Brigid Tenenbaum



"That Tenenbaum ain't what you think. Florence Nightingale, huh? That'll all come crashing down 'fore you can say 'canned tomatoes'. I've seen good bunco, and I've seen great bunco. But, when you waltz through Rapture and World War Two without even a scratch? You got more than leprechauns watching over you."

- Frank Fontaine

Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum is a genetic scientist who helped originally develop ADAM. She is also the "mother" of the Little Sisters; she created them, and cares a great deal about their safety, caling them her little ones, and acting like a mother towards them in protecting them, as shown in a clip and housing them in her study. The player is able to win her allegiance by saving the Little Sisters instead of harvesting them for ADAM.

Early Life in Germany
Tenenbaum was in a German Prison Camp when she was very young, and observed German doctors making experiments. Sometimes when they made scientific errors, she would correct them. It was in this way that she discovered that she had a love for science. Tenenbaum generally considered the German experiments to be useless, but she was indifferent to the Holocaust in general. It is likely that she survived the prison camps due to her helpfulness to the doctors, which caused them to give her the nickname "Das Wunderkind."

By the age of 16 Tenenbaum had gained a reputation as a scientific genius. However, in 1946 she mysteriously disappeared from the surface. There was speculation that she had been taken to America or the Soviet Union like many scientists after WWII, or even that she had been the victim of retaliatory execution due to her actions in the prison camps. Her true destination however, was Rapture.

Life in Rapture
After her arrival in Rapture Tenenbaum became a major figure in the scientific community. While walking on the docks of Port Neptune one day she discovered a smuggler whose crippled hands had been restored to normal function after he was bitten by a sea slug. She then researched the slug and found that it could heal damaged cells, even resurrect them. Her research explored the functions of the substance that the sea slugs produced, dubbed ADAM, which allowed people to manipulate (splice) their DNA, giving them what could be called superpowers, through the use of Plasmids.

Tenenbaum was initially turned away by all of the reputable research facilities, but Frank Fontaine saw the value of her discovery and agreed to fund her research. At Fontaine's urging she engineered a way to mass produce ADAM in the bodies of young girls, thus creating the Little Sisters. Tenenbaum was soon able to get her invention off the ground and quickly became the most well known woman in Rapture, ensuring financial success for her benefactor and Fontaine Futuristics. She found out that ADAM was addictive if it wasn't regularly taken in, acting like a benign cancer, causing mental and physical deterioration.

However, as Tenenbaum continued to work for Fontaine she became increasingly distressed by the idea of what she was doing to the little girls. Realizing that she was simply creating monsters, Tenenbaum began to hate herself for what she had done. She continued to work for Fontaine long enough to be influential in his development of his back up plan, Jack, purchasing the embryo from Jasmine Jolene on Fontaine's behalf. However, before Fontaine eventually went into hiding she had a falling out with him and disappeared from the public eye, leaving her apartment in the Mercury Suites to take up residence in her sanctuary for Little Sisters.

BioShock
Bridgette_Tenenbaum_Portrait.png‎ By the time Jack arrived in Rapture, Tenenbaum had seen the error of her ways. On a route through Rapture, she spotted a Little Sister with a Splicer and Jack. She shoots and kills the Splicer and threatens to kill Jack if he tries to her hurt the Little Sister. Atlas tries to reason with her and advises Jack to harvest her, he also mocks her for making these sweet girls into monsters. Tenenbaum was desperate and begged Jack to help the Little Sisters. She throws him a Plasmid that can turn the Little Sister back into a normal girl again. She says if he saves her, she will make it worth his while, somehow. If Jack does what she asks he only retrieves 80 ADAM per rescue, but after every three rescues she rewards him with 200 ADAM and various other items, including rare Plasmids and Tonics. If Jack chooses to harvest the Little Sisters, he retrieves 160 ADAM, and she does nothing but express her anger towards him. Jack's choice is left to the player. She mostly speaks after you save every third Little Sister, to reward Jack.

Towards the conclusion of the game, Tenenbaum saves Jack from Fontaine after Jack kills Andrew Ryan. She sends several Little Sisters to bring Jack through the vents and into her safehouse. However, Jack falls through the vent and is knocked uncouncious. He awakens in Tenenbaum's safehouse and is informed by her that she removed Fontaine's mental conditioning, and showing him what he really is, making herself his one and only true ally. She tells him to fully get rid of the Mental Condtioning, he needs to find Lot 111 in Apollo Sqaure. By freeing him she enables him to defeat Fontaine, and some unknown amount of time afterward she left Rapture and moved to the surface. It is not known if she interacted with Jack after this, especially regarding the good ending when he rescues five Little Sisters and raises them on the surface. Further contact seems to be implied, however, by the line in the good ending "You never said what was your reward...".

BioShock 2
Roughly ten years after the events of BioShock, Tenenbaum's adopted daughters who were Little Sisters left her because of what she did to them. Later on, Tenenbaum noticed the kidnappings of Little Girls all around the world by Big Sisters. Tenenbaum was contacted by Eleanor Lamb so that she may help her defeat her mother, Sofia Lamb. So she used the Sisters to bring Delta back to life; using his genetic code in the Big Daddy Dolls. She still felt guilt for her role in creating the Little Sisters, and she traveled back to Rapture in a private bathysphere to try to stop Sofia Lamb from using the little girls. However, Lamb noticed her arrival and destroyed her sub with her Splicers.

Tenenbaum escaped and hid in the ticket booth of the train station of the Atlantic Express, continuing to rescue Little Sisters and protect them as she had done years before. After Subject Delta was revived, she contacted him with a weak signal to awake him. After he awoke, he returned power back to the district and Tenenbaum could contact him further. She explained what had happened to Rapture in the past ten years, stating the Rapture is under Lamb's control, and that the Splicers, Big Sisters, Little Sisters, Big Daddies and Security are also under her rule. She encourages Delta to come find her, promising to give him information about his past. When Delta is near she explains that he is an old Big Daddy model and that his body is shutting down because of the protection bond separation, and that his long lost Little Sister is Eleanor Lamb, daughter of Sofia.

Tenenbaum wants Delta to help her continue to save the little girls. Tenenbaum already saved several, but she does not know how they will get home. After their encounter at the Atlantic Express Train Station, Lamb knows where Delta is and sends a wave of Splicers to attack them. Knowing that the Splicers could break into the booth to find Delta, Tenenbaum escapes once again with the Little Ones and goes into hiding, breaking off contact with Delta but still planning to save the Little Sisters. She leaves Delta with a valuable, but suspicious ally known as Augustus Sinclair. Her fate is unknown.

BioShock

 * Medical Pavilion
 * Love for Science
 * Useless Experiments


 * Neptune's Bounty
 * Finding the Sea Slug
 * ADAM Discovery
 * Fontaine's Smugglers


 * Arcadia
 * Mass Producing ADAM
 * Maternal Instinct


 * Farmer's Market
 * Hatred
 * Functional Children
 * ADAM Explained


 * Point Prometheus
 * Why Just Girls?


 * Removed Audio Diary
 * Gatherer's Flu

BioShock 2

 * Adonis Luxury Resort
 * Return


 * Atlantic Express
 * The Situation


 * Cult of Rapture
 * Survivors

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Trivia

 * Up until the development of BioShock 2 Tenenbaum's first name was spelled "Bridgette," and her name appears with that spelling in the area title for her apartment when the player first enters it in BioShock. However, in the course of the "Something in the Sea" viral marketing campaign her name appeared as "Brigid," and Elizabeth Tobey, community manager for 2K Games, confirmed that that Brigid was the official spelling in a post on the 2K Forums in January 2009.
 * Tenenbaum's name may be inspired by Ayn Rand's original last name, Rosenbaum.
 * Tenenbaum sounds similar to "Tannenbaum", the German word for a Christmas tree, which may be a nod towards the fact that she leaves Jack gifts when he saves Little Sisters.
 * Even though she was originaly meant to be one of the most important characters in BioShock 2 she is mainly only seen in the first level, and her fate is relatively unknown at the end of the game.