History BioShockInfinite / TropesAToH

* BossTease: Subverted ''twice'' in ''VideoGame/BioshockInfinite''.

** You see the BigBad Zachary Hale Comstock at least once on the deck of an enemy ship early on and find many other references to him, so you naturally assume that the end of the game will include a huge BossBattle with him. Imagine your surprise when your character finally meets him in person and you end up [[spoiler: drowning him in a pool of water in a CutScene]].

* BabyAsPayment: Booker Dewitt’s wife died in childbirth and shortly thereafter he lost his job and fell into debt. His only recourse was selling his daughter Anna when she was less than a year old to a man [[spoiler:who he discovers to be himself from another dimension]].

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Beating the game and playing through again is startling; almost the ''entire game'' is filled to the utter brim with foreshadowing that makes sense on replays or analysis.
** When Booker first arrives at the lighthouse, he sees a water tub with "Of Thy Sins Shall I Wash Thee" over it. Booker mutters under his breath "Good luck with that, pal." [[spoiler:This doesn't become symbolic until later when you learn about Booker's rejected baptism]]. And, of course, the baptism that shortly follows [[spoiler:sees Booker almost drown]]...
*** With some knowledge of Literature/TheBible, the presence of the water tub right at the entrance is another hint at Comstock's perspective on baptism. [[spoiler:Pontius Pilate made a show of denying any responsibility for Jesus's crucifixion by washing his hands in front of the mob. Comstock's view on baptism as a justification for his atrocities is basically the logical extreme of Pilate's symbolic act]].
*** Booker asks the man in the boat whether someone will meet him at the lighthouse. The man in the boat says he hopes so. [[spoiler:Turns out that Booker meeting Elizabeth and resolving all these quantum shenanigans is their plan. The game even ends after an extended sequence involving our heroes and that lighthouse, as well as a few dozen alternate versions.]]
** [[spoiler: The blind preacher who baptizes Booker when he enters Columbia is the same one who tried to baptize Booker after Wounded Knee. The Booker we know refused the baptism; the one who accepted it took the name ''Comstock''. For extra irony points, the preacher's first words to the player are "Is it someone new?" Answer: Nope!]]
** Midway through the game when Booker is questioned by Elizabeth about Columbia, he says he never even knew about it before arriving. [[spoiler:This is because in his universe, Comstock (and therefore Columbia) didn't exist]].
** When Booker first enters the Monument and finds the room with the Siphon, Elizabeth is humming [[Music/TearsForFears Everybody Wants to Rule the World]]. Hmmm...[[note]]If you didn't know that the earlier songs you may have encountered in the game ("Goodnight Irene", "God Only Knows", etc.) were actually anachronistic, hearing this is sure to clue you in that someone's clearly messing with time. On top of what we learn about the dark future Elizabeth.[[/note]]
** [[spoiler: Songbird's eye cracks from the pressure of being underwater when it dives after Booker when the escape from the tower leads to the beach. Note it's a relatively ''shallow'' depth, so when Songbird ends up at the floor of the ocean]]...
** [[spoiler: When Booker washes up on Battleship Bay he calls Elizabeth "Anna", which she refutes. The likely assumption is that she resembles his lost wife, who he mentions later in the game. Towards the end, it's revealed that she actually is Anna, given up by Booker to pay a debt.]]
** While Booker and Elizabeth are walking through Battleship Bay, a hot dog vendor [[spoiler: offers a hot dog to Booker and his "daughter". Later we find out that Elizabeth is is fact Anna, the daughter he gave up]].
** The Columbia goon who [[spoiler:gets Elizabeth to confirm her identity, so the Columbian Police can ambush Booker]] asks Elizabeth if her name is "Annabelle". She refutes this, too.
** After being forced through a gauntlet of Slate's men, Booker denies the old soldier's claims that he's a hero, to which he responds "If you take away all the parts of Booker [=DeWitt=] you tried to erase, what's left?" [[spoiler:The answer is: Comstock, that's what's left]].
** Throughout that entire area, Slate is constantly deriding Comstock because he believes that he was never the war hero he claimed to be. [[spoiler: Slate is RightForTheWrongReasons]].
** [[spoiler:Shortly before the nature of the Luteces is revealed, Rosalind can be seen posing for Robert, yet he's painting a self-portrait]].
** In the bank, [[spoiler:Elizabeth says Comstock's tithe is a whopping 50% of everything that comes in. Booker quips that he needs to get a job in the prophet business. Comstock, as it happens, is an alternate Booker who did just that]].
** Early in Columbia, [[spoiler:the ''very first Voxophone'' Booker may find is Lady Comstock saying "Love the Prophet, for he loves the sinner. Love the sinner, for he is ''you''." Accurate in more respects than you'll likely realize the first time you hear it]].
** When you meet Elizabeth face-to-face for the first time, the huge book she was about to smash your face with is titled [[spoiler: ''The Principles of Quantum Mechanics'']].
** There's one particularly telling dialogue between the two as they go to deal with Comstock.
-->'''Booker:''' I won't just abandon you!\\
'''Elizabeth:''' You wouldn't. Would you?
** When you board Comstock's zeppelin during the endgame, Comstock gets on the loudspeaker and counsels Elizabeth to "Look at [=DeWitt=], child. There's something about him that you just can't put your finger on." This is arguably BlackComedy, given that Elizabeth is missing the tip of her pinkie... but after you find out ''why'' it's gone ([[spoiler:Snipped off by a PortalCut when she, Anna [=DeWitt=], was taken away from her father Booker by Comstock]]), it takes on another dimension entirely.
** Everything Comstock says to Booker. [[spoiler:Comstock says Booker has a tendency toward self-destruction, and he's right in any reality - whether it's Booker drowning Comstock, Comstock abusing the Tears until he became sterile and sickly but absolutely at peace in the belief he would soon go to God, Booker gambling and drinking his life away, Booker allowing Elizabeth to drown him, and Comstock allowing himself to get beaten and drowned. Even the bounty hunter Preston E. Downs' audiolog subplot qualifies. Alternate universe Booker translates a Sioux kid, so Preston decides to target Comstock, his employer. And he only ended up in that situation because Comstock hired him in the first place.]]
** Everything Booker says to Comstock. [[spoiler:Blind with rage, howling at Comstock for all his crimes against Elizabeth? Nothing but a pretext for Booker to express his profound ''self''-loathing. Everything he says applies to him as much as Comstock. In that moment, Booker subconsciously wishes he could strangle and drown himself]].
** [[spoiler: Following the first jump through to an alternate reality and finding Chen Lin alive, but disoriented to the point that he's unaware of anything happening around him, Elizabeth comments]].
--->'''Elizabeth''': Maybe... he also remembers not being alive. What would you do if that happened to you?\\
'''Booker''': I don't know.\\
[[spoiler: ''It already did.'']]
** Before that you encounter guards you had just killed in the previous dimension. They're disoriented, and all have nosebleeds. Chen Lin is shown to have one as well. After your second hop, Booker gets a nosebleed...
*** [[spoiler: After Booker kills Comstock, Booker's nose begins to bleed again.]]
** Comstock's prominent biography display in the center of the Hall of Heroes gives his birth year as 1874. [[spoiler: Anyone who pauses to do the math on that will realize he's actually ''much'' younger than his appearance would indicate]].
** In the universe(s) where the Vox successfully rebel, you come across a sobbing, hysteric woman who is ''deathly'' afraid of leaping onto a barge, and possibly falling to her death below, while her husband tries to get her to take the risk, or she'll be left behind, which would be worse than falling to her doom. When the barge leaves, it's implied she did make it. [[spoiler:When Booker's forced to relieve his attempt to get back his daughter from the Luteces, Rosalind is desperately trying to convince Robert to hop the small and unstable hole into the universe, and Robert is frozen up in fear and saying he can't go through with it, what if the gap closes and he's stuck between universes, or chopped in half...]]?
** The song that Fink sings at the Raffle is "Goodnight, Irene". One of the lyrics contains [[spoiler:"Sometimes, I've got a great notion[=/=]To jump in the river, and drown..."]]
** When [[spoiler: Daisy Fitzroy is about to kill Fink's son, she says "You see the Founders ain't nothing but weeds. Cut 'em down and they just grow back. If you wanna get rid of the weed, you gotta pull it up from the root. It's the only way to be sure--" right before Elizabeth plunges a large pair of scissors into her spine. In the end, this is exactly what Elizabeth and Booker do; they pull Comstock out by the roots to make sure he can never have existed]].
** As can be seen on a film projector in their conference room, the Fraternal Order of the Raven have begun to theorize that [[spoiler:Comstock is hiding mixed Native American[=/=]white ancestry, just like Booker. [[RightForTheWrongReasons (This revelation also comes purely as dumb luck, given that they "proved" it using the quack science of racial phrenology.)]]]]
** The voxophones in general are fountain of these. In particular, in one of the the voxophones has Slate mentioning how Booker was called the White Injun of Wounded Knee due to all the indians he killed and another voxophone mentions that Booker speaks Sioux. A later voxophone has [[spoiler: Comstock ranting about how a sergeant once insinuated that Comstockhas Native America ancestry. To prove that it was a lie, he burnt down Indian teepees. Weird how two vastly different characters have similar pasts.]]
** When Booker and Elizabeth confront Comstock on his airship, [[spoiler:Booker drowns Comstock in a baptismal font, foreshadowing his own drowning later in the baptismal water]].
*** The baptism being his fate (and Comstock's) is foreshadowed from before he even gets into the fancy chair.
--->'''Booker:''' (on reading the placard before the baptismal bowl in the lighthouse stating, "Of Thy Sins Shall I Wash Thee") Good luck with that, pal.
** One of the very first voxophones you encounter features Comstock pontificating on baptism, saying that one man enters the baptism and another emerges. He wonders, "Who is that man in between?" [[spoiler: It turns out that Comstock and Booker are the same man separated by a single choice: one who took the baptism, and one who didn't. At the end, one version of Elizabeth says that he's Zachary Comstock, while another insists that he's Booker [=DeWitt=]. He corrects them, saying that he's ''both''.]]
** When you come across the Luteces playing a piano following the airship crash in Emporia, you can hear them bickering about one note that Rosalind keeps messing up: the "G". Elizabeth's freakout over them playing the song and causing Songbird to come and find them [[spoiler:gains a whole new meaning when you find out the sequence of notes needed to call him to help you.]]
** Comstock calls Booker the "False Shephard". So who's the real one? Comstock himself. Especially since Elizabeth is called the "Lamb of Columbia". [[spoiler:This implies that he's a thematic counterpart to Booker. He is, but he's ''also'' a much more literal one.]]

* ArbitrarySkepticism: PlayedForLaughs in the ending.

** "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt."
** "The seed of the Prophet shall sit the throne and drown in flame the mountains of man."
** "Lives, lived, will live." "Dies, died, will die."
** "What is Columbia, if not another Ark for another time?"

* DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist: The slap stings a little more than in the original ''[=BioShock=]'' (the player loses a little money and enemies gain back some health, while in "1999 Mode" death costs you $100 every time), but dying is still nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

* AirVentPassageway: Booker boosts Elizabeth through a vent halfway through the game.

** [[spoiler:Captain Slate (whether or not you execute him), the Siren (a.k.a. undead Lady Comstock) and the Songbird]].

* AllJustADream: [[spoiler:One interpretation of TheStinger is that the whole game was just a dream from Booker's depressed mind to teach him to appreciate what he has]].

* EmbeddedPrecursor: The [=PS3=] Blu-ray copy of the game will include the first ''VideoGame/BioShock1'' free of charge - but only if you're in North America.

*** [[MindOverMatter Bucking Bronco]] causes the skin on Booker's hands to crack apart like clay, hover, and bleed.

*** Burial at Sea's [[AnIcePerson Old Man Winter]] has the same effect on Booker and Elizabeth that Winter Blast had on Jack in the first ''Bioshock'' game, turning the skin of their forearms to ice and causing icicles to sprout from the backs of their hands.

** After the Vox Populi commandeer their intended escape ship, Booker ends up being sent on a mission by Fitzroy to contact a gunsmith at Finkton to arm their revolution. Seems simple enough... until he ends up needing to make up with Elizabeth and [[ExplainExplainOhCrap realizing]] just how big of an ask that is.

** The conclusion of this whole mission involves Booker and Elizabeth [[spoiler:merging their universe with another [[ForWantOfANail where the Vox Populi already have their guns]], and thus the revolution is off to an explosive start. Unfortunately, not only does that mean Fitzroy doesn't know of the deal Booker made with her, this AlternateUniverse was one [[DeadAlternateCounterpart where Booker died]] and became a martyr for the revolution she's spearheading, so when she learns he's alive and well, she [[MistakenForAnImposter assumes him to be an impostor]] and thus turns the Vox Populi on him.

** Vigors, this game's equivalent of Plasmids, don't factor much into the plot or setting this time as much as Plasmids were in Rapture. Not only do they barely tie in with the game's central conflict, virtually nobody outside of Booker uses them, limited to only a paltry tnumber of EliteMooks.

* TheArtifact: Vigors, this game's equivalent of Plasmids, don't factor much into the plot or setting this time. This is odd given that Plasmids in previous games were an important part of the history of Rapture.
** Similarly, the weapon and vigor vending machines are a relic of Rapture's obsessively open market. Columbia's overly controlling government would want to put a check on weapons being sold, given the looming threat of the Vox Populi. Even weirder is that the game accidentally points this out, since it's actually a major plot point that the Vox ''are'' having a hard time getting weapons despite the weapon vendors on every corner.
* ArtifactTitle: ''[=ChronoShock=]'' would probably be more appropriate. And awesome.

* AllohistoricalAllusion:
** The game has multiple references to the real-life [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Peking_(1900) Battle of Peking]], which in this AlternateHistory was fought entirely by the forces of Columbia, instead of by the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-Nation_Alliance Eight-Nation Alliance]]. Notably, Slate mentions that the Columbian forces lost thirty men, which is over three times the number of American casualties in the real-life battle.

* {{Eagleland}}: Boorish. To a horrifying degree. The city of Columbia was created by the United States as a showcase of American ingenuity, just in time for the 1893 World's Fair. Then there was a hostage situation in China due to the Boxer's Rebellion, and Columbia went against orders, bombarded cities and killed a lot of innocent people, and then it seceded from the Union and went crazy nativist. Comstock's regime believes that Columbia represents the true society envisioned by the Founding Fathers and most of it's citizens view the rest of the world below, America included, with great contempt. Institutionalised racism and notions of white racial superiority are common in Columbia and minorities are treated as second-class citizens, forced into menial labour with no chance of upward mobility, interracial couples risk public stoning, and speaking out for racial equality can lead to jail time or even execution. The Founding Fathers, Washington, Jefferson and Franklin are worshipped as divine figures along with Comstock (while Abraham Lincoln is widely reviled as a traitor), and Columbia's society has very militant overtones.

** In the "Clash in the Clouds" DLC, continuing from the current round resets your score to 0, fails the current Blue Ribbon challenge, and restores the health of surviving enemies.

* ContinuingIsPainful: More so than the previous ''[=BioShock=]'' games. If you run out of health in this game, you lose some money and the enemies will regain some health. On 1999 Mode the amount you lose is ''100'' Silver Eagles, so dying there is really discouraged (especially as, in 1999 mode, if you die and have run out of money, the game ''ends'' - in other difficulty levels, you still come back, even if you're broke).

* AmbiguouslyChristian: Most players assume that Comstock's cult is Christian, however Jesus is never mentioned or portrayed anywhere in Columbia. Inspiration was clearly taken from various Christian movements, though Jesus is omitted possibly to minimize controversy or in-universe because he would distract from Comstock (as suggested when Booker remarks that Comstock must not like the idea anyone bowing to someone other than himself).