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, calling them her little ones, and acting like a mother towards them in protecting them, as shown in a clip and housing them in her study. 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. She found out that ADAM was addictive if it wasn't regularly taken in, acting like a benign cancer, causing 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 eventually 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 arrives in Rapture, Tenenbaum has seen the error of her ways. On a route through Rapture, she spots a Little Sister with a Splicer and Jack. She shoots and kills the Splicer before threatening to kill Jack if he tries to hurt the Little Sister. Atlas tries to reason with her and advises Jack to harvest the Little Sister, mocking Tenenbaum for turning the girls into monsters. Tenenbaum instead begs Jack to help the Little Sisters, throwing him a Plasmid that can turn a Little Sister back into a normal girl again, and saying that if he saves the Little Sisters, she will make it worth his while. If Jack does what she asks he only receives 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 receives 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 saves Jack from Fontaine after Jack kills Andrew Ryan by sending several Little Sisters to Rapture Central Control to lead Jack through the vents and into her safehouse. However, Jack falls through the vent and is knocked unconscious. When Jack awakes in Tenenbaum's safehouse, she informs him that she removed Fontaine's mental conditioning, and made herself his ally in seeking revenge on Fontaine and undoing the rest of Fontaine's control. She tells him in order to fully get rid of the mental conditioning, he would need to find Lot 192 in Apollo Square.

When Jack finally encounters Fontaine at Point Prometheus, she orders him to follow him, but Fontaine manages to escape to the Proving Grounds. Tenenbaum formulates a plan for Jack to trick the Little Sisters into thinking he is a Big Daddy. That way, Jack can lure out a Little Sister who would unlock the doors and lead him to Fontaine. She directs him to go through the Failsafe Armored Escorts, Little Wonders Educational Facility, and Optimized Eugenics to find all the supplies needed for a Big Daddy. After he is turned into a Big Daddy, Tenenbaum sends a Sister to help guide Jack through the Proving Grounds before giving him her Harvesting Tool. When Jack finally reaches Fontaine, Tenenbaum orders him to suck the ADAM out of the highly-Spliced Fontaine. At the end of the battle, just as Fontaine is about to kill Jack, Tenenbaum sends five "Cured" Little Sisters to save Jack and to kill Fontaine. After this, Tenenbaum leaves Rapture and adopts the Little Sisters she rescued as her own.

By freeing Jack, Tenenbaum enables him to defeat Fontaine, and some unknown amount of time afterward she leaves Rapture and moves to the surface. It is not known if she interacted with Jack after this, especially regarding the good ending when he rescues the five Little Sisters and raises them on the surface. Further contact seems to be implied, however, by the line in the good ending: "And in the end, what was your reward? You never said, but I think I know... a family...".

BioShock 2
Roughly eight years after the events of BioShock, Tenenbaum's adopted daughters, who were once Little Sisters, leave her because of what she did to them long ago. Later on, Tenenbaum noticed the kidnappings of Little Girls all around the world by Big Sisters. Tenenbaum is contacted by Eleanor Lamb so that she may help her defeat her mother, Sofia Lamb. Tenembaum asks the Sisters to bring Delta back to life, using his genetic code in the Big Daddy Dolls. She still feels guilt for her role in creating the Little Sisters, and so she travels back to Rapture in a private bathysphere to try to stop Sofia Lamb from using the little girls. However, Lamb noticed her arrival and sent Splicers to destroy her bathyshere.

Tenenbaum escapes and hides in the ticket booth of the train station of the Atlantic Express, continuing to rescue Little Sisters and protect them as she had done years before. She discovers that the kidnapped girls have become Little Sisters, and that Lamb is responsible. After Subject Delta is revived, she contacts him with via radio to awake him, though the signal is weak. After he wakes up, he returns power back to the district and Tenenbaum is able to contact him further. She explains what has happened to Rapture in the past ten years, stating the Rapture is under Lamb's control, and that the Splicers, Big Sisters, Little Sisters, Big Daddies and Security are also under her rule. She encourages Delta to come find her, promising to give him information about his past. When Delta is near, she explains that he is an old Big Daddy model and that his body is shutting down because of the protection bond separation, and that his long lost Little Sister is Eleanor Lamb, daughter of Sofia.

Tenenbaum wants Delta to help her continue to save the little girls. Tenenbaum already saved several, but she does not know how they will get home. Finally, Delta arrives at the Ticket Booth and meets Tenenbaum. She shows him why she must fight Sofia Lamb, she shows him the little girls and that they are being used for something. Tenenbaum fears that this Rapture Nightmare will repeat forever, but Tenenbaum states that she will die to stop it. After their encounter at the Atlantic Express Train Station, Lamb discovers where Delta is, so, Lamb makes a public announcement of Delta's postion and sends a wave of Splicers to attack him. Knowing that the Splicers could break into the booth to find Delta, Tenenbaum escapes once again with the Little Ones and goes into hiding, breaking off contact with Delta but still planning to save the Little Sisters and aid an unspecified third party. She leaves Delta with a valuable, but suspicious ally known as Augustus Sinclair and is not seen again. Her fate is unknown.

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

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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 originally meant to be one of the most important characters in BioShock 2 she is mainly only seen in the first two levels, and her fate is relatively unknown at the end of the game. Despite this, it seems the developers originally intended for her to announce Little Sister gifts to the player. There is unused audio for Tenenbaum in the game files for if the player harvests or saved the Little Sisters. Her responses to harvesting Little Sisters are very strong against the player, stating "I will teach the ones that I have already saved to forget you." There are four responses for each situation, even though the player only receives three gifts in the final game. There is also unused audio for Tenenbaum in the game files of Persephone, in which Tenenbaum gives a warning on opening the cells.