List of characters in the BioShock series

The BioShock series of video games are story-driven first person shooters that have the player exploring dystopian settings created by Ken Levine and his team at Irrational Games. The first two games, BioShock and its direct sequel, BioShock 2, take place in the underwater city of Rapture in the 1950s and 1960s, which was influenced heavily by Ayn Rand's Objectivism. The third game, BioShock Infinite, is set aboard the floating air-city of Columbia in 1912, designed around the concept of American Exceptionalism. Though Infinite is not a direct sequel to the previous games, the game is thematically linked; a short scene within the core Infinite game returns to Rapture, while the downloadable content BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea tie in many of the plot elements between BioShock and BioShock Infinite.

All three games feature a number of characters, including the player's character and other non-playable characters (NPC), that drive the games' respective stories, and reflect some of the themes that Levine's team incorporated into the games. The following is a list of character from the BioShock games, arranged in terms of which games they were introduced in.

BioShock

Jack

The protagonist of BioShock, whom the player controls throughout the game. Jack was a passenger on board an airplane that crashed near a lighthouse in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that provided entry to Rapture. During his journey through Rapture, he encounters various gene altering substances, known as plasmids and Gene tonics, that he uses to defend himself. As Jack journeys through Rapture, he has strange visions of his family. Late in the game (before he kills Andrew Ryan) he finds out that he is Ryan's illegitimate son, and was genetically conditioned to do whatever someone said if they used the phrase "would you kindly", which Atlas had used since the moment Jack and he met. Jack then kills Ryan and shuts down Rapture's self-destruct switch, only to find out that Atlas is in fact Frank Fontaine: a notorious gangster and former leader of Rapture's black market. Escaping Rapture's automated defense systems, he ends up in the care of Dr. Tenenbaum, who frees him of his "trigger phrase ailment". He is voiced by Nate Wells.

Andrew Ryan

Main article: Andrew Ryan (BioShock)

Andrew Ryan was a business magnate in the 1940s and 1950s, and seeking to avoid scrutiny from governments and other oversight, ordered the secret construction of an underwater city, Rapture. When Ryan's vision for a utopia in Rapture collapsed into dystopia, he hides himself away and uses armies of mutated humans, "Splicers", to defend himself and fight against those resisting him, including the player-character Jack within the first game. He is voiced by Armin Shimerman.

Frank Fontaine/Atlas

Frank Fontaine is the main antagonist in BioShock. He is a criminal mastermind, is very intelligent and has a skill for evasion, and becomes the arch-enemy of Andrew Ryan as he simply wishes to use Rapture for money and power instead of Ryan's lofty ideals. He was responsible for countless murders and igniting the civil war, as well as Jack's kidnapping. To escape from Ryan's forces, Fontaine faked his death and later took up the identity of Atlas, speaking for the lower class of Rapture. Ryan feared Atlas' power and initially captured him and sending him and his loyal men to an underwater prison, but they were able to escape and in 1959 launched an all-out war against Ryan. Atlas serves as Jack's guide for most of the game, luring him towards Ryan under the guise of trying to save his fictitious wife and son that he claimed Ryan had trapped. He betrays Jack after the death of Ryan and becomes the game's final boss, pumping himself so full of Adam that he barely resembles his original self. He is killed when a number of freed Little Sisters swarm him and stab him to death with their Adam needles. He is voiced by Greg Baldwin.

Big Daddies

Main article: Big Daddy (BioShock)

Big Daddies are heavily spliced (genetically mutated and altered) human beings who have had their skin and organs directly grafted into antiqued, heavily armored atmospheric diving suits. They are armed with a rivet gun, heavy drill, rocket launcher, or ion laser. They roam the underwater dystopian city of Rapture, mentally conditioned to protect the Little Sisters—little girls that harvest a substance called ADAM from corpses—thanks to a series of plasmids stripping them of their humanity and free will. The main types of Big Daddies are Rosies (named after the famous Rosie the riveter), Bouncer,Rumbler, and only appearing in the Bioshock 2 downloadable content Minerva's Den, the Lancer. Big Daddies appear in both Bioshock 1 and 2, and also one is found in a small easter egg at Rapture in Bioshock: Infinite. They also played big roles in Bioshock Infinite's DLC missions of Burial at Sea.

Little Sisters

Little Sisters (originally known as Gatherers) are young girls who have been genetically altered and mentally conditioned to reclaim ADAM from the corpses around Rapture. Little Sisters are always accompanied by a Big Daddy. The Little Sisters are almost completely immune to damage but have no offensive abilities. Approaching or attacking them, however, will incur the wrath of their Big Daddy protectors. When the player defeats these protectors, the player can choose either to harvest or rescue the Little Sisters, which affects how much ADAM the player gains and has consequences revealed in the game's ending. Little Sisters are usually hiding in the air vents hidden around Rapture, they will only come out when called by a Big Daddy.

Sander Cohen

Main article: Sander Cohen

Sander Cohen lived among the most famous individuals in Rapture. As one of Rapture's more respected musicians, playwrights and poets, Cohen resided in a lavish apartment in Mercury Suites, along with other Rapture celebrities such as Frank Fontaine, Brigid Tenenbaum and Yi Suchong. As a result of Rapture's civil war and the chaotic months that followed, Cohen grew extremely paranoid and violently insane. Cohen was given jurisdiction over an area of the city known as Fort Frolic by Rapture's founder Andrew Ryan, with whom he had a close relationship (and Cohen said Ryan was "the man I loved"). The splicers under his domination are often the subject of Cohen's newfound sadistic enjoyment in the death and suffering of others, now seeing violence as an art form. He is voiced by T. Ryder Smith.

Brigid Tenenbaum

Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum is a genetic scientist who helped originally develop ADAM. Brigid Tenenbaum was born near the city of Minsk, Belarus, into a Jewish family with a German father. At the age of 16, she was sent via train to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she was going to be experimented on by German doctors, notably Josef Mengele. Before Tenenbaum was tested on, she observed Mengele and started correcting him, which led to the doctors sparing her life and letting her participate in the experiments on the other prisoners. At this time Tenenbaum discovered her love for science and due to her participation in the tests, she survived the Holocaust. Tenenbaum was at early age diagnosed with high-functioning autism. Her absolute adoration of science caused her to be blinded on what happened around her, including the horrific experiments she did, which continued into her adult years.

After arriving in Rapture, she had a bit of a struggle to get the recognition she deserved among the best and brightest. Until she discovered the Sea Slug, which contained a substance that could replace cells, which led to the discovery of the wonder-drug ADAM, which allowed the citizens of Rapture to manipulate their DNA. With the help of Frank Fontaine, who further devloped the drug, Tenenbaum become known as a scientific genius in the city. Tenenbaum discovered that by putting the slug into a host, it would produce up to thirty times as much ADAM and the only hosts that proved effective were young girls. While Tenenbaum was the "mother" of the Little Sisters, Dr. Yi Suchong was the creator of the Plasmids. Much like her younger self, Tenenbaum was blind to what she was doing, exploiting little girls to her own scientific benefits. When the Little Sisters were first created, she had no regard for them or their lives, seeing the removal of the slugs as no different from removing life support from a terminal patient. Soon before the Rapture Civil War, Tenenbaum's maternal instinct was awoken, causing her to leave her Mercury Suites apartment and life, to reside in the sewers of the residential complex Olympus Heights. Here Tenenbaum began rescuing Little Sisters via a Plasmid she developed, as she felt that they were her responsibility and began to care a great deal about their safety, calling them "little ones" and they called her "Mama Tenenbaum". Tenenbaum was able to survive the fall of Rapture and continued to save Little Sisters in her hiding place.

During the events of BioShock, while in the Medical Pavilion, Jack aproches a lounge in the Sergury wing and sees a Big Daddy being killed by Splicers and thrown through a window. This Big Daddy was protecting a Little Sister, which now is left alone with the remaining Splicer. Just as the Splicer is about to strike the Little Sister, Tenenbaum emerges and shoots him. Tenenbaum warns Jack not to hurt her, while Atlas encourages him to harvest the Sister to get ADAM. When Tenenbaum question Jack's morality, Atlas accuses her of hypocrisy, as she's the one that turned the girls into Little Sister. While Atlas tries to convince Jack that they are not children anymore, Tenenbaum presents an alternative; A Plasmid that would remove the Sea Slug from the girls. The following events gives the player a choice of harvesting the Little Sisters or saving them with Tenenbaum's Plasmid. From this point on, Tenenbaum's perception of Jack is up to the player. If Jack saves the Sisters, Tenenbaum will show her gratitude to him by providing an ADAM gift for him after every third Sister he saves and a overall good attitude towards him. If Jack harvests the Sisters, he will not be granted gifts and she will express her anger towards him. After the Andrew Ryan confrontation and revival of Atlas true identity in Hephaestus, Tenenbaum sends Little Sisters to save Jack from the hands of Fontaine, by leading him into a vent, in where Jack falls and blacks out. Jack wakes up in Tenenbaum's safehouse and she has undone the Would you Kindly mind control condition on him. Tenenbaum can be seen behind glass in an office in the safehouse, smoking and explaining to Jack what has occurred and what he should do next. After this, she serves as Jack's guide throughout the final third of the game and provides the narration during the final scene (which is effected by Jack's choice to save or harvest the Sisters). Sometime after the events of the first game, Tenenbaum leaves Rapture with an undisclosed amount of Little Sisters.

During the events of BioShock 2, 8 years later, she returns to Rapture to rescue Little Sisters and in an attempt to find the cure for Splicing. She contacts Subject Delta's during the beginning and guides him through the first two levels, and is then replaced by Augustus Sinclair, as she needs to help others, aka Charles Milton Porter.

She is voiced by Anne Bobby.

Development

Brigid Tenenbaum's personality and back story was largely developed by Ken Levine, who wanted a believable and flawed human which was managed with the combinations of her medical condition, ethnic background, and overall circumstances. Levine felt that her core characteristics: being a woman, autistic and Jewish was not what defined her, but 'her absolute adoration of science' was what ultimately did. Up until the development of BioShock 2, her name was spelled "Bridgette" instead of "Brigid". Her in game Audio Diary portrait for BioShock was based off a photo of actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Yi Suchong

Dr. Yi Suchong is a medical doctor that came to Rapture and set up an independent research lab to help exploit the resources for financial gain. Suchong saw the possibles of Dr. Tenenbaum's discovery of ADAM, and bore out the means of using ADAM to create plasmids and other technology wonders. He is also credited with creating the Big Daddies to help protect Tenenbaum's Little Sisters. Though initially neutral in the feud between Ryan and Fontaine, Suchong became dissatisfied with Ryan's work and secretly worked with Fontaine. Suchong was part of Fontaine's project to create Jack, Fontaine's "ace in the hole". Suchong conditioned a rapidly growing Jack with his triggers, including the phrase "would you kindly" before Jack was smuggled back to the surface, but was not able to give this information to Fontaine. Within BioShock, Suchong is already dead, though Jack discovers Suchong's name in various recordings. In Burial At Sea Episode Two, which takes place a year before BioShock, Suchong is still alive and shown to have been able to use tears to communicate to Jerimiah Fink from Columbia, the two sharing their research data for the betterment of both Cities, though remaining cautious of the others' motives. Elizabeth witnesses Suchong killed by a Big Daddy, and finds Suchong's notes about Jack, and is able to deliver them to Atlas (Fontaine) for him to utilize the 'ace in the hole'. He is voiced by James Yaegashi.

J.S. Steinman

Dr. J.S. Steinman is Jewish American and one of Rapture's most a accomplished surgeons, especially in cosmetic. After ADAM was introduced, Steinman started to become bored as ADAM provided almost no boundaries, but was restricted to the requests of the costumers. When ADAM started to take a toll on his mind he started to mutilate his patients and, becoming insane, began having hallucinations of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of beauty. He is voiced by Peter Francis James.

Splicers

Splicers serve as the mainstay "infantry" within the first two BioShock games. These are humans who through the excessive use of ADAM have mutated into humanoids permanently endowed with various superpowers, but who are also murderously and irreversibly insane. Unlike the protagonists of the first two BioShock games, who can mix and match the powers given to them by the use of plasmids with near-limitless variety, Splicers fall into a set of different categories that give each splicer type a consistent but limited set of abilities and powers (Spider Splicers, Houdini Splicers, Leadhead Splicers, Brute Splicers, etc).

BioShock 2

Subject Delta

Subject Delta is the player-character of BioShock 2. Originally known as "Johnny Topside", he discovered Rapture. After being sent to prison, Delta became the first successful Big Daddy subject bonded to a Little Sister, Eleanor Lamb. This bond was capable of killing or inducing coma if it were to be broken, which is what happened on New Year's Eve 1958 when Dr. Sofia Lamb forced Delta to commit suicide with the use of a pistol, reclaiming her daughter. Ten years later, 1968, Delta is revived by the now adolescent Eleanor Lamb with the use of a vita-chamber reprogrammed to his DNA. Delta is required to find Eleanor, thus repairing the bond between the two.He was part of the Alpha series of Big Daddys.

Augustus Sinclair

Augustus Sinclair is Subject Delta's guide through Rapture. He was the creator of Persephone, the headquarters of Sinclair Solutions and also Rapture's prison. During Rapture's height he was a successful businessman with links to Andrew Ryan. Sofia Lamb later, against Sinclair's own freewill, is transformed into the last of the Alpha series, Subject Omega, whom Subject Delta must kill to gain access to the escape raft to exit Rapture. He is voiced by Doug Boyd.

Eleanor Lamb

The daughter of Sofia Lamb, and a previous Little Sister. Roughly ten years after the 1958 New Year's Eve Riots she contacts Subject Delta, beginning the events of BioShock 2. Eleanor still remembers Delta after ten years and knows he is searching for her. Throughout the course of the game, she will leave him gifts and messages written on the walls of the city. In the story of BioShock 2, her behavior is influenced by Delta's actions towards the Little Sisters and NPCs. She is voiced by Sydney Unseth and Sarah Bolger.

Sofia Lamb

Dr. Sofia Lamb is the primary antagonist of BioShock 2. She has taken over Andrew Ryan's position as the leader of Rapture, albeit with a completely different ideological view revolving around collectivism. She uses her skills as a psychiatrist to brainwash most of the Splicers in the city, forming a cult known as "The Family". She sends out members of The Family to prevent Subject Delta from reuniting with Eleanor. She is voiced by Fenella Woolgar.

In 2013, Liz Lanier of Game Informer included Lamb among top ten female villains in video games, stating that "an extremist obsessed with the "greater good," Lamb will sacrifice anything and anyone for her own agenda; whether that means brainwashing or murdering to create her utopia, she's down."

Big Sisters

The Big Sisters were created when doctor Gil Alexander noticed that little sisters were not being protected to the full extent, and decided they needed a last defense. The Big Sisters are post-pubescent Little Sisters that have become unstable in Rapture's environment. Eight years after the events of BioShock, they are charged with maintaining the ecological balance in Rapture. Their extreme level of powers, far beyond normal plasmid users, can be attributed to their bodies adapting the ADAM created in their bodies as children while they were still developing. Thus they have a much more natural affinity for the powers that ADAM creates. They are extremely fast and agile, making them even deadlier opponents than the slower Big Daddies.The only game Big Sisters are featured in is BioShock 2.

Subject Sigma

Previously known as Charles Milton Porter, Subject Sigma is the protagonist of Minerva's Den.

The Thinker

The Thinker is a supercomputer stored in rapture central computing. A location from Minerva's Den.

BioShock Infinite

Booker DeWitt

Booker DeWitt (Troy Baker), the player protagonist, is a disgraced former agent of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. As a soldier in the 7th Cavalry Regiment, he had performed brutal acts against native American Indians at the Battle of Wounded Knee to defend his own honor; these acts left him emotionally scarred, leading to excessive drinking and gambling and earned him the title "White Injun" due to his tendency to scalp those he killed. He was given an opportunity to be baptised and start anew, but ultimately declined. He was subsequently dismissed for behavior beyond the acceptable bounds of the Agency, but considers his actions with the Pinkertons in quelling labour strikes to be among his many sins. He continues to work as a private investigator from New York City, referring to himself as an "independent contractor". Outwardly, he cares little for the extraordinary, provided that it does not interfere with his ability to do his job; internally, he is disturbed by both his role in the events at Wounded Knee and recurring visions of New York City under attack from the air. Booker is skeptical of faith, unwilling to accept the idea that he can be absolved of his sins by embracing religion, as he considers his sins to be so extreme as to demand a penance rather than forgiveness.

The character of Booker was well received. He was nominated for the Best Male Character by Cheat Code Central, ultimately awarded second place. Troy Baker was also praised for his performance as Booker. At the 2013 Spike VGX, his role as Booker was nominated for Best Voice Actor; he ultimately won the award for his role in The Last of Us.

Elizabeth

Main article: Elizabeth (BioShock)

Elizabeth (Courtnee Draper) is a young woman who has been held captive in Columbia for most of her life. She is shown to be intelligent, having spent most of her life studying a wide variety of subjects from geography to medicine and physics, whilst acquiring more practical skills in the form of cryptography and lock-picking. She also has the ability to perceive and interact with the dimensional tears across Columbia. She wears a thimble in place of the tip of her little finger, which had been cut off, though she does not remember how this happened. It is later revealed that she is Anna DeWitt, Booker's daughter, who Comstock kidnapped across dimensions. Her finger was severed when the portal closed on it and cut it off. She is the only main character alive at the end of the game (as all the other hypothetical Elizabeths and Annas vanished from existence). She reappears in the Burial at Sea DLCs, first as the helper character, and again as the playable character, hunting down any and all versions of Comstock who may have survived Booker's sacrifice. She is killed after saving Sally from Fontaine and is beaten to death by him as a result, but not before foreseeing that Jack (whom she met earlier) would kill Fontaine and end the cycle of violence for good.

Songbird

Elizabeth's confinement within Columbia has been maintained by Songbird, a large, robotic bird-like creature who had been both her friend and her warden. Songbird was designed by its creator to feel betrayal should Elizabeth escape, and Elizabeth notes she "would rather be killed than be recaptured by Songbird." Similar to a Big Daddy (upon which the technology used in its creation may have been based) Songbird's eyes can also turn into 3 different colors: green, yellow and red

Zachary Hale Comstock

Father Zachary Hale Comstock (Kiff VandenHeuvel) serves as the main antagonist of the story. He is revealed to be an alternate version of Booker DeWitt; whereas Booker refused the baptism after the Battle of Wounded Knee, this version accepted it, found faith in religion, and renamed himself as Comstock. Claiming to have received a vision of the future from an archangel, Comstock became a religious fanatic who founded Columbia with the help of the Luteces, and is revered there as "The Prophet".

Comstock created a religion that Ken Levine described as being a hybrid of Christianity and the worship of the Founding Fathers as religious figures. At the same time, he eschews figures like Abraham Lincoln, considering him to be a "devil" that led America astray; in one area of the game, the player encounters a cult-like group that reveres John Wilkes Booth as a hero. To maintain his leadership, Comstock has created a cult of personality within Columbia, which also protects his secrets by weaving them into the mythology he has created. Under his leadership, Columbia has become a breeding ground for racist and sexist attitudes, with minority groups subject to seizure of assets, false imprisonment and penal labor, torture and summary execution without charge. Although Comstock's knowledge of these crimes is never established, he himself is revealed to be responsible for at least three murders and leading a violent purge of over forty dissidents.

Comstock claims that Elizabeth is his daughter, born miraculously to his late wife, Lady Comstock, after only seven days in the womb, and that she is "The Lamb" that will lead Columbia in the future. It is later revealed that he had become sterile from the technology used by the Lutece twins, and employed them to take Anna DeWitt, Booker's child, from another reality to become Elizabeth and his genetic heir to Columbia. He subsequently killed his wife and attempted to kill the Lutece twins to hide this conspiracy. He is killed in the garden room of his airship, the Hand of the Prophet, when Booker smashes his skull in on a baptismal font. A version of Comstock also serves as the protagonist for the first Burial at Sea DLC. After Anna was killed when the dimensional portal (which in the main game only severed her finger) decapitated her, Comstock left his Columbia for Rapture to forget his grief and returned to being Booker DeWitt. He unofficially adopted a Little Sister named Sally and was later hired by Elizabeth (the one from the main game) to find her. This was revealed to be a test to see if this version of Comstock had changed his ways, and when it became apparent that he hadn't, Elizabeth had the Big Daddy they were fighting impale Comstock from behind and kill him for good.

One source of inspiration for the character and the setting might have been Cyrus B. Comstock (February 3, 1831 – May 29, 1910), a U.S. army engineer. He served on the trial of the Lincoln conspirators until he was dismissed because of his criticism of the proceedings. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and supported an award to scientists conducting innovative work in the investigation of electricity, magnetism, or radiant energy. Today this award is known as the Comstock Prize in Physics. He also had a wife and a daughter named Elizabeth.

Daisy Fitzroy

Daisy Fitzroy (Kimberly Brooks) is the leader of the Vox Populi. A woman of African-American descent, she originally journeyed to Columbia to find a new life, and took a position as housekeeper in Comstock's mansion. When Comstock murdered his wife to keep Elizabeth's parentage secret, he turned Fitzroy into a scapegoat for the crime and invented the Vox Populi as common enemy of the people in order to further turn Columbia into a police state. This inspired Fitzroy to develop a bitter hatred of the Founders and what they stand for, and assumed control of the Vox Populi to lead the underclass in uprising against Comstock and the Founders. Despite fighting against the injustices perpetrated by the Founders, Daisy and the Vox Populi are presented as being no better than the Founders, given the lengths they are willing to go to in order to overthrow Comstock, their murder of civilians during the uprising, and the use of child soldiers for psychological warfare. She is killed by Elizabeth in defense of a child Daisy was threatening to kill, an action later shown in Burial at Sea Part Two to have been instigated by the Lutece twins; they convinced Daisy to take the child as part of her larger role to help mature Elizabeth into making harsh decisions.

The Lutece Twins

Robert (Oliver Vaquer) and Rosalind Lutece (Jennifer Hale) are two mysterious individuals that direct Booker to Columbia and appear throughout his travels. They appear to be near-identical fraternal twins, but it is later revealed that they are the same person from two different realities, differing by sex as well as core ideas, causing them to disagree about certain theories, such as the effects of one person being introduced into a dimension other than their own. Rosalind is shown to be the one to have developed the technology that keeps Columbia afloat under Comstock's orders, and through that, made contact with Robert. Together they worked out how to communicate with and subsequently cross between dimensions to the extent where they can now do so at will. Over the course of the story, it is revealed that Comstock attempted to murder the Lutece twins by sabotaging one of their devices to protect his secrets, but instead they ended up in a state of flux, existing along the entire "possibility space". They now act as agents of reality, attempting to correct imbalances without directly manipulating events.

Lady Comstock

Lady Annabelle Comstock (Laura Bailey) is the wife of Zachary Hale Comstock and the adoptive mother of Elizabeth. Shortly after meeting Comstock, she became one of his most dedicated followers, but soon became disillusioned when Comstock resorted to increasingly violent tactics to impose his will on the city of Columbia. She grew to resent Elizabeth, and as she grew evermore unstable, she was unable to keep the secret of Elizabeth's parentage and threatened to undermine Comstock's rule over Columbia. Comstock murdered her and blamed Daisy Fitzroy and the Vox Populi for her death, using the act to further establish control over the city. Lady Comstock now exists in a spectral form, fuelled by her own rage and hatred. In this form, known as 'the Siren,' she has the ability to raise the dead to do her bidding. She attempts to kill Elizabeth several times until Elizabeth convinces her that they are both Comstock's victims.

Jeremiah Fink

Jeremiah Fink (Bill Lobley) is an unscrupulous businessman who has a monopoly over manufacturing in Columbia, aided by usurping technology that he has observed through the tears, including that of Songbird. Fink is a key supporter of Comstock as it enables him to exploit cheap labor of the underclass, though he does not share Comstock's religious fervor. He has achieved a celebrity status within Columbia, and produces most of the propaganda throughout the city. He also guided Albert, his brother and a composer, to take music heard through the tears and claim it as his own for profit. In Burial at Sea, it is shown that Fink and Suchong shared data and research through a tear linking Rapture and Columbia.

Cornelius Slate

Cornelius Slate (Keith Szarabajka) is a former soldier that fought alongside Booker at the Battle of Wounded Knee before becoming a follower of Comstock and going on to destroy Peking during the Boxer Rebellion. Slate becomes disillusioned with Comstock's rule when he discovers that Comstock has claimed both Slate's and Booker's achievements in battle as his own, and rebels against the city.