Bouncer

The Bouncer is one of the two types of Big Daddies. Along from being the iconic protectors of the Little Sisters, they are also the main mechanics of Rapture, as seen in the beginning of the game, during Andrew Ryan's speech. Bouncers are more agile than Rosies, the other type of Big Daddy, but are entirely ineffective in ranged combat. The Bouncer's main weapon is an oversized drill attached to its right arm and powered by the internal combustion engine on his back. They generally attack using powerful blows at close range, with a fast charge being their only offensive long range ability. The Bouncers' distinctive helmets, with multiple small portholes and protection cages, appear to be based on the French Carmagnolle diving suit's design.

BioShock
In addition to normal Bouncers, the player encounters Elite Bouncers, which use a spinning harpoon instead of a drill, are decorated with red stripes, and are more difficult to deal with than the earlier Bouncers. The Bouncers are encountered in Welcome to Rapture, the Medical Pavilion, Fort Frolic, Hephaestus, and a single one in the Proving Grounds.

Bouncer "Moods"


The Bouncer, like the Rosie, has three "moods" that may occur when you encounter them. These moods appear as the color of the small portholes on the Bouncer's mask, along with his wrist.


 * The Bouncer's "green light" will only appear when he is hypnotized, by use of the Hypnotize Big Daddy Plasmid.
 * The Bouncer's "yellow light" will appear when it is in a "neutral" mode. When walking with a Little Sister, they will always be in this mood.
 * The Bouncer's "red light" will appear when the player attacks the Big Daddy or is enraged with the Enrage plasmid.

Attacks
When fighting any kind of Bouncer, three different attacks can and will be utilized against you.


 * The Bouncer may slam his drill into the ground, creating a small tremor in the ground and disorienting you for a moment.
 * The Bouncer may punch or drill you, eating away a lot of health. With both normal and Elite Bouncers, the drill will take away approximately half of your health.
 * Depending on how far away you are from the Bouncer, it may charge rapidly into you, blasting some of your health, and disorienting you for a second.

Strategies


Tactics involved in killing a Bouncer vary slightly from a Rosie as it's advisable to stay out of melee range. Using electrical attacks such as Electro Bolt, the Chemical Thrower with Electric Gel, or the Shotgun with Electric Buck, sends the Bouncer into a state of shock in which it cannot attack. Bouncers are vulnerable to armor-piercing ammunition from the Pistol or Machine Gun, and hacking turrets or bots (if possible) will give you the upper hand.


 * One of the best ways to kill a Bouncer is to use the trap bolt. Find a corridor with two walls, then while crouching, fire a bolt from one side to the opposite wall, uncrouch, fire another bolt above the previous one, go over to other wall and do the same in the other direction. Move down the hallway, rinse and repeat until you have a rough grid of electrified terror. Although this does take a lot of time and ammo to prepare, if a Bouncer charges though a well constructed grid, then you may be rewarded with the Bouncer dying just before it gets to you, with its body landing neatly at your feet to plunder. A fun idea in Hephaestus is to lure the Bouncer to the big stairwell and place around 4 trap bolts going down with a proximity mines in the middle and the Bouncer will charge, trip, and smash headfirst into a wall.
 * One relatively unknown and easy way to kill any Big Daddy is to fire exploding buckshot. On Easy mode, three shots should kill it.
 * One highly effective (and extremely entertaining) method is to use the Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid on a wandering Big Daddy, then take him to the target Big Daddy and let them battle it out. If the target Big Daddy falls first, so much the better, but if yours dies first, it is easy to pick off the survivor with even your weakest weapons.


 * Another easy way to dispatch a Bouncer is to wait until its back is turned, and then firing five or six Proximity Mines on the ground right in front up you. Step back, and pull out your Pistol, fire a single shot at the Bouncer, and let it charge forward, running straight into the mines. This strategy will kill an Elite Bouncer in one shot on the Easy difficulty. On medium or hard, the player can also set the mines in a group and put a Target Dummy over the mines. When the Bouncer attacks, he will be dealt a great deal of damage.


 * One of the easiest ways to kill a Bouncer (or any Big Daddy) is to ambush it in a tight place and fire a proximity mine right in front of you, following the mine you can fire a continuous stream of electric gel (from your chemical launcher) at the Bouncer. The Electric Gel effectively stuns the Bouncer and slowly burns away its health. A moderately powerful Bouncer should take a little more than a full tank of gel to kill, but while you reload your chemical launcher the Bouncer should die as it crosses over the proximity mine you placed earlier.


 * A strategy first seen in the "Bringing it Home" trailer shown at X06, the Insect Swarm Plasmid works almost the same as the Electro Bolt, although the Bouncer may still charge at you, even though the insects remain. Using Insect Swarm is a great opportunity to charge in with a Shotgun loading 00 Buck ammo or a Machine Gun with armor-piercing rounds.


 * Another strategy, although not particularly effective but very easy is to upgrade the grenade launcher so it no longer damages you, then simply walk up to the Bouncer and shoot it with proximity mines.


 * A very effective (but very simple) strategy is to just attack Big Daddies with Heat-seeking RPG rounds from your grenade launcher until it falls, a damage upgraded Grenade launcher should only take five shots to kill an Elite Bouncer on medium difficulty. If you find that this method wastes too much ammo for your liking, then hack U-invent machines and use the prolific inventor gene tonic, this should make getting RPG's quite easy.


 * Another strategy is shooting incendiary bolts at a Bouncer. On Easy difficulty, two shots will take out most of its health with a small bit left


 * It is possible to break the valve off the airtank on their back, releasing oxygen, shooting the stream (incendiary helps, but normal ammo has worked) will cause an explosion, and a very hurt Bouncer. A good way to pull this is to approach with a wrench, aim well, and take off the valve with a swing, then run, stun, and shoot the stream (or if you feel lucky, and have static discharge, scratch the 'run' and let your defenses do the stun).


 * A strategy more useful on Bouncers than Rosies is to hack some kind of hackable device, but instead of completing the hack you direct the flow to an alarm tile and when the security bots come after you, you shoot the Security Bullseye plasmid on the Big Daddy, on Hard this strategy may need to be used twice to kill the Big Daddy, and the two main benefits of this strategy is: it is cost efficient, and it keeps you out of harm's way.


 * A simple but effective strategy is to simply use any weapon with electric ammo, and continuously fire at the bouncer until it dies. This should be used with a shotgun that has the speed upgrade, otherwise you would be pounded. This is extremely effective when the target is in water. When also used with Incinerate! a good amount of damage is done even when not shooting.


 * One of the fastest ways is to put a bunch of proximity mines on an exploding object, and throw it at the Big Daddy. If it does not kill him, then it will leave him with almost no health.


 * Once you have both the Chemical Thrower and Grenade Launcher, a great way to take out an Elite Bouncer is to get far away, shoot it with Electric Gel until its health is about halfway, and then switch to the Grenade Launcher and blast away at it. This tactic will take mere seconds to kill the Big Daddy.

The most overall efficient way to kill Elite Big Daddies is to shoot them with a steel-tipped crossbow bolt, hit them with Electro Bolt, and repeat the process until they are dead. This is much cheaper than most other methods, and does not require weapon upgrades, but upgrading the crossbow damage is highly beneficial to efficiency. To do the above strategy, you must fire and stun as quickly as possible, as you only have fractions of a second to act while the Big Daddy is immobilized. This tactic was researched on Elite Bouncers and Elite Rosies, and is more effective on the Bouncers because they take the shortest possible route to you.

BioShock 2


Bouncers will be returning as enemies in BioShock 2.

Trivia

 * The Bouncer is the iconic face of BioShock, being featured in most of the trailers, on the cover of the game's box, and as a doll or figurine, both in-game and in real life.
 * The Bouncer is also one of the few enemies in any game that knocks you back and swings your camera as you are being hit.