Big Daddy (Bio Shock) - in Video Games

In Video Games

Introduced to the player through a cutscene early on in the game, the Big Daddies are mentally conditioned armed escorts to the Little Sisters, little girls who gather ADAM from corpses. The girls in turn interact with the Big Daddy, referring to it as "Mr. Bubbles" or "Mr. B" as they talk or sing to it gently, and mourn for them if they die. In order to gain higher level powers, the player must kill the Big Daddy escort and recover the ADAM from the Little Sister.

If the title screen of BioShock is left to idle, a video sequence is left to play, which shows graphically the violent nature of Big Daddies and Rapture itself - a splicer pulls a Little Sister out of an escape vent, and corners her with a wrench, in order to kill her and harvest her ADAM. A Big Daddy saves her by intervening, which follows a close-quarters melee, in which the splicer has his hand drilled through when he raises it to defend himself - he then injects himself with the Insect Swarm plasmid and attacks the Big Daddy with a swarm of red hornets. The splicer then rams a shotgun directly into one of the Big Daddy's helmet viewports and fires, sending it off a balcony, where it lies immobile on the floor below. As he looks down, a drill is rammed through his back and appears from his stomach, directly in his line of sight. The second Big Daddy then engages the drill, causing the splicer to scream in agony. The Big Daddy then removes the drill, spins the splicer round to face it and punches him in the face with the drill. The scene cuts to black, and then cuts back to the little sister crying on the floor, until the Big Daddy walks up to her. With blood dripping off its drill onto the floor, it holds out an enormous hand, which is taken by the tiny hand of the Little Sister, and the sequence ends.

Outside of protecting Little Sisters they rarely interact with anything else. They are incapable of speech and can only communicate via groans and grunts and roars. If a Big Daddy is not escorting a Little Sister and comes across the player character, he will not attack unprovoked. This also goes for the non-player Splicer enemies. However, if either the player or a Splicer gets too close to a Little Sister, the Big Daddy will assume an aggressive stance in attempt to scare off the transgressor. If either the Big Daddy or the Little Sister is attacked (intentionally or accidentally), the Big Daddy will retaliate against the attacker until it or the attacker is dead. Big Daddies can be hypnotized into protecting you with the Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid. The lights on the helmet indicate their moods: Yellow indicates that the Big Daddy is indifferent to the player's presence, red indicates rage towards the player, and green indicates that the Big Daddy is hypnotized and friendly towards the player.

In BioShock 2, the player takes on the role of Subject Delta, previously known as "Johnny Topside", who is an early Big Daddy prototype known as the Alpha Series that had his mind and free will restored by Tenenbaum. He is the first Big Daddy to be successfully "pair-bonded" with a single little sister. The Alpha Series are a more streamlined and agile type of Big Daddy, meaning they are not as heavily armored, but are faster and more maneuverable. Alpha Series were not grafted into their suits like the later production models, but are still heavily spliced. Unlike the subsequent versions of Big Daddies, he is both faster and able to use Plasmids. Despite minor alterations and additional features, Delta looks similar to the Rosie model. However, Delta and his fellow prototype Big Daddies, the Alpha Series, suffer from a major flaw: If the Little Sister they are pair-bonded to dies, is rescued, or simply is too far from them, then the Alpha will eventually either fall into a coma or go berserk. Subsequent Big Daddy generations removed the pair-bonding in favor of Big Daddies protecting any Little Sister in general. Unlike in the previous game, Little Sisters will not run away from the player when they meet, but instead greet them, able to be "Adopted" to collect ADAM or "Harvested" on the spot to collect greater amounts of ADAM at the cost of their lives.

Big Daddy (specifically the Bouncer type) appears as a playable third-party character in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.