BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea — Content and Trigger Guide
Overview: racial slurs, decapitation, claustrophobic gameplay, child abuse, torture, needles, unreality. The game takes place in a city built underwater.
Some points are from Game Phobias. Any contributions are appreciated.
Animal death: There is a hallway the protagonist walks down where there are abandoned dead “experiments”, including dogs and primates. (thanks to savefrog)
Child abuse: A young girl is tortured.
Claustrophobia: In the second chapter, the player often has to crawl through tight spaces.
Decapitation: There is a scene where the player sees a baby gets decapitated. The screen cuts to black before the decapitation happens.
Eye horror: There is a first person view of the protagonist receiving a lobotomy via implement in the eye socket. It's rather drawn out and realistic. (thanks to savefrog)
Needles: The protagonist injects themselves frequently as part of gameplay.
Racism: Racial slurs are used.
Torture:
A young girl is burned alive.
The protagonist is captured and tortured, eventually culminating in very nearly being lobotomized.
Unreality: In the second chapter, the protagonist experiences hallucinations of a dead person.
Overview: Animal cruelty, body horror, a clown, drug use, cannibalism, claustrophobic/nyctophobic scenarios, insects, drowning, substance abuse, needles, mutilation, optional violence against children. The game utilises jumpscares, and takes place in a city built underwater.
Paraphrased from Game Phobias.
Animal violence:
Dead cats can be found around Rapture. When looked at, each has a name.
There also is a audio log where the murder of a dog is graphically heard. This can be avoided by not picking up and listening to the Mind Control Test audio diary in the Rapture Control Room.
Body horror/gore:
The main enemies of the game are malformed, with large tumors and certain parts of their bodies twisted unnaturally.
When the Player Character uses plasmids their hand will mutate. The type of mutation depends on the type of plasmid. The mutation for the Insect Swarm plasmid is particularly graphic.
Fighting enemies results in gore.
In the Medical Bay area, Steinman graphically mutilates an unwilling patient.
There is a cutscene in Andrew Ryan's office where the Player Character brutally beats a man to death. The wounds are graphically shown.
Cannibalism: Little Sisters ingest blood. This sequence is shown during the Little Sister escort quest. The player can choose to turn away and not watch.
Claustrophobia:
The protagonist crawls through small vents multiple times.
Throughout the entire game the Player Character is trapped in an underwater city. The city feels large but there are glass ceilings and areas that the player can see the sea out of.
The protagonist is required to use small, round submarines called bathyspheres. The protagonist is sealed in these multiple times during cutscenes.
Clowns: The general items vending machine is a clown that loudly says “THE CIRCUS OF VALUES!” when ever you go near it. This is accompanied by tinny circus music. The clown is mechanical and does not move.
Child abuse:
The player can choose to murder Little Sisters, genetically altered little girls, via “harvesting” their Adam. Their death is not shown on screen. The player can choose to “rescue" them instead.
One of the endings results in the death of several children. If you want to avoid this, see the end of the post.
There is a Little Sister escort quest towards the end of the game where the Little Sister can be harmed and die.
Darkness:
The game is dimly lit and there are some areas where the lights will flicker so that it is completely black. Enemies can come out of the shadows to attack.
There is a particularly dark scene in the Heat Loss Monitoring area where the lights go out and the Player Character can hear enemies running around them.
Drowning: The game begins with the Player Character drowning. The Player Character does not die, but choking noises are heard and the screen blacks out a few times.
Ghosts/unreality: There are unavoidable apparitions seen throughout the game. It is unclear whether they are ghosts or just a hallucination as a side-effect of the ADAM, but a loading screen calls them ghosts and they act like ghosts. They do not attack the protagonist.
Insects:
The Insect Swarm plasmid causes bees to fly out of the Player Character's hand. This is not required to be picked up or used at all in game.
The Player Character must visit a beehive sanctuary in the Farmer's Market area. There are swarms of bees that will attack the Player Character. They can be temporarily pacified via a gas but they will wake up once the timer runs out and attack. The room and the room before it have loud buzzing noises.
Jump scares:
A sense of tension is created in multiple areas when the lights shut off and enemies are heard, however when they come back on there are no enemies to be seen.
Enemies can jump out at the Player Characters around corners.
As the game progresses, enemies will start to pretend to be dead bodies. They will lie perfectly still and jump up and attack the Player Character when they are approached.
Needles:
The plasmid replenishment animation is the Player Character violently stabbing a needle into their wrist. This will happen multiple times throughout the game.
Little Sisters use giant needles to extract ADAM from dead bodies. These needles are shown in detail several times in the game.
To defeat the final boss the Player Character must stab him with a Little Sister's needle. The death sequence for the boss is Little Sisters stabbing him multiple times with their needles.
Trypophobia: If you use the Insect Swarm plasmid, it causes holes on the protagonist’s hands.
Racism: The bullet buying stations have a racist caricature of a Mexican bandit.
Suicide: A character forces the protagonist to kill him.
Spoilers below! Violence against children warning:
If the player harvests one Little Sister, the ending will involve the protagonist killing all of them.
