BioShock Infinite Cultural References

Like the other BioShock games before it, BioShock Infinite contains many references to video games, philosophy, and real world history.

References to the BioShock Series

 * BioShock Infinite and the original BioShock have parallels to each other in a sense (revealed to be a part of the constants and variables in the infinite universes). Some of the following are parallels of BioShock and BioShock Infinite:
 * The game begins with a Lighthouse that holds transportation that will descend/ascend a user into the city the Lighthouse belongs to.
 * The man that enters the city receives a box/gift containing coordinates, a pistol, and an objective. Plus, the man has some marking on their hand(s). Jack has chains tattooed on his wrists while Booker DeWitt carved A.D. on his right hand.
 * The travel to the cities are similar. While the travel to Rapture is descending in the ocean via Bathysphere, the travel to Columbia is ascending into the air via Pilgrim Rocket. Both signify the depth/height in which they are traveling until revealing the city through an obstructed view of a window followed by words that represent the city.
 * The Church of New Eden parallels the beginning of BioShock with a statue of its leader and the message and belief of the city on a banner. Also, developers mention that the candles on the water parallel the fiery waters from the plane crash in the original BioShock.
 * In the beginning of the game, the priest asks Booker "Is it someone new?", similar to Jack's first encounter with a Splicer in BioShock.
 * It is later revealed in the Sea of Doors that Rapture and Columbia are nothing more than constants and variables and that there is always a: "lighthouse, man, city, a girl, a monster." The game's content can be paralleled entirely: Jack/Booker, Little Sister/Elizabeth, Rapture/Columbia, Songbird/Big Daddy, Andrew Ryan/Zachary Comstock, etc.
 * When Booker and Elizabeth enter the Arcade of Battleship Bay they will come across a arcade game featuring Duke & Dimwitt called "Flawless Flintlock." When Elizabeth is presented with this game, she exclaims: "Look! It's Flawless Flintlock! It's the newest one in the series! I heard it was delayed three times!" This an obvious jab at BioShock Infinite itself because of its "new game in the [BioShock] series" and its actual delay for release of three times.
 * When Elizabeth realizes Booker has duped her into thinking they are going to Paris, she hits him with a wrench. A direct reference to Jack's melee weapon from the original BioShock.
 * The only combination lock to feature in BioShock Infinite utilizes the same code as the first combination lock encountered in the original BioShock, which also happens to be the first code used in Deus Ex: Human Revolution and was the code for the door to Looking Glass studios, creators of Thief and System Shock. This was originally a reference to the book Fahrenheit 451, and the Firemen of Infinite may also be a reference to the novel as well.
 * Near the end of the game, Booker considers "a city at the bottom of the ocean" to be ridiculous, which was ironic considering that he was in Rapture, the setting of the original Bioshock.
 * In one of Jerimiah Fink's Voxophones, he mentions observing a biologist through a tear, along with "a merger of machine and man that is somehow the lesser, yet the greater, of both parties", this is possibly a reference to a Big Daddy.

Cultural References

 * At the Fairgrounds, after Booker passes by the ticket taker machine, Robert and Rosalind Lutece will approach and they ask him to call a coin toss (which always results in heads). This coin tossing is reference to the play Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead. Besides, the Lutece twins also share similarities with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from the play in their play with logic, probability and language.