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. 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. Although she found out that ADAM was addictive (like a benign cancer): if it wasn't regularly taken in, it caused 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 eventualy 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
By the time Jack arrived in Rapture, Tenenbaum had seen the error of her ways and begged Jack to help the Little Sisters. 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.

Towards the conclusion of the game, Tenenbaum helps Jack by removing Fontaine's mental conditioning, and showing him what he really is, making herself his one and only true ally. She frees him and lets him live a real life. Her final fate is revealed in the sequel; preliminary coverage from GameInformer Magazine says that regardless of Jack's actions, she left Rapture with her own group of Little Sisters. It is not known if she interacted with Jack after this, especially regarding the good ending where 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
After the events of BioShock, Dr. Tenenbaum spent 10 years living on the surface. The events involved in the kidnapping of girls from the surface to turn them into Little Sisters caught her attention, and drew her back down to Rapture.

She has been quoted as saying "She is like the golden story, not understanding the thing that she does.She is taking girls and turning them into...creatures like her. All of this...it is my fault." With "she," being the Big Sister, one of the remaining Little Sisters Tenenbaum brought to the surface with her. She is shown communicating via radio with the protagonist, the first Big Daddy ever made, in a picture shown in the magazine. It is unknown what role, other than providing information about the Big Sister, she will have in the sequel.

Her presence in BioShock 2 was fully revealed in the debut gameplay trailer on GameTrailers TV, where the Big Sister is seen running around the halls of Rapture and Tenenbaum says to the player, via radio: "What was that? Was it her? Follow her!."

In BioShock 2, she appears slightly aged. Unlike in the first BioShock, Tenenbaum will feature her own in-game model, as seen to the right. Her role in Bioshock 2 is more akin to a cameo, as she only appears in the first two levels of the game before she is replaced by Augustus Sinclair as Subject Delta's guide.

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

Video
left|300pxMeeting Tenenbaum right|300pxTenenbaum's Little Sister Hideout

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 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 unkown at the end of the game