The 25 Mindblowing Things You Need to See After Beating "Bioshock Infinite"

So: Assuming you've now seen the entire ending, there might be some initial confusion. Alternating timelines, different dimensional tears, different Bookers, different Elizabeths-it's kinda nuts. The good folks at VentureBeat put together one of the better-and mostly-clear-headed Bioshock: Infinite ending explainers we read, out of many.

Okay, so are you ready
to
have
your
mind
blown?

For those of you who didn't pick up on this—and we definitely didn't—there was a weird, brooding sound under the entire game's soundtrack. Somebody took the time to slow it down. And what did they find? A secret message playing throughout the entire game, right under your ears, a la Inception.

There are different explanations and ideas about what the music "means," but this is as good as those ideas get.

A second-playthru of Infinite reveals a game rife with foreshadowing from the first moment the Lutece twins are telling Booker that he "doesn't" row. One of the best parts of those first moments are the signs climbing the lighthouse, specifically, this one: Booker, as we all know by now, is going to Comstock's land. But that makes it Booker's land, technically, as well.

Fans of the game that started all of this, Bioshock, remember the first words another character spoke to them: A splicer, jumping in front of the submersible, asking: "Is it someone new?" Kinda set the insane tone for the entire thing. Well, guess who got a callback in Infinite? Take a look at the video above.

Speaking of Rapture, anyone notice this?

And another callback to the original Bioshock: The wrench, from the original game, which appears in a few places in Columbia, most memorably, when Elizabeth whacks you over the head with one.

Like every major release video game that comes out now, Infinite had a fair share of delays and issues with its release. But did you notice this meta moment, when Elizabeth goes to play one of the games in the arcade off of the beach?

Remember when Booker is on his way to the airship with Elizabeth? You're stopped, and somebody says something to Elizabeth. They call her Annabelle. Which means that somehow-through all of this dimensional mixup insanity-someone managed to recognize Elizabeth Comstock as Anna DeWitt, long before either of you figure out that she's Booker's daughter. Full video here.

By now, you should understand that the coin flip is a "constant." In other words, no matter how many times Booker fails-or how many times the Luteces have to start the entire process of getting a new Booker, to give this entire thing a go-there will be a coin flip, and that coin will always land on heads. But the Booker who destroys Columbia, and ends the entire existence of Comstock? That Booker-the one you're controlling-is the 123rd Booker DeWitt to give this a go. And we know this because (A) the map of ringing the lighthouse shows the numbers 1, 2, and 2-almost as in ringing out the dead one-but more importantly, (B) because the chalkboard with which the Luteces keep track of coin-flips adds up to-yes-123 coin flips. If you want to get really crazy about it, here are a bunch of theories about the significance of the numbers 122 and 123 in the game right here.

By now you know that the ending of Infinite takes you back to the beginning of the original Bioshock. But what's the difference a few years can make (even on the same platforms)? A pretty incredible one. One Reddit user took a look at the differences between the two, and they're kind of incredible.

Ken Levine, Bioshock: Infinite's mastermind, is Jewish. Which might explain why the preacher in the game's first scene in Columbia is screaming about the various things Comstock has done for the people of Columbia, and how-after each one-"it would have been enough," but Comstock kept giving to the people of Columbia. That prayer construct is part of a song that plays a big role in Passover, the holiday during which the Jews celebrate their exodus from Egypt under Moses. The song they sing at the end of the Seder is called "Dayenu," which more or less translates to "it would have been enough," as in, when God struck down Egypt with the Ten Plagues, it would have been enough (but then, he freed the Jews from Egypt). And so on. Levine basically copped to the parallell in an interview with Digital Trends writer Adam Rosenberg three months before the game came out. Whether or not he could have seen that Bioshock: Infinite would be released during Passover when he put this moment in the game is another question entirely.

Some Bioshock Infinite players have done really, really deep digs into Booker's past. Proof? Well, there's a theory about why Booker is as damaged as he is. One of them, which we'll call The Empathetic Theory, accounts for Booker's age over the entire series of events he goes through even before the game, documented here. The other theory, which will call The Booker Is A Self-Loathing Asshole Theory, digs into the psychology of why he killed all those Native Americans back in the day (and then sought absolution for his sins). This one seems a hell of a lot more plausible, and evident by way of subtext: Booker was part Sioux, and was compelled by his fellow soldiers to slaughter all those Native Americans back in the day, setting into motion Booker's guilt (and again, the entire game's plot).

Not long after the game dropped, of the crazier ideas and theories about the game sprouted first from the mind of Forbes writer Paul Tassi: That DeWitt/Comstock is actually just the alternate version of Jack/Andrew Ryan from the original Bioshock. For those of you who played the original Bioshock-which was packaged with Infinite, maybe for a good reason beyond just giving players a little extra with their game-you'll remember that the bathyspheres could only be controlled after they were locked down by Ryan (or those close to Ryan). So why could Booker operate the bathysphere when taken down to Rapture at the end of the game? There's more to it, and Tassi's theory on the connection between the two games is a must-read. There's also, of course, an entire Reddit thread about this replete with visual accompanyment that distills the entire thing into pretty simple pieces.

There's a theory about Booker's apartment at the end of the game that went up on the Bioshock sub-Reddit: That the hinges on the door of Anna's room change sides from when Booker gives the baby to Robert Lutece to when Booker checks in on Anna's room at the game's final, post-credits scene. It was either a convienent fix so players couldn't see all the way into Anna's room, or has more meaning-That you're in a different dimension/timeline than those of previous events. You be the judge.

This scene-one of the most crucial in the game, in terms of sheer storytelling power-was one a lot of people missed. Did you?

Also, if you haven't figured it out yet, the theme of "Will The Circle Be Unbroken?"—one of the first songs you hear in the game—is, in hindsight, a dead giveaway to the game's story. The "circle" is the endless loop of Bookers trying to take down Comstock and reverse the process of him giving away Anna. And—as we all know by now—no, the circle would not go unbroken. And realize, this brings us to the biggest giveaway of the game, its title: The 'Infinite' in 'Bioshock Infinite' refers to the infinite loop of time that Booker and the Luteces are attempting to break. Yes: The game's title is its biggest dead giveaway.

If you've played through all of Bioshock: Infinite, you can now recognize the coin-flipping scene at the beginning as one of the game's most compelling and crucial moments. But do you know where the inspiration came from? Look no further than a scene from Tom Stoppard's play, the classic existential comedy Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead. In Stoppard's play, the two titular characters basically amount to goons who are unknowingly crucial to the plot of Shakespear's Macbeth. Obviously, in Infinite, the Luteces have more involvement in their own fates (and the fate of their world). But they share a thread as two pairs of funny characters who operate in a weird vaccum of involvement (or uninvolvement) from a central plot, who have an implied central plot of their own. And it looks like Ken Levine might've taken some inspiration from them in building out the Lutece Twins. Check out the opening scene above from Stoppard's 1990 film adaptation of his own play for the comparison.

Ready to have your mind blown again? There isn't just hidden music in Bioshock: Infinite, but hidden sounds.

Another thing a lot of people missed: What it's like to fall out of Columbia. There's a screenshot above, but full video of the experience-which really, is kind of cool-right here.

...only takes five minutes to watch, and is hilarious. If you haven't seen the Zero Puncuation review of the game, yet, stop what your'e doing, and watch it now.

During the PC version of the game's ending, one player went outside of the maps—in other words, beyond the invisible "walls" of the game, into the edges of its codes—and explored the ending of the game, including the revisted version of Rapture. The screenshots are incredible and beautiful. Check them out here.