Frank Fontaine

Fontaine

Frank Fontaine is the main antagonist of BioShock. A con man, criminal mastermind, archenemy of Andrew Ryan, and leader of the opposition in the power struggle that ultimately led to the fall of Rapture. During the Civil War, as Atlas, he sparked the Apollo Plaza Rebellion. In the English dub, Fontaine speaks with a rough Bronx accent.

Biography

Life on the surface Frank's childhood left a huge imprint on his destiny and personality - from the very birth he did nothing but fight for a place in the sun. Life in an orphanage (where his father sent him), running away from there and working in a theater troupe - all this only strengthened the boy's opinion that in this life he could only count on himself. Three years of work in the theater gave him an indelible impression on how to influence the "audience" through costumes and acting. Frank - his real name - used many different last names throughout his life, such as Gorland, Barris, Wiston, Moskowitz and Wang. Few people knew Frank's real last name, and one of them was a bully from the Bronx - Reggie, who knew Frank from the old days. He was forced to change his last name to Gorland by the FBI, who wanted to incriminate him in an interstate bookmaking operation. With a fake birth certificate, Frank Gorland moved to New York City and set up a bookmaking business in the basement of his drugstore. In 1946, Gorland duped a bar owner named Harv Merton into signing over "Hudson Credits" to pay off his gambling debts. When Merton failed to pay the interest on the loan, Gorland took title to Merton's collateral, a bar called the Big Mistake. Gorland wanted a bar for two reasons: first, it was a profitable business; and second, it was a great place to gather rumors about boxing bets. It was at the Big Mistake that Frank heard information that would change his life forever.

Biography

Shortly after Gorland began working as a bartender at the Big Mistake, he overheard two gangsters discussing the details of an upcoming fight between Nell Steele and Charlie Wriggles. Using the false name "Lucio Fabrici," Gorland approached Steele before the fight and lied to the boxer that "the gangsters' plans had changed." The gangsters intended for Steele to lose the fight, winning them money, but Fontaine was able to convince Steele not to lose the fight, thereby pocketing a large sum of money (having bet on the boxer to win). What happened to Steele after the fight is unknown, but it is not difficult to guess what those same gangsters did to him after he won. While working at the bar, Gorland was visited by Federal Agent Voss, who was involved in an interstate bookmaking investigation. Voss, threatening to investigate Frank, demanded that he give up information about Andrew Ryan and his "North Atlantic Project." Although Gorland had heard rumors about a mysterious project, he never told the Federal Agent, preferring to keep useful information to himself. Frank Gorland saw this as an opportunity for a potentially large profit. A few days later, Gorland had a conversation with a drunk woman in his bar who claimed that her boyfriend, Irvin, had died under mysterious circumstances, namely, at Andrew Ryan's construction site somewhere on the ocean floor. Her drunken ramblings only confirmed Ryan's involvement in the "North Atlantic Project." A couple of days later, Gorland managed to track down a couple of sailors who worked on Ryan's ship, the Olympian. Pretending to be a federal agent, Gorland learned from one of the sailors that Andrew Ryan's workers had laid the foundations for an entire city on the ocean floor in the North Atlantic. [1] Gorland didn't stop there - taking the name "Bill Foster" and slightly adjusting his appearance, Frank pretended to be a canned food supplier and made his way into the Marine Construction warehouse.

Biography

The angry warehouse manager gave him detailed information about Ryan's construction work.[2] Hoping to gain even more information, Gorland recruited Reggie as "extra muscle" to help him interrogate Harv Merton. Under pressure, Merton revealed a smuggler named Frank Fontaine, who supplied Ryan's workers with fish. Fontaine owned Fontaine Fishing and was also known for smuggling goods from Cuba into the United States. Gorland arranged a meeting with Fontaine at a bar on Staten Island. At the meeting, Gorland was able to convince the smuggler that Voss was planning to arrest Frank Fontaine for drug smuggling. Gorland intimidated Fontaine into agreeing to sell his boats in exchange for a large sum of money so he could finally retire and go to Cuba. Two nights later, Gorland met with Fontaine on one of the smuggler's former boats. Fontaine planned to collect the payment for the boats and retire, but Gorland was one step ahead - having bribed and thrown out Fontaine's crew in advance, thereby leaving no witnesses (except for the helmsman, who had only recently served time and was willing to serve anyone for good money), Gorland knocked Fontaine out and threw him overboard, where he drowned. From this point on, Frank Gorland assumed the identity of the drowned smuggler, becoming Frank Fontaine.

Biography

For two years, Frank Fontaine had been sending Andrew Ryan regular, flattering letters. In these letters, he claimed to share Ryan's ideals and asked for permission to visit his underwater city to develop an underwater fishing industry using modified submarines. But in truth, Fontaine saw Ryan's utopian society as nothing more than a golden opportunity for a man like himself - in his opinion, the "utopia" would eventually "collapse" and become easy prey for plunder. In 1948, Ryan accepted Fontaine's request and sent his man, Sullivan, to meet Frank and escort him to the city. Fontaine took only his most loyal men with him, including Reggie and his first mate, Peach Wilkins.[4]

Delight

Fontaine moved to Rapture in 1948. Soon after his move, his life began to improve, and it didn't take long for him to put together a group of smugglers and organize a "black market" in Rapture. Fontaine continued to take on various adventures, which invariably brought him income. Thanks to his acting talent, Frank often misled both suppliers and customers - no one could tell what he really looked like, which only played into the hands of a cunning smuggler. In one of the radio messages[5], after Ryan's death, he tells Jack: "Hell, I even pretended to be Chinese for six months!" Although Frank Fontaine never took ADAM before the events of BioShock, he admits to Jack that he once used cocaine and heroin. A crippled smuggler whose hands had been restored by a sea slug bite, discovered by Brigid Tenenbaum, began producing ADAM, a substance with near-miraculous medicinal properties. Tenenbaum approached Fontaine with an offer to fund her slug research, and he accepted, seeing the potential for a profitable business. Using Tenenbaum and Ian Suchong's research and development of plasmids and gene tonics, Frank Fontaine soon established an ADAM business, Fontaine Futuristics. Tenenbaum informed Fontaine that little girls were needed to mass-produce ADAM, so Frank opened the Little Sister Orphanage, a charity that provided orphaned girls with homes. These girls were then turned into ADAM-producing Little Sisters. Inspired by the example of Sofia Lamb, Fontaine founded Fontaine's Home for the Poor to gain support for those who suffered from the lack of social services in the city and were left destitute. Fontaine used this to raise his public profile in opposition to Ryan; at the same time, the people of the home and criminals were often used to test new combat Plasmids.

Delight

At first, Fontaine's charisma even had an effect on the head of Rapture, Andrew Ryan, who saw in him the very ideal of a "free man" (a rational individualist unbound by the restrictions and prohibitions of society, forging his own happiness with his own hands), which he sought to create in his city. But when he learned of Fontaine's connection with the smuggling of goods from the upper world, a real scandal erupted. When Ryan created Rapture, he dreamed of an ideal city where talented people could realize their ideas without fear of "parasites" - state institutions that appropriate, in Ryan's opinion, the fruits of other people's labor, and Fontaine's criminal activity not only did not fit into this concept, but also jeopardized the anonymity of the underwater refuge. Andrew Ryan instructed the head of security Sullivan and other members of his team to begin an investigation into Fontaine's case in order to expose his criminal activities and at the same time cover up the dangerous smuggling. Using increasingly harsh measures, Ryan's henchmen tried to prove the criminals' connection to Frank Fontaine. However, Fontaine's subordinates feared their boss much more than Ryan's people, and refused to cooperate. Fontaine did not wait for events to develop - he developed a multi-move plan that would allow him to gain the upper hand over Ryan sooner or later. On Frank's orders, Fontaine Futuristics scientists bought Ryan's son's embryo from his lover Jasmine Jolene and quickly grew it into a real universal weapon - little Jack not only obeyed all orders that began with the code phrase "Be kind", but also possessed the DNA of the city's founder, which greatly facilitated his movement around Rapture. Jack, who did not remember anything, was sent to the surface and returned to Rapture only after receiving a package that contained the activating phrase.

Delight

On September 12, 1958, Fontaine was killed in a shootout with Ryan's men. By faking his death, Fontaine was able to escape punishment for his crimes and give Ryan and Rapture false hope that their problem was finally over. Some time later, Fontaine returned under a different guise, taking the name Atlas - a fisherman, proletarian hero, and family man who led the people's resistance. Atlas managed to shed all resemblance to Fontaine and once again charm the crowd by pretending to be just a humble freedom fighter. He was able to stir up a seething discontent among the lower classes of citizens, creating the necessary conditions for the outbreak of a civil war that would eventually split Rapture in two. Atlas managed to sway the mutants to his side and send them into the streets of the city - they terrorized the population, disrupting Rapture's economy, forcing Ryan to take decisive action against the war. Even without Fontaine Futuristics, Fontaine continued to produce valuable combat plasmids in a lab hidden in Joe's Grocery Store in Siren Alley. Hoping to win and take control of Rapture, Atlas eventually finds himself trapped - all bathyspheres and mutants (controlled by pheromones [6]) are under Ryan's control. With no other options left, Atlas activates his sleeper agent, Jack.

Bioshock

Under the guise of Atlas, Fontaine never allowed Jack to get close to him, except for a brief moment during which Atlas saved "the family." After Andrew Ryan's death, he finally revealed his true identity. Fontaine reveals that his ultimate goal was not just to take over Rapture, but to use its ADAM technology to spread his power to the surface and become an industrial magnate. Jack then frees himself from the mind control and confronts Fontaine face to face on Prometheus Station, where Fontaine is revealed to have mutated to superhuman strength, throwing iron beams to create barricades in Jack's path. He reveals that he has never used ADAM before, but now he can enjoy it. Fontaine assembles a machine in his office to inject the entire ADAM supply into his own body. He begins to taunt Jack with his power and how he cannot stop him. When Jack finally reaches Fontaine, he is already transformed into "Atlas" due to the gigantic doses of ADAM. Jack then drains him of ADAM with a syringe from the Little Sisters until Fontaine is so weak that he is ambushed by the Little Sisters, who stab him to death with syringes. Thus, Jack ended the war for control of Rapture - by this point, both participants were dead.

BioShock 2

Subject Delta can explore Fontaine's office, where the player can find an audio diary, "Fontaine's Farewell", which tells the story of how Fontaine became Atlas. There is also a painting in the office that may depict Frank's family, with him standing with a boy and a woman, but who they really are is unknown, as Fontaine confessed to Jack that he never had a child or a wife. Another of Fontaine's audio diaries, "The Fall of the Place", can be found in the Fine Arts Gallery in Dionysus Park. In this audio diary, he marvels at how he acquired a completely new face to transform into Atlas, and also references the events of the first game.

Burial at Sea - Episode 2

In Burial at Sea - Episode 2, it was revealed that Fontaine, disguised as Atlas, was imprisoned in his department store along with many of his former employees captured after the shootout at Neptune's Bounty. During one of their supply runs, they find Elizabeth and capture Sally. Atlas orders his men to kill Elizabeth, but she convinces Atlas that she can return him to Rapture and makes a deal to be released in exchange for her life and Sally's. Atlas is skeptical, but agrees when she claims to be Suchong's lab assistant. He gives her a walkie-talkie to keep in touch with her. While exploring the Manta Ray Lounge, Elizabeth can discover Fontaine's secret room, which contains his disguises, including one of a Chinese man (supporting his statement that he "was Chinese for six months" from the first BioShock). In the same room, if Elizabeth examines a syringe on the table, she will have a vision of the future, showing Fontaine at the end of the first BioShock, being attacked and killed by the Little Sisters. She later re-enacts this vision during her death at the end of the expansion.

Facts

The nickname "Atlas" is a clear reference to Ayn ​​Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. According to Ken Levine, Frank's character was based on the character Kaiser Souza from The Usual Suspects.[7] Like Fontaine, Kaiser was a feared crime boss and semi-legendary figure. In the original version of the game, Atlas was supposed to sound like a Southerner (i.e., a resident of the southern states of the United States), but in the final version of the game, Atlas was given a new voice actor who speaks with an Irish accent. As a result, Atlas and Fontaine have different voice actors in the first BioShock. In BioShock 2 and Burial at Sea - Episode 2, Fontaine is voiced by Karl Hanover, the same actor who voiced Atlas in the first BioShock. (English dub) In the Russian localization of BioShock, Atlas is voiced by Vladimir Antonik, and Fontaine by Oleg Shcherbinin.

Facts

In Burial at Sea - Episode 2, during moments of rage, Atlas' Irish accent changes to Fontaine's Bronze accent. Frank Fontaine in his mutated form, Andrew Ryan, and Sander Cohen are the only characters in BioShock to have their own unique models. Due to a game bug, Fontaine's lines are quieter than other characters (Russian localization). Fontaine/Atlas uses a slightly modified model of the "Swamp Dweller" mutant. If you look at his model up close, you can find mutations, scars, etc. on his body and face, but most likely this was done to save resources, since the player cannot see Fontaine/Atlas up close for a long time. The developers are not particularly "proud" of the fact that they inserted the fight with Fontaine at the end of the game and did so because of the publisher's pressure.

floor

male, refers to himself in the masculine gender