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So apparently details about BioShock 4 were leaked. And now Netflix is said to be working on a BioShock film adaptation. Now it's reminding me to get these last few BioShock candidates out of the way already.
Do note that there'll be one more BioShock candidate to discuss once this proposal is out of the way. But after that? Nobody else in the series counts so far. Andrew Ryan, Sander Cohen, Daisy Fitzroy and Jeremiah Fink all have genuine redeeming qualities that prevent them from counting; Sofia Lamb was cut fairly recently for one or two glaring redeeming qualities; and other somewhat unsympathetic major antagonists like Reed Wahl fail the heinous standards.
Let's get this out of the way.
What is the work?[]
A spiritual successor to the System Shock games, BioShock is a dystopian, sci-fi first person shooter franchise with rich lore, RPG elements, horror elements and... elemental super powers caused by gene splicing? Hell yeah. The first two games take place in Rapture: an isolated underwater city conceived by staunch objectivist Andrew Ryan as an ideal paradise where the brightest minds can achieve one's happiness and success through their independent work ethic without being constrained by government, religion or... any political ideology that Ryan doesn't agree with. Naturally, it all went disastrously wrong: flaws in Rapture's law, Ryan's totalitarian regime, civil unrest, conflicting ideologies, a whole bunch of sociopaths and deadly genetic drugs drove Rapture to civil war and societal collapse. What's left of Rapture is a hellhole roaming with violent, bio-engineered maniacs, the hulking Big Daddies, the creepy Little Sisters, and a few notable figures in Rapture society vying for whatever power, agenda and/or survival they can get out of the city's ruins. And now you, the player, are stuck in Rapture.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. This proposal isn't going to be about the games, but rather a non-canon prequel novel called BioShock: Rapture, written by John Shirley. Written as a leadup to the BioShock 1 and 2's events, the book depicts the rise and fall of Rapture through the eyes of Bill McDonagh, Andrew Ryan, Chief Sullivan and good ol' Franky F (as the main antagonist, surprise surprise). But various other characters get the POV spotlight too, which brings me to our candidate: the starter villain of the first game and a strong contender for one of the most insane, fucked up citizens in Rapture (and that's saying a lot). While he was rejected before due to the moral agency issues he has in the games, the book makes some significant changes to his character that I feel are worth re-discussing. In other words, it's a "Type Dependent on Version" case.
Who is he? What has he done?[]
Much like in the first game, Doctor J.S. Steinman is a renowned plastic surgeon, the head of Rapture's Medical Pavilion, and an utter psycho who gradually loses his mind from too much ADAM consumption. An eccentric sociopath and narcissist even before coming to Rapture, Steinman's finesse in facial surgery causes him to develop a God complex when a vision of the Greek goddess Aphrodite speaks to him during a hard drug trip on ether and cocaine. Telling Steinman exactly what he wants to hear, the so-called "Aphrodite" claims that Steinman can find the "perfect faces" in the same way a God would, or in the same way Picasso creates his art. As such, Steinman adopts an extremely twisted, artistic view on "beauty". And by "artistic", Steinman means carving the "symmetry" out of his patients and straight up mutilating them. It isn't until Ryan invites Steinman to Rapture that he realizes he has found his key to practice his new "artform"... and the opportunity to experiment on his patients.
Initially starting out his life in Rapture fairly normally with his standard facial work procedure, and even collaborating with Sander Cohen in one of his theater productions, Steinman decides to finally take his work to more sinister levels when he buys a wounded splicer from one of Ryan's corrupt policemen. Since the spliced woman was paralyzed from a gunshot wound to the head, but still alive, Steinman withholds giving her an anesthetic and messily mutilates the splicer's face until she expires, culminating in skinning off her face and hanging it on a lamplight. Proving himself to be far more loyal to himself than he is to Ryan or his city, Steinman agrees to reconstruct the faces of Frank Fontaine and his enforcer Reggie (as part of Fontaine's plot to fake his own death) as long as he gets his next fix of ADAM and a bundle of cash for his troubles.
After quite a bit of time passes in the novel, we cut back to a more drug-addled, but still rather "sane" Steinman for one last time near the end of the novel, where we are shown exactly how depraved Steinman has become in his budding madness. Developing an irrational, borderline misanthropic hatred for people who fail to meet his warped standards of beauty and perfection, Steinman had stored various skinned faces in a fridge as trophies; faces of "patients" he kidnapped and tortured to death via live surgery in his deluded emulation of Aphrodite's "blessing". He even admits in his inner thoughts that one of his faces belonged to his assistant nurse Chavez, who he mutilated to death when she threatened to turn him in to Ryan's police for his crimes. That's right, Steinman's become a serial killer, and now we have the displeasure of seeing his horrifying M.O. on full display with his latest victim.
Having bought an attractive blonde woman off of Sander Cohen and keeping her bound and gagged on a gurney, Steinman rips the poor woman's face apart with a scalpel while she's fully awake, gives her ADAM to regrow her flesh... only to start slicing her up again all because he wasn't pleased with his initial results. Rinse and repeat until she dies of agonizing blood loss and shock. Going as far to admit that he withholds his anesthetics just to see more blood spurting and the fear and pain in his victims' eyes, Steinman deliberately killed this woman in the most drawn out, painful way available to him and it's all but outright stated he did the same to his previous victims. The chapter closes with Steinman going berserk, hacking the dead woman's body apart with his scalpel out of anger that she was "selfish" enough to die on him (y'know, as if it was her fault for Steinman killing her). Steinman has now truly lost it in the path he has chosen for himself.

"UGLY! UGLY! UUUGLYYYYYY!"
Although that's the end of Steinman's story in the novel, the book is intentionally written to follow up on the events that occur in the first two games, in spite of it being non-canon due to Ken Levine's say so and the continuity snarls. So Steinman's story after that is pretty clear, as seen in the first game: he becomes a raving, drug-addled madman who murders plenty more "patients" to decorate the Medical Pavilion with in his delusional need to make people "beautiful", until Jack comes along and kills him.
Mitigating Factors[]
Yeah, about that elephant in the room.
Steinman's a complicated case because of his psychosis. By the time we meet Steinman in the games, he has become such an incomprehensible lunatic that it's impossible to claim he has moral agency (I mean, just listen to his page quote). With the ADAM completely messing with his head, Steinman perceives "Aphrodite" as this physically present entity who speaks to him constantly and guides him in committing his atrocities. And even more on point, it's never really made clear in BioShock that he's doing what he does out of genuine malice. He's portrayed more like a snobbish surgeon whose body and psyche has been destroyed by ADAM's deadly side effects. Originally, this is what got Steinman rejected.
His book counterpart though? While Steinman is essentially still the same character, the circumstances behind his sanity are waaaaay different. You see, Aphrodite never appears as a physical entity guiding Steinman in his actions like in the game, and the one time she does show up is during Steinman's weird coke fever dream where she's stroking Steinman's ego the entire time and giving him his perceived sign of destiny when he's invited to Rapture. Not once does she show up besides Steinman as this "physical entity" when he's lucid. In stark contrast to being a hallucination ordering Steinman commit his atrocities, the Aphrodite seen here is a fragment of Steinman's ego giving him one final push into succumbing to his inner desires: to play God with his horrific facial surgery on people.
This brings me to the nail that seals the coffin: if you take in the previous points into account, it becomes clear that Book Steinman consciously planned on and achieved in butchering people alive BEFORE he completely lost his marbles. He's fully aware that his patients are dying on him and doesn't care: with his last shown victim in the book, he initially reacts to her death like he just dropped a pen and then proceeds to blame her rather than himself for dying on him when he goes berserk on her corpse. He also goes as far as to admit he doesn't bother with anesthetics because he loves seeing his victims frightened out of their minds and spurting blood each time he cuts into him. In fact, here's the entire quote:
“ | My dear, I'd love to give you some anesthetic to grace your experience, I really would, but I have quite run out of it, and anyway, there is something less aesthetically pleasing about sculpting an unconscious patient. If they are unconscious, the blood hardly spurts at all, their eyes don't have that look of possession by the god of terror, and how satisfying could that be, now I ask you? | „ |
~ Steinman. Violating the Hippocratic Oath since 1959. |
In general, Steinman is presented here as far more malicious than how the game presents him (as if he wasn't bad enough already). Point is, he was a serial killer before he lost his mind. As far as the book continuity is concerned, the ADAM destroyed his mind in the long run, but it didn't stunt his moral agency beforehand. He isn't given any real sympathy points for his insanity either since it was entirely his fault for going crazy.
Insanity aside, Steinman has nothing in either the games or the book. He's a smug, self-serving, remorseless maniac going on a never-ending ego trip. He isn't loyal to Rapture, Ryan, the law etc. considering he's willing to go behind Ryan's back to help Fontaine reconstruct his face, and only really kept quiet about Fontaine's little secret because 1. He was squeezing some extra ADAM and cash out of him as a reward for working on Fontaine's face 2. Fontaine threatened to kill him if he didn't keep his mouth shut. He's supposedly good friends with the equally psychotic Sander Cohen, but then proceeds to cut all ties with him because he thinks Cohen is a "looney tune" (LMAO) and his "reputation to think of" (again, hypocritical nonsense, considering he purchased a lady to torture to death off of Cohen).
Ryan's mistress Diane McClintock is rumored to be have had an affair with Steinman because Ryan kept ghosting her, but Steinman shows no real care towards her, since he fantasizes about carving her up like the rest of his victims. In fact, he never cared for his patients even before he started murdering them, reacting to one of his latest face jobs with boredom because it was too plain for his standards and leaves an offhanded comment about his patients looking like "circus freaks" before performing surgery on them. He literally sees people who are too "ugly", too "fat", too "symmetrical" or too "plain" (generally people who don't meet his standards of beauty) as nothing more than dirt. He keeps claiming he wants to make people "beautiful" with his surgery. But as we all know, Steinman's methods to accomplish this is lethal, grotesque, misanthropic, quite sadistic, ego-driven and extremely delusional.
Sheesh. The things people do for "art"...
Heinous Standards[]
It's BioShock. The heinous standards are high. A big theme of the series is ideologies pushing people into either a grey zone or straight up evil. Thus, quite a few tyrants, crooked businessmen, crooked scientists and bloodthirsty psychos are bred in each game, some more redeeming or heinous than others. Now I've heard that some users claim that Steinman falls quite short on heinousness, but... really? I find that claim to be very dubious.
Steinman is not an all-powerful tyrant like Ryan, Lamb or Comstock, nor has he ever been. He's certainly not a powerful businessman and con artist who got dozens killed with his drug product and by instigating a civil war that destroyed Rapture. He's not even a scientist with enough resources to turn dozens of people into horrific cyborgs or in possession of dozens of little girls to use as guinea pigs. Instead, Steinman manages to stand out by being a serial killer who kidnaps and mutilates quite a number of people to death in the most excruciating, drawn out way available to him. He gruesomely cuts people's faces apart without giving them anesthetics, even slicing up women's breasts (e.g. the blonde woman) and other body parts (e.g. cutting up Chavez's "doll-like visage", according to Steinman's inner thoughts). Then there's the part where he keeps his victims' skinned faces as trophies. And then there's the part where he gives his victims ADAM to regrow their flesh, only to painfully carve them up again solely to perfect his messed up work, rinsing and repeating until they expire.
With several bodies left behind in his wake and the nightmarish, painful nature of his killings, I'm not sure whoever contests Steinman's heinousness realizes how awful he is. He is very unique in that he manages to hit a special, visceral level of cruelty that is unmatched by other characters of his tier. Sander Cohen, the only other serial killer in the franchise besides Steinman, is the only other character who seems to match him in the serial killing department. But even then? Steinman easily manages to stand out with his excessive torture. And considering his conscious choice to start murdering people in the first place eggs him on to rake in even more kills to his body count once his psychosis overwhelms him?
I'm sorry, but I really don't see how Steinman doesn't pass here. In my opinion, with what he does and what he's got, he crushes the heinous standards with the uniqueness of his crimes.
Final Verdict[]
Very, VERY disturbing villain. But I'll leave it up to the votes.
Feel free to leave your thoughts below, Would You Kindly?