and go straight to crab-walking on the ceiling, which is just as freaky as it sounds.
* [[Watering Down]]: This is Pierre Gobbi's main complaint with Rapture; watered down wine to rip off customers (who obviously have no other choice to get wine). Judging by the nature of ADAM and the fact homemade Plasmids became increasingly common, it would not be surprising if more illicit sources of ADAM were cut with other stuff or watered down.
* [[Wham! Episode]]: Rapture Central Control in the original, or the sequel's Persephone Penal Colony.
* [[What Could Have Been]]: The original ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' game underwent many, many changes from the time it was pitched to the final product. The original pitch still had the [[Zeerust]] idea; they wanted it to take place on land, however, in a series of interconnected controlled environment chambers created by 1940's Germany. The laboratories would be full of mysteriously dead human bodies, being overrun by strange, insectoid life forms called Gatherers, who collected genetic material and body parts, the Protectors for the Gatherers, and predatory Aggressors. These eventually developed into the Little Sisters, Big Daddies and Splicers, respectively, when the developers decided they wanted a more "human" angle. The concept art book for ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]]'' shows off some of these life-forms; particularly striking is one insectoid being half-fused into a human body using its arms and legs to walk and fire a pistol. Among other things promised was the ability to alter the controlled environment, such as raising the temperature in an area and giving yourself a plasmid that protected you from heat exhaustion.
** According to the original pitch of the game, you would have played as Carlos Cuello, a "deprogrammer" asssigned to infiltrate a mysterious cult based on a remote island and "rescue" a wealthy heiress being held there. The game would have also included a much more in-depth weapon creation system, based on the superpower creation system in ''[[Freedom Force]]''. Some of the weapons you could make included a triple-barelled automatic shotgun, a silenced railgun, magnetic grenades, a sniper rifle that shoots acid-coated bullets, ''and a chain lightning taser pistol''.
** One of the insectoids nearly made it to ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' - the concept art shows Splicers turning into things that made [[Resident Evil|G-Virus mutants]] look cute.
** The original game had Jack mutate more and more with plasmid use, and would make players decide if they wanted to become a hideous freak like the splicers to survive, or refuse, keeping their humanity at the cost of less safety. The final product ''encourages'' you to use more ADAM and EVE.
*** The weapon mods originally looked like they were cobbled together with random household junk [[MacGyver]] style, as a means to emphasize how Repture was supposed to be a mostly weapons free society. Levine decided that the weapons ended up looking "dorky" and thus changed the mods as to still look hand modified but "by someone who knows what they're doing".
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** Also during said phase, Mark Meltzer was apparently supposed to play a bigger role in the story, even being the one who hired the main player (either a detective or a parent whose daughter had also gone missing) in the first place.
** Subject Delta's armor used to be based off of old WWII-era Bombers and would have been a lot more top-heavy and bulkier.
** Sander Cohen was planned at one point to return in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' as a "20-foot-tall Freudian monster bunny".
** Some of the elements above (man infiltrating hidden area, singular [[Big Bad]]/[[The Dragon]] harassing you at every turn) are being recycled into ''[[Bio ShockBioshock]] Infinite'', while the Russian soldier AI was utilized for the Splicers in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]''.
** During the early stages of ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'', there was a giant squid boss that Delta was supposed to fight outside of Rapture.
* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: The bad ending of the original has Tenenbaum chew you out for being such an amoral monster, which shouldn't bother you if you made the decisions to earn it.
** Sofia Lamb attempts to invoke this tirelessly throughout the course of the sequel, but for the most part her accusations are ineffectual. Although, if Delta's been a particularly abusive father, it can hit pretty hard.
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* [[You All Look Familiar]]: Only two characters in the original had unique character models, and even some major cast members had to make do with un-deformed versions of Splicer models. Happily averted in the sequel, where even minor named characters with only a few seconds of screentime have unique and detailed models.
** They avoid making it too obvious in the first game by making sure you see every named NPC from behind (Johnny, Julie), from very far away (Atlas at Smuggler's Hideout, Tenenbaum in the Medical Pavillion), or obscured by a mask or scenery (Steinman, Wilkins, Tenenbaum at Mercury Suites), saving the unique character models for the two characters you actually converse with up close.
* [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness]]: An audio diary titled as such in ''[[Bio Shock 2 (Video Game)|Bio Shock 2]]'' explains that {{spoiler|not only did the rest of the Alpha series meet this fate, but Gil Alexander himself has also been abandoned by Sofia}}.
** Ryan to Professor Langford after she decides to help Jack restore Arcadia with the Lazarus Vector. The specific reason is that her contract made all her intellectual discoveries Ryan's property. Considering Ryan's [[Author Tract]] about "owning the sweat of one's brow", and how she's one of the few sane, helpful and (if a bit amoral) nice people in Rapture, her death is a big [[Player Punch]] moment.
** {{spoiler|After Jack has killed Ryan and shut down the auto-destruct, ending Ryan's control of Rapture, Atlas/Fontaine sends security bots after him, and when that doesn't work, activates Code Yellow.}}
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