Little Sister



""Mr. Bubbles, Mr. Bubbles, are you there? Are you there? Come and give me lolly, come and bring me toffees... teddy bear... teddy bear.""

- A Little Sister

Little Sisters are young girls appearing to be around seven years old, who have been genetically altered and mentally conditioned to reclaim ADAM from the dead around Rapture. Little Sisters are almost always accompanied by a Big Daddy. They are completely immune to damage and have no offensive abilities. Attacking them, however, will incur the wrath of their protector.

History


ADAM is excreted by a sea slug found near Rapture. However, the sea slug did not naturally produce ADAM in large enough quantities for serious research and exploitation. Bridgette Tenenbaum developed a procedure whereby a sea slug was implanted in a host's stomach. After the host fed, inducing regurgitation yielded up to thirty times the amount of usable ADAM. Female children were found to be the only viable hosts. After implantation, they were known as Little Sisters. Frank Fontaine used his Little Sister's Orphanage in Apollo Square as a front to obtain a supply of hosts for Tenenbaum. When that failed, Ryan's men took the little girls promising they would become the salvation of Rapture. Naturally, he told them nothing about the process through which that would occur.

Although Tenenbaum hoped to keep the children in a vegetative state, they had to be fully functional in order to produce ADAM. They still maintained many of the ordinary characteristics of children: laughing, playing, smiling, singing. However, the implanted sea slug gave them a physical drive to feed on the dead. Naturally, the children were resistant to this impulse. Dr. Suchong was able to mentally condition the children to have a neurological impulse to feed and made them associate the bodies of dead Splicers as "angels" to make the process more appealing for the girls. With a physical and neurological drive in place, the Little Sisters now eagerly pursued harvesting of ADAM in Rapture.

The ADAM coursing through their bodies made them virtually indestructible. However, they still had the stature and strength of small girls. They would be a constant target for abduction and exploitation. Dr. Suchong conceived of partnering each Little Sister with a Big Daddy, a heavily spliced human grafted into an armored diving suit. A pheromone produced by the Big Daddy attracted the Little Sisters, and its counterpart produced by the Little Sisters drove the Big Daddies to defend them with their lives. The first successfully bonded Little Sister was Eleanor Lamb. The Little Sisters, because of the pheromone, are strongly attached to the Big Daddies, affectionately calling them "Mister Bubbles" or "Mister B". A message can also, on occasion, be heard over the intercom, stating, "Please remember that it is against the law to approach the Little Sister." When a Big Daddy is killed, its Little Sisters will stop whatever they're doing and mourn its death. Interestingly, as shown in recent trailers for BioShock 2, when the player (a Big Daddy) comes across a Little Sister, she stalls for a few seconds then replies "Mister... Mister B? It's you, you're all better again!" This suggests that the Little Sisters are not assigned or attached to any one particular Big Daddy, but attracted to them as a whole; they may not even be aware that there are multiple Big Daddies, and may think of them as a singular "Mister B".

Removal of the sea slug from the host under normal circumstances is fatal. Although the host does not die immediately, it was likened to taking a patient off life support: their demise was inevitable. In a forced removal, a large amount of ADAM could still be obtained from the sea slug. However, Tenenbaum's constant contact with the Little Sisters and their unsuppressed childlike behavior eventually caused her to seek a way to safely remove the sea slug. In time, she was able to design a Plasmid to accomplish just that. However, the Plasmid could not reverse the mental conditioning: only time could accomplish that. Tenenbaum then established a safe house for restored Little Sisters in the tunnels beneath Olympus Heights.

Number of Little Sisters in Rapture
There are a total of 21 Little Sisters which can be rescued or harvested, disregarding any extra Little Sisters which may appear as a result of glitches. If the player harvests all 21 of these Little Sisters, he or she will gain a total of 3360 ADAM throughout the game. If the player rescues all of the Little Sisters, and finds all of the gifts from Dr. Tenenbaum, he or she will earn a total of 3080 ADAM. Accessing the start menu will reveal the number of Little Sisters in the player's current level, as well as their current status.


 * Welcome to Rapture: 2
 * 2 Little Sisters can be seen in 2 hidey holes extremely briefly, and one Little Sister is seen briefly, but none of them can be rescued or harvested.
 * Medical Pavilion: 2
 * Only the second Little Sister is protected by a Big Daddy.
 * Neptune's Bounty: 3
 * An extra Little Sister can sometimes be found. See Extra Little Sister Bug
 * Arcadia: 2
 * Farmer's Market: 1
 * Fort Frolic: 3
 * An extra Little Sister can sometimes be found. See Extra Little Sister Bug.
 * Hephaestus: 3
 * Olympus Heights: 2
 * Apollo Square: 2
 * Point Prometheus: 3
 * Proving Grounds: ?
 * The Little Sister which you need to protect is not counted, because she cannot be rescued or harvested since she is no longer implanted with a slug.
 * The Endgame: ?
 * After fighting Fontaine, you can only see little sisters coming out of their vents and stabbing Fontaine to death with their needles.

Strategy
Every three Little Sisters the player harvest will grant them 480 ADAM (160 x 3), whilst every three they save will grant them 440 (80 x 3 + 200), plus many excellent Gene tonics as well as the Hypnotize Big Daddy Plasmid.

Harvesting represents the short-term solution: Not only will the player end up with more ADAM than if they had saved the Little Sisters, but the first few levels of the game will be much easier to achieve. Coupled with the potential for sampling many different Plasmids and Gene tonics at once, this is the ideal strategy for someone playing BioShock for the first time. This path unlocks the unhappiest ending to the game.

Saving, on the other hand, is a long-term investment. While it is harder to survive the first few levels with this path, it ultimately offers greater rewards. The gene tonics and Plasmids the player receives are among the most powerful in the game and cannot be obtained otherwise. The ADAM gap between a Harvester and a Rescuer (280 ADAM in total) is also compensated by these bonuses. However, these rewards may or may not suit one's playstyle (due to the benevolent nature of Dr. Tenenbaum, all of these rewards offer non-aggressive boons), so it is recommended to either look up the rewards individually or play the game as a Harvester first. This option is recommended for experienced players or for those who have already played the game. This strategy will also unlock the happiest ending in the game.

Mixing both strategies is not excluded. By both harvesting and saving the Little Sisters the player offers themselves a generous dose of ADAM, with unique Plasmids and Gene tonics to boot. Please note that the player only gets their rescue reward after saving three Little Sisters, so if one is feeling scrupulous do so in blocks of three so as to get that reward as quickly as possible. Also note that this strategy will never get the player as much ADAM as a pro-Harvester, nor as many unique rewards as a pro-Rescuer. However, with efficient planning and harvest/rescue alternation one can combine the advantages of both paths, making one's life easier during the first stages of the game while being able to use a Big Daddy as a bodyguard. This option can be taken by any type of gamer, regardless of their skill or experience level. This path will also offer the player a unique ending to the game, similar to that of the Harvester ending but less miserable.

BioShock 2


In BioShock 2, the tactics into gaining ADAM is very similar. Once the player comes across a Little Sister, they can either Harvest her, or Adopt her. It should be noted that Little Sisters rarely carry much ADAM when first meeting her. Instead they can put her on their character's shoulders and look for an ADAM-rich corpse. This will attract the Splicers' attention, forcing the player to set up a perimeter. Once she has harvested the ADAM, the player will have two choices. They can either send her to a Little Sister Vent back to Tenenbaum or they can harvest her as she will contain a lot more ADAM. The Little Sister will always give the player ADAM every time she harvests a Splicer. This system is meant to be an even harder choice for the player. Being a Big Daddy the Little Sister trusts Subject Delta with her life, and if he protects her while she is harvesting, even more so.

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Trivia

 * The "Little Sister" seen in the BioShock "Bring It Home" Trailer features little to none of the usual physical attributes of a Little Sister making her appear as if she was rescued as she clearly lacked glowing eyes. The only sign showing she was a Little Sister was the fact that she was sporting her usual ADAM probe. However, this could have been because the teaser presented content that was still under development.


 * There are three corpses of little girls found in one of the Mercury Suites apartments. It can be noted that each of these little girls are actually reused rescued Little Sister models.


 * Interestingly, if the player walks by a Little Sister vent at a fast pace and glance quickly at it, they can catch a glimpse of glowing eyes, as if the Little Sisters were curious or wanted to know whether the player was their guardian.


 * Like many of the objects in Rapture the Little Sister's needle appears to be cobbled together out of a large needle, a hose nozzle, and a baby bottle.


 * In the original concept of Bioshock, the player was to collect ADAM directly from the sea slugs that produce it, but the developers wanted to give the choice of harvesting ADAM more impact. The slug was changed to a dog missing it's hind legs, but as the feeling of it was deemed too comedic, the concept of Little Sisters was invented.