Andrew Ryan

"Andrew Ryan... the bloody king of Rapture."

- Atlas

Andrew Ryan (voiced by Armin Shimerman) is the founder of Rapture and the owner of Ryan Industries. He is the main antagonist throughout most of BioShock. He only appears in person in the Rapture Central Control level.

History
Ryan was born Andrei Ryanofski in Minsk in 1892 to a rich family that where important figures in the Russian government. As a result he was witness to the murder of his entire family by communist rebles in 1918. He was then sent to a work camp in the gulag until he escaped. His experiences under Soviet rule led Andrew Ryan to his personal philosophy: the modern world was created by great men who strove to make their own way. Anytime "parasites" gained control of such a world, they destroyed it. In 1923 he fled Russia to Britain where he enrolled as a student at Oxford University. He emigrated to America in 1927, believing it was a place where a man could prosper.

For a time, he was devoted to his adopted country, grateful for it rewarding his intellect and determination with wealth and fame. It was there he founded Ryan industries which manufactured steel products and weapons. In the stock market crash of 1929 Ryan was barely effected. In 1932 he was named by "Life magazine" as the youngest billionaire in the country. However, the social programs adopted in the 30s increasingly tested that devotion. Ultimately, Ryan considered those who benefited from others "parasites." Ryan soon came to despise the ideals of charity or generosity. In his mind, one could only own what one earned. For instance, he once owned a large forest as a personal retreat, one that many groups envied. Eventually, the government attempted to nationalize it as parkland. His response, before surrendering it, was to burn it to the ground, thus keeping the "parasites" from taking what he was his.

The final straw for Ryan was the destruction of Hiroshima with the Atomic Bomb. In his eyes, the Bomb was the ultimate corruption of his ideals—science and determination harnessed for destruction, creating a weapon that gave the "parasites" the ability to destroy anything that they could not seize.

Ryan's response was to use his entire fortune to build Rapture; a community where "the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great not be constrained by the small," in the only place he felt the "parasites" could not touch—the depths of the Atlantic ocean.

Ryan filled his city with several thousand of the world's best and brightest, and for a time, it was everything he dreamed it would be, a paradise of freedom and wealth.

There was only one flaw in his plan: the reason he built the city in the first place. To keep Rapture safely hidden from the "parasites", he strictly forbade contact with the surface, which created a market for smuggled goods, which caused the rise of the one thing Ryan had been unable to imagine—a brilliant and determined man for whom freedom, wealth and comfort were not enough. A man who could only be satisfied by control—former mobster Frank Fontaine. Fontaine's life prior to becoming a citizen of Rapture provided the skills that allowed him to dominate the small, yet unavoidable black market in smuggled goods. By being the first to sponsor Bridgette Tenenbaum's research into a mysterious sea slug, he became the primary distributor of ADAM. As Rapture was completely isolated from the surface world, few were aware of the chaos of the post-WWII reconstruction era, and Fontaine was easily able to sway the lower classes with promises of revolution. With these factors in his favor, it took him less than three years to gather enough wealth, power and support to challenge Ryan openly.

The idealistic Ryan was totally unprepared for the brutality of armed conflict as opposed to the genteel honor of economic competition. As Rapture fell into chaos due to the machinations of first Fontaine and later Atlas, he grew ever more desperate in his efforts to protect his utopia. Out of obsession with his enemy, he became his enemy. One by one, he abandoned all of his ideals until he was nothing more than a tyrant spouting monologues of self-determination while smiting his enemies like a spoiled god. He had become one of the very "parasites" he had built Rapture as a sanctuary from, and he was destroying it—just like he believed all "parasites" did to great things.

This is the state of affairs in which Jack finds the city at the beginning of BioShock.

Ryan is an ever-present voice while Jack travels through Rapture. Although Frank Fontaine set Jack on his journey to kill Ryan using the would you kindly trigger phrase, Ryan knew exactly what was occurring.

When he laid eyes on Jack, however, he instantly recognized him as the son he might have had with Jasmine Jolene, had she not sold him before he was born. His own flesh and blood, reduced to a puppet, was the ultimate insult this world could have given him.

Looking at his life and his works, now all in ruin—by his own hand as much as his enemies'—he decided to die as he had lived: on his own terms, by setting Rapture's self-destruct mechanism. Ryan is ultimately confronted by his son Jack. With the trigger phrase, he could have controlled Jack as Atlas did, and directed him against his enemy. Instead, he educates Jack about his true self, his birth, and the phrase would you kindly which has controlled him completely up until now. He then hands Jack a golf club, telling him, "A man chooses, a slave obeys". Ryan, insisting that he die on his own terms, orders Jack to kill him. As Jack strikes him numerous times Andrew Ryan repeatedly yells, "a man chooses, a slave obeys." Ryan orders Jack to kill him to demonstrate that he chooses his own destiny and will not be controlled. Emphasizing this choice is the fact that, shortly after Ryan's death, the player discovers that Ryan had made the decision to turn off the local Vita-Chamber to prevent the device from resurrecting him. He could have kept the device active and done battle with Jack, or perhaps managed to have merely save himself.

There are a number of theories on Ryan's motivations for his manner of dying. Some say that with his city and his dreams in ruins, Andrew Ryan lacked the courage to live in a world not under his own control, and instead chooses death; this is made doubly ironic in that Ryan, who has not hesitated to murder others for his own ends, cannot find the fortitude to commit the final act himself, instead relying upon Jack to do it for him. Others say that this was his one chance to be a father to his son; to teach him to be a man, not a slave. Using the Vita-Chamber would cheapen his death, and only a real sacrifice would have this impact. Ryan would rather die than be a slave to Atlas's whims. If this is the case, he succeeded; Jack immediately sets out to free himself from Fontaine's control.

Andrew Ryan introduction
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Audio Diaries

 * Medical Pavilion
 * Parasite Expectations
 * Vandalism
 * Neptune's Bounty
 * Fontaine Must Go
 * Watch Fontaine
 * Death Penalty in Rapture
 * Working Late Again
 * Arcadia
 * The Market is Patient
 * Offer a Better Product
 * The Great Chain
 * Farmer's Market
 * Pulling Together
 * Desperate Times
 * First Encounter
 * Hephaestus
 * A Man or a Parasite
 * Impossible Anywhere Else
 * Great Chain Moves Slowly
 * Point Prometheus
 * Marketing Gold
 * Mistakes
 * Removed Audio Diaries
 * Congregations

Trivia

 * Andrew Ryan is heavily based on the character, John Galt, from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Their political philosophies are identical, and they both broke away from the world because of their views on "parasites". Andrew Ryan's name is an anagram of Ayn Rand, with the letters REW added in. References to John Galt can also be seen through the course of BioShock, such as the phrase "Who is Atlas?", which is a mockup of "Who is John Galt?", Atlas Shrugged catch-phrase.
 * In his office, as aforementioned, Ryan has turned off the Vita Chamber which could have otherwise resurrected him. However, there is a glitch which turns it on without so much as touching it; after you have killed him and put the genetic key into the slot, wait until the locked door opens and the alarm begins to sound. When the Little Sisters appear, don't follow them, but instead allow the Security Bots kill you. You will then respawn in the previously deactivated Vita Chamber.