User blog comment:Unownshipper/Can "Burial at Sea" be counted as canon?/@comment-3967731-20131114022302/@comment-867628-20131114211810

I find it most likely that this is a sort of "alternate" Rapture; not the city we know from Bioshock 1 and Bioshock 2, but a different Rapture altogether. For one, I find it unlikely that Sander Cohen would run an orphanage given his obviously psychotic tendencies. I can see the Fontaine Department store happening, but Cohen seemed somewhat out-of-character.

The Rapture version of the sky-hook also leads me to believe that this Rapture is another "constant", especially given Elizabeth's remark after you find the Sky-Hook. Not to mention Suchong's "theft of intellectual property = two-way street" Audio Diary. It's quite possible that the Rapture from the first two games isn't even reachable by Tears, and is thus "closed off" from Columbia and this "alternate Rapture".