The game's back-story describes the city as envisioned by business tycoon Andrew Ryan in the mid-late 1940s as a means to create a utopia for mankind's greatest artists and thinkers to prosper in a laissez-faire environment outside of increasing oppression by the world's governments and religion.

However, the lack of government led to severe wealth disparity, a powerful black market, and unrestricted genetic modification, which turned the city into a dystopia[1] exacerbated by Ryan's tyrannical methods to maintain control.

In BioShock 2, the player takes the role of a "Big Daddy", a heavily modified humanoid in an armored diving suit, designed to maintain the city, and would soon come to serve the purpose of protecting the Little Sisters as they collect ADAM from "Angels", which are dead bodies that harbor significant amounts of ADAM; this takes place eight years after the events of the first game, and while Ryan has been killed, there remain those that vie for the vacuum left in his position of power.

[4] The concept of Rapture was the brainchild of Ken Levine, founding member and creative director of Irrational Games, (briefly renamed 2K Boston just prior to BioShock's release, but later returned to their former name).

[10] Conceived of early on as a man encased in a diving suit, the Big Daddy was designed to have "that hulking metal feel of an underwater protector, so solid not even a shotgun blast could knock him off his feet.

[11] Developer Ken Levine noted that with the concept of the gatherers as little girls, it allowed the team to explore the protector role of the character and demonstrate it in a way to appeal to a real-world relationship for the player.

Initial drafts of the Rosie model featured it encased in a light atmospheric diving suit with a singular hole for viewing through the helmet, as well as missing its left forearm and hand, replaced with a hook and pulley supported by cables attached to the stump.

[11] The Bouncer model of Big Daddy featured it encased in a heavier diving suit than the Rosie, with the helmet more heavily armored and having multiple smaller holes for viewing.

Standing for "slow-moving, projectile-shooting, f'ed-up-melee", this Big Daddy was intended as a slow, ranged type that would center itself and fire a heavy projectile at enemies via a large arm-mounted cannon.

The city was designed to be self-sufficient, growing and raising its own crops as well as using the surrounding sea life for food, and taking advantage of submarine volcanoes to provide geothermal power to its population.

In addition to living quarters, Rapture features shopping areas, entertainment venues, laboratories, manufacturing plants, medical facilities, and other common services provided by a functional city.

As described in the games' backstory and through in-game audio recordings, the city of Rapture was envisioned by the Randian business magnate Andrew Ryan, who wanted to create a laissez-faire state with no ties to the rest of the world to escape what he saw as increasingly oppressive political, economic, and religious authority on land.

Scientific progress flourished in Rapture, leading to rapid developments in engineering and biotechnology, such as the invention of ADAM, thanks in part to the brilliant scientists that Ryan brought to the city.

This was exploited by Frank Fontaine, a businessman in charge of the plasmid industry who secretly established an illegal smuggling ring with the outside world while simultaneously creating charitable organizations to manipulate the underclass.

[24] In the events of BioShock, Jack, the player-controlled protagonist, ends up in Rapture after a plane crash in the middle of the ocean leaves him close to the city's bathysphere surface terminus.

In contrast to Ryan's belief of empowering the individual, Lamb's ideals are favoring the collective, and she is able to build "The Family", a cult-like following of the remaining citizens of Rapture to achieve her goals.

[citation needed] The Burial at Sea downloadable content expansion for Bioshock Infinite explores a series of events that lead to the Rapture civil war.

Though it was never explicitly stated, the Splicers had likely all died and Rapture's buildings had fully collapsed by the 21st century, leaving nothing but a ruined heap of aluminum on the ocean floor where the once shining utopian city stood.