So during the entire ending "our" Elizabeth is with us the entire time up until the point where we walk through the lighthouse door for the final time? We know this because she had the bird medal (I chose bird) attached to her necklace up until near the end of the ending (part where "our" Booker goes through the lighthouse door for the final time). After going through the lighthouse door for the final time we enter a tear that takes us to the part where Booker is about to be baptized (turned into Comstock) but you are surrounded by multiple Elizabeths and all of them have the necklace but WITHOUT the cage/bird medal who then proceed to drown Booker to prevent him from becoming Comstock.

-How is it possible for multiple Elizabeths (each one from a different universe) to occupy the same place at the same time (during the scene where Booker is downed at the very end)?

-Why are all of the Elizabeths (each one from a different universe) missing the cage/bird medal from each of their necklaces.

-Why is "our" Elizabeth not present during the scene where Booker is drowned at the end? Is it because our Elizabeth is still at the lighthouse because she opened up the tear which allowed "our" Booker to arrive at the final scene where he is drowned by the multiple Elizabeths from different universes?

Why wouldn't it be possible for multiple Elizabeths to occupy the same space? There are two Luteces in the same space and two Bookers (Comstock and Booker) in the same space already.

The Elizabeths with no necklaces are simply other ones that never got a necklace. Booker himself comments that his Elizabeth isn't there.

She might still be outside.

The real question no one seems to address is why does killing the booker who had already been through colombia reset the timelines? They should have actually traveled back in time and drowned the Booker who had yet to experience any of these events, but for some reason it works. I'm willing to not look too deep into it for the purposes of narrative, but it still doesn't make sense.

You're thinking about it too literally. At this point Elizabeth has reached god-like levels of power. "Drowining" Booker was her severing the "accepts baptism/becomes Comstock" trunk from the multiverse. An event that was previously a variable (bird or cage) has become a constant (heads). Instead of being one of two paths, the "rejects baptism/has Annabelle" trunk is now the only path.

-That is not the same thing. They don't look the same. One Lutece is male and the other is female. Booker looks young and Comstock looks old. For example 2 old looking Comstocks can not exist in the same universe just like 2 female Luteces (that both look exactly the same) can not exist in the same universe. The difference here is that all of the Elizabeths look identical and are in the exact same place at the exact same time. Time paradox.

-I think you misread what I typed (or it might be my fault and I didn't explain is clearly enough-sorry). The problem is that all of these Elizabeths DO have a necklace on. They are all missing the medal (either cage or bird) that attaches to the necklace.

Says who?

@secondpersonshooter said:

No. Going back in time would sever both branches and create a stable time loop - and one that would not escape the grandfather paradox, to boot.

There are two theories: she's either turning Booker rejecting the baptism into a constant or creating an artificial reality where a Booker accepting the baptism always drowns and putting it in place of the Comstock-is-born branch. Either way, they are changing reality so the Comstock branch gets cut. This is supported by the baptism site you see during the ending not being the real baptism site from Booker's life and the fact that the post-credits Booker gets a memory dump from the one you play throughout the story.

1. Elizabeth transcends time and space at this point - she is essentially a physical god and a rule-breaker in herself. Not to mention that there can't be a time paradox simply because they aren't using time travel. There are no loops. They are jumping realities in the multiverse. Time travel plays a limited role in the story earlier on with Old Elizabeth, but it's not used to change reality. This is almost spelled out during the ending when Booker remarks that the baptism site is not the actual one.

Also, technically, they can. player!Booker manages to exist in martyr!Booker's reality, even though the latter is dead - if the realities determined each other and had rules concerning two copies of himself at the same time, he would immediately die the moment he crossed over. But he doesn't, the multiverse just tries to merge them by dropping on him the memories of his martyred incarnation - which, by the way, starts to happen whenever Comstock talks to Booker. Elizabeth gets a pass because she already exists in two universes at the same time by virtue of having a finger still stuck in Booker's reality.

Not to mention that Robert and Rosalind are almost the exact fucking thing - they are separated by a single chromosome. Even Comstock and Booker are less interconnected, despite being the same person.

2. They are missing it because the medal is just an insignificant variable. It's a droplet in the sea of possibilities which is the multiverse - it's just a reality check created by the Luteces, its only purpose is to see what's a variable and what's a constant. All the Elizabeths you see are just a manifestation of said possibilities and infinity - they're all different to highlight that. A different way would be to make her go Agent Smith on your ass, but that would probably be too unsubtle and would make you not pay attention to the unused Elizabeth design (as part of the game's metacommentary). You also don't see "your" Elizabeth presumably because she's no longer just "a single" Elizabeth. She now transcends time and space, as I said - she's what the Luteces are, only ten times more powerful.

What?

...

What?

...

No really, what?

Thank you for that. Saved me the effort to expand on what I originally said.

We will eventually get to the point where people stop mixing up what happened with time travel.

@golguin: Maybe we should make a blog post or sticky with the most important information?

This is a fantastic idea; there are a lot of questions being asked over and over, so a BioShock Infinite Spoiler FAQ would be pretty useful.

What troubles me with this scene is how none of the Elizabeths in this tear got a nose bleed, though i believe this happens because none of them got into an argument with one another and they were all thinking the same thing.

They transcend epistaxis.

Guess I'll be the one to point out that she wears a choker, not a necklace.

Only in the realities that are presented in the game; we're talking exclusively about every other reality...

@ghostiet said:

It seems like the three of us are the ones doing the most BioTalk. Want to collabo?

@starvinggamer said:

I'd be in.

You guys really should. There's going to be more people in the coming weeks asking about multi dimensional/ time travel and you guys seem to have it down. Or at least my opinion of it is very close to you guys so I have no problems with it :D

I'd be happy to delegate my views to those two. We've essentially been saying the same stuff.

Needless to say, SPOILERS

"Your" Elizabeth is not present in the drowning scene. If you look closely, she is not wearing the necklace which you gave her at the beginning of the game. I quote here a good explanation which I came across on the 2k forums:

Elizabeth's fate is still rather up in the air. It's possible she exists within the probability space like the Luteces. As far as I understand it:

1. The first sea of lighthouses you encounter, with all the "stars" (which are really tears) represents the Bioshock multiverse.

2. From there you enter the Columbia megaverse, a subset of possibilities within the entire multiverse all having to do with Columbia/Elizabeth/Booker.

3. You enter a final light house where you're drowned by parallel universe Elizabeths.

4. But Elizabeth never enters that lighthouse with you. The Elizabeth in this lighthouse/universe doesn't have the bruises and scratches from being recaptured by Comstock, and she isn't wearing the bird/cage pendant. Booker even says "wait, you're not, who are you?"

5. So Elizabeth is still outside, hanging out in the Columbia megaverse. If drowning Booker eliminates the Comstock timelines, this could be visualized as all the lighthouses(universes) containing Comstock popping out of existence in that sea of lighthouses.
   Elizabeth doesn't necessarily disappear, because she's shown to be detached from the Bioshock time/space continuum by having the ability to open/enter tears and megaverses at will.

6. The question is, what's she doing now? Sitting around in that endless sea of lighthouses? Knowing the constants and variables of each one? Sounds akin to purgatory. Or even hell. But I guess that's the implication of immortality. Can she visit Booker, and would she even want to? The ending tangentially opens new questions, infinitely, so to speak.

By the end of the game, the Elizabeth with whom we traveled was omniscient and quasi-omnipotent. It seems reasonable to conclude that she was able to remove herself from the Comstock timeline, to survive the erasure of the Columbia universe.

Needless to say, SPOILERS

I quote here a good explanation which I came across on the 2k forums:

Elizabeth's fate is still rather up in the air. It's possible she exists within the probability space like the Luteces. As far as I understand it:

1. The first sea of lighthouses you encounter, with all the "stars" (which are really tears) represents the Bioshock multiverse.

2. From there you enter the Columbia megaverse, a subset of possibilities within the entire multiverse all having to do with Columbia/Elizabeth/Booker.

3. You enter a final light house where you're drowned by parallel universe Elizabeths.

4. But Elizabeth never enters that lighthouse with you. The Elizabeth in this lighthouse/universe doesn't have the bruises and scratches from being recaptured by Comstock, and she isn't wearing the bird/cage pendant. Booker even says "wait, you're not, who are you?"

5. So Elizabeth is still outside, hanging out in the Columbia megaverse. If drowning Booker eliminates the Comstock timelines, this could be visualized as all the lighthouses(universes) containing Comstock popping out of existence in that sea of lighthouses.
   Elizabeth doesn't necessarily disappear, because she's shown to be detached from the Bioshock time/space continuum by having the ability to open/enter tears and megaverses at will.

6. The question is, what's she doing now? Sitting around in that endless sea of lighthouses? Knowing the constants and variables of each one? Sounds akin to purgatory. Or even hell. But I guess that's the implication of immortality. Can she visit Booker, and would she even want to? The ending tangentially opens new questions, infinitely, so to speak.

Mind Blown as I did not realize this when I beat the game. Looks like I need to replay that game again.. Now....

I don't agree at all with either of their view on the situation. There IS time travel in the storyline in my understanding and I don't know why people keep trying to downplay it. Elizabeth's powers in the ending transcend merely opening doors to parallel universes as she is capable of staging events with people from Booker's past such as Lutece being at the door to ask booker for baby anna and Elizabeth forcing Booker to hand her over to illustrate to him that "he already did".

The end of the game is completely free from any of the "laws" the game brings up before the final confrontation.

Time/space/dimension travel. It's sort of her thing.

Maybe because they missed that detail. It's the final cutscene, and I guess it's safe to assume that the ending was one the story plot points that was defined, and the most stable, ever since the game began development. This might be completely wrong, but it doesn't sound like too farfetched a hypothesis. Maybe the scene with the bird and the cage was added in at a much later point in development than the ending was, and the team eventually missed that spot during the final cutscenes so there's that discrepancy.

It's very, very likely this wasn't the case. What I'm trying to say is that it sounds like something that might not have been at all intentional.

Man, people are over analyzing this game. The answer to "Why did _____" is because videogame, dudes.

The whole "Elizabeth is a God" twist is a lazy Deus Ex Machina to explain away contradictions or impossible events. Any inconsistencies you find can be waved off with "She's a God now so the rules don't apply", and that's it.

Just enjoy the story and gameplay and move on. I can only imagine if every game inspired this fervent an analysis. "Dude, the guards in Metal Gear completely forget they just saw an intruder after 15 seconds. I think that's Hideo Kojima's commentary on how the stealth action genre is doomed to repeat itself forever, with players forgetting their struggles with previous entries. What an amazing critique on the state of game development and how publishers force developers to hide in metaphorical lockers to avoid the Metacritic score."