Fridge / BioShock

Fridge Brilliance

• Splicers go down easy. Paralyze them, and one good thwack to the head with your trusty wrench is all it takes to kill one. Zap them in water and they fry. A little oil and they'll burn to death pretty fast. But that's not all that different from real life! That's a pretty heavy wrench and it could cave your skull in one blow. And for the record...Splicers are little more than juiced-up humans.
• The game is effectively a parody of much of Ayn Rand's work. Two characters are drawn from her work, Atlas from "Atlas Shrugged", Fontaine from "The Fountainhead." Indeed, if you take Ayn Rand's name, and switch a few letters, you get "And Ryan," which is very close to "Andrew Ryan" and given that "Andrew Ryan" isn't even his real name it's likely he chose that name to match his ideology. The symbols and themes in the game are very much like her ideals. Rapture is a laissez-faire society, like the one she envisioned, where everyone is "free" to achieve what they want without taxation or government interference. Many of the quotes are similar to speeches from her books.
  • That's not even including all of the Atlas Shrugged style statues/imagery that is included throughout the game.
  • Andrew Ryan seems to a gender-bent Ayn Rand—his early life mirrors hers (both born in Russia, personally disadvantaged and/or harmed by the Russian Revolution, fled to the United States at a young age, loves the capitalist ideals of the US and hates when things steer away from that). Of course, paired with Infinite's multiverse theory, he may be just that, with all of Rand's rigid ideology and personal hypocrisies when push came to shove.
• The first words that meet you before entering Rapture: No Gods or Kings, only Man. You can say that the splicers are Gods with their superhuman powers, or that men like Fontaine or Ryan are Kings due to their power and need for control, but in the end, they are all ordinary Man, who are turned into deformed monsters fighting over more ADAM.

• Peach Wilkins attacks you in the belief you're working for Fontaine, at the time you brush it off as paranoia, especially if you found his tapes. Come the big twist and it turns out he was right, you just didn't know it.
• Peach Wilkins' speech before he attacks comes off as a paranoid rant to many, though he was correct in deducing that you were working for Fontaine. The final lines seem to be rambling on about Ryan lying. But combine the twist with Wilkins' first lines with you, and it becomes apparent that Wilkins never trusted Atlas in the first place. His rant then becomes him not only confirming you were Fontaine's errand boy, but also trying to piece together how Fontaine managed to slip one by him. His last line charging wasn't about Ryan. It was him realizing Atlas was Fontaine.
  Now, I bet when your boss waggled out of Hell, he done told the Devil he'd be right back, and the Devil says "Sure thing, Mr. Fontaine, I'll hold you a spot." Ryan promised Fontaine was dust, and now here you are doing his dirty! I guess that makes Ryan a bum and you...
  ATLAS! He was ours! Ours!
• Consider the endings, stripped of Tenenbaum's judgments. In the selfish ending, you gain control of a whole city, an army of loyal super-soldiers, and, eventually, a nuclear armada - with which to hold the world at ransom. In the selfless ending, those you have helped go on to live rewarding lives while you live humbly, grow old and die while surrounded by loved ones. Thus, everyone gets what they most desire - there's no bad ending if you act according to your beliefs.
• Jack has chains tattooed on his wrists. It foreshadows both of the big reveals. Not only are the chains symbolic of Jack's forced servitude but it also hints to him being the son of Andrew Ryan, vocal believer in "The Great Chain".
• During the Fort Frolic level, Atlas's description of Cohen gets drowned out by the rendition of "Rise, Rapture, Rise". This game had a good number of issues with background audio making it hard to hear the shortwave radio dialogue. Except Cohen can hear your radio conversations. He's probably piping the music in on purpose to drown out the terrible things Atlas is saying about him. Note that the song is actually coming through over the radio and fades out as soon as Atlas is done talking. It has served its purpose.
• A little Meta here. Remember how reviewers complained that the Vita Chambers harmed the game, making it far less challenging? While it was a valid point, somehow complainers didn't think that even before a patch was released it was possible for a gamer to simply choose to ignore the chambers and reload the game every time Jack was killed. That's right. It's a game where you can and must defy some of its rules to make it more challenging, realistic and interesting. Of course, you can choose to follow the given pattern instead. To obey the rules.
  • Would you kindly?
• Rapture is suspiciously similar to a certain city that sank because of the hubris of its inhabitants, but what does Atlantis mean? "Island of Atlas."
• Steinman was intentionally incorporating his audio diaries into little exhibits. That's why they were all propped upright or hung on walls! That's why the audio diary about symmetry was next to an asymmetrically disfigured corpse!
• The most prominent figures who opposes the Objectivist ideas of Andrew Ryan and Rapture in both games? Frank and Eleanor who share their given names with Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor, who were at the head of the US government at the time Ryan would have been planning and building rapture.
• Smoking cigarettes in the game increases your EVE level but lowers your Health level. EVE is your magical energy, which you need to use your plasmids, some of which are very cool. So it makes you look cool, but at the same time it damages your health... kinda like real life.
• When Fontaine uses "Code Yellow" in an attempt to kill you, he says "I just told your brain to tell your heart to stop beating"... but the brain doesn't control the heartbeat, that's the work of the sinoatrial node. Stimulation via the CN X: Vagus Nerve can slow the heart rate and stimulation via the T1-4, Spinal Nerves can increase both heart-rate and contraction strength, but neither will kill you. Which is probably why you don't die despite the fact he does it several times. In fact, he admits "The heart is a stubborn muscle".
  • What happened to Jack's body after Fontaine issued the "Code Yellow" command probably was as described above, as it was actual scientists like Suchong and Tenenbaum who worked on Jack and presumably would have known what they were doing. As far as Fontaine was concerned, however — who doubtfully was fantastically versed in science or anatomy — he just wanted something that would stop Jack's heart. So saying it was the brain was probably just an error / lack of care on Fontaine's part. As for the sinoatrial node not being able to kill you anyway...well, given the whole mind-control dealio and everything else, we can probably chalk that up as another scientific breakthrough.
• The Rapture "anthem" that plays during the 2K logo goes, "Rise, Rapture, Rise! We turn our hopes up to the skies!" ... and where does Jack come from at the beginning of the game?
  • You can have a lot of fun re-reading the loading screens once you know the final twist...
• When you go into the frozen section of Poseidon Plaza, there's a trash can with food in it... it's been in a frozen trash can for two years. You may think ew at first but then again... FROZEN trash can.
• Rapture's turrets, cameras and security bots are slightly in advance of today's technologies, let alone those of the 1960s. Even allowing for "science not bound by petty morality" it seems unusually advanced... until you find out that most of the modern advances in neuroscience came after the invention of MRI and other non-invasive ways to watch a live brain in action. Prior to this, neuroscience progressed mostly through the study of brain injuries. Petty morality meant that neuroscientists had to wait for the rare accident to happen. In Rapture, on the other hand... neuroscience becomes much easier.
  • Not to mention that Rapture presumably contained the finest minds in the world. Minds that were no longer around to pursue their ideas in our world.
  • Emphasis on the "presumably." It seems more likely that Andrew Ryan offered Rapture to people who shared his philosophical views rather than an across-the-board "best and brightest." The scientific minds we see range from the clinically detached to the sociopathic, and that was before they even came to Rapture. And to judge by the meager hints we've gotten of the surface world, it doesn't look like their disappearances made a huge impact.
  • Alternatively, many people who technically were the best and brightest in their field may simply have rejected Ryan's politics — and consequently his invitation — completely out of hand. Not all — or even most — brilliant people are Objectivists, after all. The above point is still valid, however.
• Upon reading the novel, the reason the city was named "Rapture" hit me. The chosen (smart, rich people with a lot of stick-to-it-iveness) are spirited away to paradise, while the unworthy (everyone else) face the end of the world (nuclear war). The Rapture Civil War could also be an allegory for the War in Heaven (paradise becomes a battle-field).
  • One could consider the city a dark mirror of the word "Rapture." The aforementioned chosen (smart, rich people with a lot of dubious and questionable fields in their resume) are spirited away to a hell posing as paradise, while the "unworthy" go on living none the wiser. The Civil War could then be interpreted as Rapture's true hellish nature "revealing" itself. If anything, it's a cruel blessing of sorts in that the "unworthy" are spared from whatever ethical horrors said chosen would have unleashed upon the world had they stayed topside.
  • The name Rapture is also a play on the phrase, "the rapture of the deep", a term coined by Jacques Cousteau for nitrogen narcosis, the result of breathing gasses under elevated pressure during deep dives causing nitrogen to seep into your bloodstream. The effects cause a feeling of tranquility and mastery of the environment, intoxication, the impairment of judgement, and in later stages, extreme anxiety, depression, or paranoia — all symptoms displayed by splicers.
• So Rapture is a contained city, with the Big Daddies keeping it from leaking TOO much, with enough room inside for MAYBE 5000 people. So why is it that Splicers (who constantly kill each other and the Big Daddies, if they can.) and the Big Daddies seem to keep showing up? Because the Big Daddies fix the Vita-Chambers first (admit it, when was the last time you saw a broken, or even a damaged Vita-chamber?) and those same Vita-Chambers still have all the citizens' DNA in them, so they KEEP GETTING BROUGHT BACK. Which also explains the limited amount of models for splicers in the game.
  • Except that in the first game, it clearly explains that only people with Ryan's same DNA are able to use the Vita-chambers, which is why Jack comes back after being killed.
  • Could be explained the same way as the "ghosts". Genes crossing over during genetic sampling, possibly because of Little Sisters recycling ADAM. Not sure if Ryan ever spliced up, there's nothing in the canon saying he has, but it would explain a couple things about the population of Rapture.
  • The game explains that the similarities are due to reoccurring mutations from people who overused plasmids. It's safe to assume that similar plasmids cause similar physical mutations.
• Frank Fontaine seems to just have a normal name until you go back to System Shock 2, which has a character named Prefontaine. Once you realize what that means, it's a clever reference.
• When Jack has flashbacks, they're basically of the photograph he had on the plane. Because that family doesn't exist. Thus the only real memories he has of them are the photograph. Jack's brain is trying to tell him he has nothing else to remember them by.
• The Reveal in Bioshock is a rather impressive one, but until you actually think about it, you don't really understand it's full meaning. A Man Chooses, A Slave Obeys. Throughout the game, you've been given no choices, save one morality choice made over and over again that, while it does impact the ending, has very little impact on the plot. But you, the Player, not just the Player Character, but the person who has been holding the controller, have obeyed every single instruction given to you by Atlas/Fontaine since the game began... without ever questioning whether you should follow them or not. You have obeyed every instruction given to you by a fictional character without ever even questioning whether you should or not. You have essentially, since you started the game, made yourself the slave of a person who doesn't even exist. And you never even realized that it happened, until it was rubbed in your face.
• Before entering the Beehive area of Arcadia, I came across a female Splicer with a shotgun right next to her. A few paces forward, I found an audio log about a woman getting peeved that Langford is "lolling out amongst my hives" without giving her a cent for it. The woman states that if she continues, she'll come after her with a shotgun.
• Tenenbaum is most comfortable speaking German, as shown when she uses phrases like "mein kleinen Mädchen" or "Scheisse." So why does she have a distinctly Russian accent? Because she was raised in Belarus, and most likely learned English from a Russian speaker, while speaking German or Yiddish at home.
• So, for starters, the idea that Ryan founded Rapture not to create a haven for the world's elite, but to create a haven for himself in which he could dominate virtually every industry without fear of reprisal was a Fridge Brilliance moment for me. But digging deeper into this idea, it's also a lot more consistent with his beliefs. He says that the most grievous sin of all is altruism — doing things for the benefit of others rather than oneself. And what else would you call building a huge underwater city, no doubt at great personal expense, as a haven for the world's elite? Building it for his own benefit — and the measures he took once he realized the free market no longer favors him — is more in keeping with his beliefs. Seems he's not such a hypocrite after all.
  • Brilliantly confirmed by one of the audio diaries in 2, where Ryan comfortably remarks about how he's dealt with Fontaine and Lamb, and is content at being 'alone at last'. Truthfully, he should have just built Rapture for himself.
  • And ties in quite well to how Objectivism is basically a philosophy that allows someone to only care about themselves, know that they only care about themselves and still believe themselves to be a good person.
  • Possibly overlapping with a bit of Fridge Horror, but take another look at some of what he does with his ideology. Just in the first game you can see that he not only promotes objectivist thinking, but also has regularly broadcast messages warning people about the dangers of "parasites." In fact, he seems to label anything that challenges his view as a "parasite" and goes to great lengths to instill that view into his people. This is even expanded on with Ryan Amusements in 2 and the "Ryan the Lion and Peter the Parasite" films in Burial At Sea (both of which are blatant propaganda pieces presumably intended for indoctrinating children). He is always warning people to be on the lookout for "parasites" and even cuts the city off from the surface (and with it, anyone who could offer alternative viewpoints). Ryan's behaviour is very much like that of a dictator, which is actually quite fitting when you think about it. After all is it not common for dictators to put their own interests above the people they are leading?
  • This also serves as another reason why the people of Rapture were such easy prey for Fontaine- anyone reasonable enough to catch out Fontaine's con would have noticed the truth behind Ryan's- after all, why would anyone whose worldview involves complete selfishness do something intended to advance the prospects of others?
• According to the audio logs, before Tenenbaum's work with the Little Sisters, they produced ADAM by eating, in addition to not producing very much. Now, consider that drinking alcohol decreases Eve and increases health. Alcohol is a tranquilizer, which "slows you down". Meanwhile, drinking caffeine increases eve. Caffeine is a stimulant, which "speeds you up". Eve is produced based on your metabolism!
• When you drink, you gain health, and when you smoke, you lose health. You gain some health from snacks and a lot from First-Aid kits. Drinking moonshine isn't going to take a bullet out of your face, but what does alcohol do? It makes you feel better! If you don't feel as much pain, you're able to go longer without falling over because of that sharp pain in your knee! The health isn't a measure of your actual state of health! It's how good you feel and how much pain you think you can endure before you can't go any further. Hence why smoking decreases your health! It's unpleasant for those new to it!
  • Smoking decreases Jack's health because it's unpleasant for him. It's unpleasant for him because he's new to it. He's new to it... because he's never actually smoked until that point! Remember how Fontaine said none of Jack's memories were real? That means Jack was smoking on the plane because he only thought he was a smoker, though he'd never smoked before in his life, because that was part of the memories Fontaine put into him! He reacts badly because his body isn't used to smoking!
• Jack's never smoked before that day in his life. He's only smoked once, that day on he plane. That means that the reason it was so easy to ignore the cigarettes in the game... was because he wasn't subconsciously looking for them! He wasn't thinking about smoking because, since he hadn't smoked until then, he wasn't addicted to the nicotine! His body was still new to it, so he didn't have a hard time kicking the habit since he didn't have that habit to begin with!
• One of the reasons Rapture is so flooded is possibly because a lot of the Splicers are wielding pipes, no doubt ripped straight from the walls.
  • Dealt with in 2, where you encounter the ones who designed and built Rapture for Andrew Ryan. Supposedly the place was leaking even before the civil war, most likely because of water pressure and the constraints of working that deep in the ocean. It literally shouldn't exist; another of the audio diaries even states that if a Big Daddy was clumsy enough, it could have flooded the entirety of Dionysus Park; In other words, Rapture was destined to fail.
    • Despite that, it exists anyways. Why? Because as soon as Andrew Ryan began to try, he began spawning universes where he succeeded. No matter how unlikely the occurrence, if it can happen, it must. One iteration or a thousand, it made no difference. The multiverse does not work on plausibility, merely possibility. Of course, the real question is, who threw the first stone? Did it start with Andrew Ryan, or is Andrew Ryan’s creation of Rapture just another cosmic inevitability following the one constant? If so, Andrew Ryan was never anything but the multiverse’s slave.
• Those mindless splicers you kill by the truckload? They were all at some point some of the most talented and gifted people on earth. All of them.
  • Well, not entirely. Sander Cohen is outright believed by some to be a hack (and "Rise Rapture Rise!" may give credence to that belief) who got in simply because he was close to Ryan. One of the residents happens to be a plumber who got in because Ryan liked his spirit and how he seemed to be trying to get out of the lower class that he so despised. It seems like Ryan chose his residents more because of their agreement with his ideals than their pure talent and intelligence.
    • That leads to more Fridge Brilliance, in terms of the deconstruction of Objectivism. In Ayn Rand's books, the best and the brightest are almost invariably the ones who agree with objectivism (except for a few exceptions who always become depressed and/or suicidal). Those who are brought to Galt's Gulch include people with records of great accomplishment, but also random people who are sympathetic to his philosophies. In Rand's world, those people are always paragons of virtue. In the real world, they include hacks, thugs and criminal masterminds.
    • H. L. Mencken once said, "The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." Too bad neither Rand nor Ryan ever noticed that.
• During the "Would You Kindly" rapid-fire flashback, you hear one instance of "Would you kindly forget this". The player only knows what Jack knows - how much more did Jack do that the player never saw? What did he have to forget doing?
  • Fontaine claims that you’ve forgotten over half of what you’ve done in Rapture. Clearly, it’s at most a partial lie.
• One kind of Big Daddy in this game is a "Rosie". These Big Daddies are equipped with rivet guns. Rosie the Riveter, anyone?
• I saw someone else point this out. Atlas, for an Irishman, frequently uses (correct) American terms and references. Like making accurate comparisons to American Football, instead of European football that he'd be more likely to be familiar with. It's a pretty big tip off he's not actually Irish.
• Something that hit me when replaying Bioshock 1 recently. While you enter Rapture in a Bathysphere, the next time you use one is a few levels later, moving from Medical Pavilion to Neptune's Bounty. By now you are at least passingly familiar with splicers, ADAM, and the reliance of Rapture on Genetic technology. In Neptune's Bounty, hidden in some muck, you can find an audio diary talking about how the bathysphere's have recently been genetically locked to only those in Ryan's inner circle, but the locks allow anyone in the genetic ballpark to use them. Yep, SEVERAL levels before you are told openly, the game foreshadows the fact that Jack is related to Andrew Ryan or at least someone in his inner circle.
• Typically, we rationalize killing Steinman because we needed his genetic key, but it was Atlas who told us to do it. And it was Steinman who gave Fontaine the surgery to become Atlas, making him the only other person in Rapture that knows of the revolutionary's true identity. Perhaps killing Steinman was more than just story progression. Perhaps it was Atlas trying to tie up loose ends...
  • Speaking of which, the entire reason why Atlas wanted Jack to go to Neptune's Bounty wasn't to save his family. It was all an excuse to kill Peach Wilkins for his betrayal.
• Hacking vending machines tends to be more difficult than hacking many other things in the game - on top of that, failing to hack a vending machine causes turrets to spawn and attack. This makes sense as the game giving the player a bit of a break when it comes to completing objectives - hacking things like turrets is often required to solve a puzzle needed to progress in the game, whereas hacking vending machines is totally optional... it also makes sense in universe as part of Rapture's whole capitalism-worshiping culture; of course stealing would be punished so harshly.
• Where are you shown the violent scene that showcases the relationship between Splicers, Sisters and Daddies? At the Footlight Theater —a fitting locale for NPCs to play out a non-interactive scene for you.
• One detail that initially confused me on completing the game and learning the full story, was the question of why Fontaine would go through the trouble of having Jack hijack an airliner to get to Rapture. After all he was probably capable of finding a quieter and less dramatic way of achieving the same end (not to mention one with significantly less collateral damage). Having Jack hijack an airplane and crash it into the ocean was kind of a big gamble since the whole plan hinged on the assumption that Jack would survive the crash and find the Lighthouse. Fontaine's entire plan could have backfired if, for instance, Jack was killed in the wreckage, got trapped in the fire, killed by a piece of the plane falling on him or drowned before he could find the Lighthouse. However, it turns out there are a few good reasons for him to take such a daring gamble:
  • When the game opens, it appears to be a straightforward Hero's Journey: an ordinary man who by chance falls victim to unfortunate circumstances that lead to him entering Rapture, which is what Fontaine wants you to think, as his plan hinged on Jack not realizing he was being controlled. Given the lengths Fontaine went to in order to maintain his charade, including staging a failed attempt to "rescue" a nonexistant family from Andrew Ryan to make Jack feel more emotionally invested he probably wanted to conceal any evidence that Jack was a tool being used for a specific end. Fontaine could have found a quieter method, for instance telling Jack to board a ship that would be heading nearby and steal a lifeboat when he reaches the right point, or had someone come to get Jack and persuade him to come to the lighthouse. The problem with this is it would have made it more obvious to Jack that he was supposed to be there, even if he didn't fully understand why. A plane crash on the other hand, makes the situation appear far more random, leaves no alternative method to leave, and creates the illusion that it was total chance that Jack ended up in Rapture.
  • In addition to fooling Jack, it was likely also planned to avoid drawing unwanted attention from Andrew Ryan. If Fontaine had just had Jack take a boat to the island, it would have probably been a much more obvious sign that he was up to something, and would give Ryan time to intercept them. A plane crash on the other hand might have seemed less suspicious, as it was easy to make appear accidental. Jack would have seemed to everyone (including himself) just an unlucky survivor who happened to get stuck in Rapture and trying to survive. Though Ryan would undoubtedly suspect something was up, he wouldn't immediately have grounds to connect it to Fontaine, buying time for "Atlas" to prepare his new weapon while Ryan tried to figure out what was actually happening.
• The man who guides you through Rapture calls himself "Atlas." What does one use an Atlas for? Better understanding the world around them. It is through Atlas that the player learns how to navigate Rapture, and Jack relies on his directions to know exactly where he needs to go to complete his objective. In short, Atlas serves as an atlas for Rapture.
• Why do people turned into Big Daddies have vocal chord surgery that makes them only able to talk in whale-like moans? Big Daddies were originally created to provide maintenance to Rapture, which often meant working outside the underwater city. Many whales (especially larger species) have calls that can travel large distances through water. Big Daddies working outside Rapture might have needed to communicate to each other from different parts of the city, and having voices that can easily travel through water would make that process more efficient.
  • Why not just have them use radios? Because radios can fail, connections can be disrupted. To a profit-minded scientist like Suchong (who is clearly uninterested in little things like ethics and human rights) this may have seemed like it would increase efficiency and prove cheaper in the long run. Radios also don't work underwater at any reasonable distances, especially with 1960's technology. Submarines use Extremely Low Frequency radios that need very long antennas and only works at a few characters per minute.
• Criticism has been levied at the Save/Harvest option for providing a Broken Aesop on the nature of evil, but they're just viewing the two choices wrong. The Harvest choice provides an instant influx of power, but at the cost of losing out on a bigger payoff later on. In other words, the choice isn't about good versus evil, it's about instant gratification versus delayed reward. Evil isn't tempting because it has what you want, it's tempting because it'll give you what you think you want right now.
• Ryan's attempt at Taking You with Me seems to have failed at first. Realizing that he is beaten, he opts to self-destruct Rapture rather than let it fall into the hands of Frank Fontaine, a plan that seems to fail when Jack stops the sequence seconds later. But while his intended plan might not have worked, his actions expose Fontaine's manipulation, making it possible for Jack to turn on his apparent ally. Just after this confrontation you pretty much spend the rest of the game trying to overthrow Fontaine and eventually defeat him in the final boss fight. Ryan may have died but he actually succeeded at taking Atlas down with him, if perhaps indirectly and not in the way he intended.
• When you finally meet Ryan in his office, you catch him playing a bit of minigolf. It's a small detail that happens to put the weapon he'll be killed with in his hand already. But Andrew Ryan is a man who loves using symbolism to make a statement. In golf, one takes his time to plan where he wants the ball to go, just as Ryan planned where he wanted Rapture to go. Building Rapture and populating it with the world's best and brightest was Ryan's golf swing. Everything he did before and during the swing affected the future, but once it was in the air, it was out of his hands. As the ball is steered by wind and gravity, so too was Rapture steered by the wind of morality and the gravity of human nature. Ryan playing minigolf is symbolic of Ryan accepting that what's about to happen was always fated to happen.
  • Ryan's final action is to give Jack the golf club and command him to carry out his order to kill Ryan. Again, Ryan's using his golf symbolism to make a statement. He knows Jack is only acting as a proxy for Atlas/Fontaine. Jack's literal swing of that club will be Frank's metaphorical golf swing. After this, whatever happens is out of his hands. Sure enough, the first thing to happen after the game continues is the start of Fontaine's downfall as he loses control of Jack.
• The different endings seem pretty clear cut as good or bad, but there's a slightly deeper level to them when you consider the game's objectivist themes. Think about it- in the "bad" ending, Jack focuses on his own needs and desires, and works to make things better for himself. In the "good" ending, Jack rescues the Little Sisters and raises them as his own, putting their needs above his. It's not just a question of good or evil, it's a question of whether you ultimately embrace or reject Rapture's ideology!
• The one major character to openly denounce Ryan's objectivist philosophy is Dr. Tenenbaum, who has given up on doing anything for herself in favor of trying to make things better for others, primarily the Little Sisters but she also tries to help others who are also victimized by Rapture- for instance helping Jack, her brief attempt to help Subject Delta (which was only halted because Sofia Lamb forced her hand), and later rescuing Subject Sigma. This all ends up being done with very little, if any, consideration of herself. There is a counter-philosophy to objectivism- utilitarianism, the philosophy that you should focus as much as possible on helping others. And what better way to defy a man as fanatically objectivist as Andrew Ryan than to embrace the exact opposite of everything he values!
• During the blackout in the opening cutscene, there's audio of the plane's "bitchin' betty" yelling "Pull up!". Leaving aside that planes back then didn't have those systems, that's a huge clue that you're actually a hijacker, since you'd have to be in the cockpit to hear that voice.
• Why is Rapture done in an Art Deco style when that decor would have been out of date by the fifties? Because neither of the two art styles in vogue at the time would have worked with the city. Mid Century Modern follows a more relaxed style unsuited for a producers paradise and lacks a "monumental quality" someone building a new movement would have preferred. Brutalism would have been tainted by its origins in communism and leaks like a sieve even on the surface. It would have suited Ryan to iterate on the Art Deco style and push it truly spectacular lengths rather than keep up with the times.
• The logo foreshadows the experience, the outlook and differences in perspective of Rapture. It starts with the light source being above the title, showing a nice-looking logo, like how people look at Rapture from above like a utopia; then the light source slowly goes down and the logo looks degraded, rusty, showing its true colors literally, the state of decadence Rapture is really in.
• The Color Coding for Big Daddies fits the color scheme for Traffic Lights; Green signals that it's okay to move forward, especially if they are hypnotized; Yellow signals that you should slow down, and proceed with caution; Red signals that, you should stop soon!
• Gatherer's Garden machines only take ADAM, not money. They don't sell the plasmids, they make them! The "garden" motif was likely chosen to reflect that the plasmids are, in a way, "grown" right there in front of you. It's likely one used to be able to get ADAM vials from the vending machines or certain shopkeepers, they're just all sold out by now, which is why you can only get it from Little Sisters in-game.
• Atlas tells you to kill the Little Sisters to harvest their ADAM, and indeed, you get more at once than if you spared them. However, sparing the sisters actually earns you more ADAM in the long run, from Tenenbaum's gifts that she'll send for sparing every few sisters. On top of this, a few powerful plasmids can only be obtained by going the spare route. However, considering "Atlas" is actually Fontaine, it makes sense that he would give you bad advice, and only care about the current results rather than the ones down the line.

Fridge Horror

• Since Big Daddies are mentally conditioned to have no purpose other than to protect a Little Sister when not near one, they effectively have no reason to live and no will.
• The audio diaries are unsettling enough already, but it gets worse. These diaries are made by Fontaine Futuristics. About two-thirds of the way through the first game, you learn that Frank Fontaine is the son of a bitch who has been manipulating you the entire time. And every single audio diary you've seen, as well as the ones you haven't seen, put money in his pocket.
• Thinking about the ADAM making process according to the diaries involving a parasitic sea slug implanted in the little sister's stomach yields a rather disturbing revelation once you learn they regurgitate the ADAM. These children have been converted into nigh-immortal ADAM-producing honeybees.
• The indication that ADAM can actually preserve a person's memories and transfer them from one user to another actually explains a lot about how splicers become as unstable as they are. The extremely addicting nature of plasmids is bad enough on its own, but imagine repeatedly injecting yourself with the stuff and occasionally getting other peoples' memories that then proceed to merge with your own. Maybe the reason splicers tend to lose themselves is because they take so much Adam that the new memories get merged with their own until they can't tell the difference between what actually happened to them and what is a memory brought in by the Adam. Combine that confusion with the slow deterioration of the brain that is also caused by excessive doses, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
• Go back and listen to Ryan's audio logs again, especially the one where he describes a forest he purchased and then burned down when he was asked to share it. Ryan is clearly very possessive of his property- he seems to have a philosophy that his property is his to deal with as he sees fit, and nobody else is entitled to what he owns. He seems to be almost fanatical about this view, to the point where he is willing to destroy his own property if it means keeping it out of someone else's hands. It's no wonder that he chose objectivism as the basis for Rapture's society, but it's also no surprise that he would try to destroy Rapture and kill everyone in it just to keep someone else from taking over. It also ties into his hatred of communism, due to what he experienced as a child in the early days of Soviet Russia - the purest ideal of communism is that "what's yours is mine, and what's mine is yours", a society where everything is shared equally. In response, Ryan created his own ideal - "what's mine is mine, and if I can't have something, nobody gets it".
• Despite being seemingly quite friendly and compassionate, Atlas openly dismisses the Little Sisters, insists they are no longer human, and encourages you to harvest them. It's only because of Tenenbaum that you even learn of 'any' other option. It makes a lot more sense when you realize it's probably some of Frank Fontaine's true nature slipping through his facade, and an early hint that he's not your friend.
• Steinmann notes the Little Sisters being indestructible to bullets and virtually anything, but just how did he find that out? When you realize his status as a mad doctor, it suddenly feels as if he found that out himself through his own sadistic curiosity...
  • Well, a Little Sister did break her legs prolly trying to escape (and had to get her legs re-broke to set them right)and the Little Sisters were around during the New Year's Eve Riots....
• With all the carcasses of cats lying around and some of 'em lying in blood, y'all would have to take a wild guess that some of their owners turned into Splicers. Remember what Atlas said about "babies being strangled in cribs"?
• One of the dentist advertisements mentions phossy jaw - degeneration of the jaw caused by phosphorus poisoning.^note Don't do a google image search for it if you're easily squicked. The ailment was very common in the Victorian era for factory workers handling phosphorus (such as workers in matchstick factories) but by the 20th century new safety precautions had pretty much entirely eliminated it. That it is a common enough issue in Rapture to warrant mention in advertisements suggests Rapture's industrialists have thrown all those safety measures away in the name of more profit.

Fridge Logic

• Why did Fontaine bother with the charade at all, when his mind-control was clearly powerful enough to make Jack do things regardless of whether he wanted to or not?
  • By the time Jack left for the surface, it was fairly apparent that while Jack may HAVE to do what Fontaine wants, he can still express if he wants to or not. By putting Jack into situations where the orders make sense, he wouldn't fight it and be able to slip around Rapture easier. If Jack had just marched straight to Ryan, Ryan would know something was up and fight even harder. Or maybe he can only obey short, direct, orders. "Go and kill Andrew Ryan" would have him go straight to Ryan, maybe even through the sea.
• Why did Fontaine want Jack dead? Yeah, he’s been manipulating Jack. But also, Jack just slaughtered his way through a small army of splicers, turrets and Big Daddies. Fontaine clearly figures out how bad his plan was before the final fight, but for such a smart guy he should have figured it out faster. He knows full well how dangerous splicing is. There’s no reason to suggest he was a hardcore splicer before you made him desperate. So, he’s probably pretty sane. It seems like he could have made Jack a pretty easy pitch for why he shouldn’t mind the situation. He wouldn’t exist without Fontaine, Fontaine has never actually tried to kill you up to that point so you have little beef with him, your only reason to be particularly mad is if you agree with the views of Andrew Ryan, and he can spend hours listing reasons why Andrew Ryan really needed that golf club in the face. Even assuming collecting all diaries is canon and that Fontaine is aware you have collected all diaries and thus knows you know everything about his charade, you have less dog in this race than ever. If he just said “okay, now gtfo of my city” to you, your gaggle of Little Sisters and science mom, he’d have won everything. Plus, we know for a fact “would you kindly forget this” works. So even if Jack was that pissed about everything, Fontaine could have wiped everything from you. And if Jack is an amoral asshat on a harvest run? Offer to rule together. Jack might insist on removing the trigger, which means you just wipe that memory from him and he stops. Fontaine really clutched the villain ball after finally winning by playing a brilliant long con. Victory high must have gotten to him.
  • Fontaine is paranoid and egotistical.