Andrew Ryan

"Now you've met Andrew Ryan... the bloody king of Rapture."

- Atlas

Andrew Ryan 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
Andrew Ryan was born Andrei Rianofski in Russia during the time when the Czar still held autocratic rule over the country. In 1917 he witnessed the Russian Revolution which established the Soviet Union and put the Communist Bolsheviks in power. Ryan's experiences under Soviet rule led him 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 1919 Ryan fled the economic hardships in Russia and came to America, believing it to be a place where a great man could prosper.

For a time, he was devoted to his adopted country, grateful for the wealth and fame it awarded his intellect and determination. However, the social programs adopted in the 30s increasingly tested that devotion. His experiences in the "worker's paradise" made Ryan despise the ideals of Socialism, believing that those who benefited from others were parasites. 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 (saying that it "belonged to God"). When the government attempted to nationalize it as parkland, Ryan's response was to burn it to the ground so no one could have it.

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 would not be constrained by the small," in the only place he felt the parasites could not touch — the depths of the Atlantic ocean. He created a shield company on the surface named Warden Yarn, and through it he conducted business with suppliers, such as Orrin Lutwidge's Scarlet Sovereign Import and Export, to receive materials necessary to build his city. When Rapture was completed, Ryan filled it 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.

However, by filling a city with ambitious experts, trained geniuses, and breakthrough artists, Ryan set up a top-heavy class system with most Rapture citizens feeling that essential jobs such as food processing, cleaning, simple maintenance, etc. were beneath them, and thus were often ignored. This led to widespread dissatisfaction when these jobs were neglected and an eventual economic collapse throughout Rapture. The social conditions resulting from the economic collapse allowed Frank Fontaine to establish the influential but undermining Fontaine's Home for the Poor and also allowed Atlas to rise to political power and openly challenge Andrew Ryan's leadership.

Furthermore, in order to keep Rapture safely hidden from the parasites, he strictly forbade contact with the surface, inadvertently creating a market for smuggled goods, which in turn led to the rise of Frank Fontaine.

Fontaine's life prior to becoming a citizen of Rapture provided the skills that allowed him to dominate the small black market in smuggled goods the city's forced isolation made possible. The wealth gleaned from that small black market funded Bridgette Tenenbaum's research into a mysterious sea slug, making him the primary distributor of ADAM. As Rapture was completely isolated from the surface world, few were aware of the chaos of the post-war reconstruction era, and Fontaine was easily able to sway the lower classes with promises of revolution. With black-market wealth, ADAM-based biotechnology, and duplicitous propaganda, it took him less than three years to acquire the power to challenge Ryan openly.

As Rapture fell into chaos due to the machinations of Fontaine (and later Atlas) Ryan grew ever more desperate in his efforts to protect his utopia. His war Fontaine was paid with the very freedoms which made his city prosper. For example,his decision to alter plasmids so he could control their users with pheromones reduced its population to slaves. Eventually, he abandoned each of his ideals until he was nothing more than a tyrant, and just like the parasites he had built Rapture as a sanctuary from, he was destroying it. This is the status quo in Rapture when Jack arrives at the beginning of BioShock.

BioShock
Ryan is an ever-present voice while Jack travels through Rapture. Frank Fontaine sends Jack on his journey to kill Ryan using the "would you kindly" trigger phrase, though Ryan is not aware of this at first. When Jack first arrives in Rapture, Ryan assumes he is someone from the Russian KGB or CIA, come to make an already disintegrating situation worse. After Jack makes it safely out of Arcadia, Ryan begins to piece together the puzzle, realizing that it is Atlas who is directing Jack's movements. .

As Jack heads to Rapture Central Control, Ryan begins to hint at this knowledge in his final radio messages before his face-to-face meeting with Jack. The "Would You Kindly" board outside his office shows how Ryan put together the clues connecting himself with Jasmine Jolene, and Jack as their illegitimate son, whom Jasmine had sold to Frank Fontaine before he was born. Infuriated with this knowledge, Ryan decides to activate Rapture's self-destruct mechanism in a final attempt to put a stop to Fontaine's plan.

Minutes later, Jack confronts Ryan, who is casually playing golf in his office. He educates Jack about his true self, telling him of his birth, his conditioning, his experiences in Rapture and the phrase "would you kindly", which controlled his every action. He tells his son that the fundamental difference between a man and a slave is that "a man chooses, while a slave obeys". Ryan then hands Jack the golf club and orders Jack to kill him. Jack obeys, and proceeds to batter his father to death. With Ryan dead, Jack claims the genetic key to Rapture's systems from Ryan's corpse. With the Vita-Chamber in Ryan's office deactivated, Ryan is officially dead and cannot be resurrected.

BioShock 2
2K Marin has stated that, although Andrew Ryan will feature again in BioShock 2, it is unclear to what extent he will return. One of the most obvious ways would be through Audio Diaries, and perhaps messages left over the intercom system. It has also been seen through videos showcasing Ryan Amusements, that his ideals will be carried on through the large animatronic devices showing his versions of the "Parasite's world". The player will be able listen to his voice booming over the scenery, as shown in the videos. The relationship between him and his political opponent, Sofia Lamb, will be detailed throughout the game.

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's actions are heavily based on those of the character John Galt from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, though their end results are drastically different . Ryan's actions (burning an entire forest down when the government nationalized it and then isolating himself from the rest of the world) closely mirrors that of another character in the novel under the same circumstances (the character in question was Ellis Wyatt. Instead of a forest he burnt down his oil fields and retreated to Galt's Gulch.)
 * Andrew Ryan's name is an anagram of Ayn Rand, with the letters REW added in. Additionally, his political philosophies and personal history are very similar to hers. For example, they were both born in Russia and emigrated to America after their home country adopted a Communist regime, and both believed in the philosophy of Objectivism..
 * 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 the player has 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 to kill Jack. The player will then respawn in the previously deactivated Vita Chamber.
 * Despite Frank Fontaine and Atlas being his arch-nemeses, Ryan never figured out that they were the same person.
 * Ryan is also prone to favoritism, doting on those who side with him, so much so that he has subdivided Rapture and given two of his subordinates Sander Cohen and J.S. Steinman complete control over their respective sectors.