10 OBVIOUS Video Game Plot Holes (That Actually Aren't)
7. Bioshock - How Did Jack Survive Outside Rapture?
If there is one entry virtually guaranteed to be on a list of ‘plot-holes’, it's this one.
The claim is that Jack (whom the player controls), being what amounts to a one-year-old in an adult’s body, shouldn’t have had the skills to survive outside of Rapture. Furthermore, where did he stay and what did he do?
The first question is answered in the game’s opening: if Jack’s mind could be implanted with all the skills needed to board a commercial airliner then it stands to reason that the same could be done for any skill.
To answer the second we look to the man who commissioned Jack, Frank Fontaine. As a smuggler who dealt in contraband, Fontaine maintained a network of contacts outside of Rapture.
Having those contacts retrieve, house and employ Jack, forge documents for him, then send him on his way once Fontaine needed him would have been simple. All memories of this period could be easily erased using the control phrase.
Granted, Bioshock never spells any of this out, but as a game that put much stock in the players’ intelligence, the clues were always there to find.