Zachary Hale Comstock is a difficult video game antagonist to forget. In BioShock: Infinite, he is known as the founder of the sky city of Columbia and the creator of The Founders political party. While he is not met many times, his presence is everywhere in the game, as he is worshiped by the Columbian citizens as "Father Comstock" and has the title of Prophet.
Comstock is a cult leader character that has a lot of similarities with ultra-religious, nationalist, and racist figures from history. He uses powers of manipulation, religious knowledge, military training, and charisma to get what he wants. There are two real-life people in history that fans think Comstock may have been inspired from due to their similarities. These two real-life people are Anthony Comstock and Ernst Rudin.
Anthony Comstock
Before BioShock: Infinite, Comstock was a last name already famously known due to a man named Anthony Comstock. He held a few jobs as a part of the Republican Party and lived from 1844 to 1915. He was an anti-vice activist, meaning he was an activist against any behavior that was considered sinful. These sinful things would include birth control, women's suffrage, and any books he deemed too obscene. In fact, he claimed books were "feeders for brothels." This real Comstock became so well known for his zealous censorship campaigns that terms like "comstockism" and "comstockery" became words to describe extreme censorship.
For Anthony Comstock to share his last name with the Comstock of BioShock: Infinite is not surprising. Both share strategies of demonization, using the idea of "sinful actions" to control information, and using allusions to the Bible to justify themselves. BioShock is also not the first piece of fiction to possibly use Anthony Comstock as inspiration. Books like The Alienist, The Beautiful and Damned, and The Future of Another Timeline have used Comstock's name (often for their villains) or even reinterpreted Comstock's life.
Ernst Rudin
BioShock fans have also looked into the similarities between Comstock and Ernst Rudin, a real Nazi that lived from 1874 to 1952. Interestingly enough, BioShock's Comstock has the same birth date as Rudin: April 19, 1874. Comstock also shares philosophies with Rudin, who believed in the sterilization of races he deemed to be genetically inferior. While Anthony Comstock may have given BioShock's Comstock his religious zealotry, Rudin may have been the inspiration for his racism.
In his similarities with Rudin, Comstock advocated for a white ethnostate. Like Rudin, he also committed racist war crimes and believed in white supremacy. Believing that the white race was better than the rest was a way for Comstock to make himself still seem like a good man despite his horrid acts against others. This ties greatly with not only Rudin, but with Nazi ideas in general.
What These Connections Mean
The BioShock franchise is partly about the consequences of extremism. This was true with Andrew Ryan, who was the villain of the first game and in many ways the opposite of Comstock. He was an atheist that wanted to reject the American government and let people do anything they pleased. Comstock instead was incredibly controlling and cared greatly for American values, despite breaking away from his country. Both of these stories and villains, however, are still similar because both are about extremism and how that leads to dehumanization, exploitation, and ultimately, hypocrisy.
Extremism has a long and disturbing real-world history. For video game developers to tap into that history for their characters is a good strategy to tell deep stories. The BioShock series is famous for how it handles itself in philosophy and American ideology, rivaling novels and the art world for its heavy symbolism, allusions, and societal criticisms. It does make one wonder, though, many years from now, what kinds of real people will inspire new villains in the gaming world.
BioShock: Infinite is available now for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.
