Here's the plot of Bioshock: Infinite, done in chronological order (which is NOT the same as the order in the game).
Obviously, there are MASSIVE spoilers coming. I'm intentionally leaving out minor plot points that aren't super important to the story, which is complicated enough.
In the beginning...
Booker DeWitt was born in 1874, and served as a soldier in the US Army at the massacre of Indians at the Battle of Wounded Knee.
Upset about the massacre, he attended a river baptism by a Preacher Witting.
At this point, realities start diverging.
In one reality, he accepts the baptism, and is reborn as Zachary Hale Comstock.
In another reality, he rejects it and walks away. This is where the main character's Booker DeWitt comes from.
A bunch of stuff that happens after the baptism:
In the Zachary Hale Comstock reality (who keep in mind is still the same man as DeWitt), he becomes an extremely religious man and acquires wealth and power as an influential preacher. Comstock also marries a woman later known as Lady Comstock.
Comstock meets a woman, Rosalind Lutece, who is an incredibly brilliant quantum physicist. Through her research she discoveries alternate realities, and specifically one where a Robert Lutece exists. Robert is the male version of her in another dimension, doing the exact same experiment. Comstock funds Rosalind's research (believing them to be able to predict the future) to build a dimensional travel device. Rosalind manages to bring Robert into her dimension permanently with it.
Comstock starts using the dimensional travel device to see into other worlds, which is where he sees the floating city (what would eventually become Columbia). However, use of the device has serious physical consequences, and Comstock begins aging rapidly and becomes sterile. He sees that his utopia will fall apart without an heir, so he discusses with the Lutece twins how to take an heir of his from another dimension.
In the Booker DeWitt reality, he marries a woman and has a baby, Anna. The wife dies during childbirth, and Booker sinks into alcoholism and gambling. In 1893, he meets the Lutece twins and Comstock who offers to wipe away all of his gambling debt in exchange for Anna (see above). He agrees, then reconsiders shortly after and chases after them. He spots them escaping through the portal and grabs onto Anna, but loses her as she falls through. Her hand was outstretched to him as the portal closed and the portal cuts off part of her pinky and leaves it in Booker's dimension.
DeWitt, depressed about losing his daughter, brands her initials onto his right hand (Anna DeWitt). He further slips into alcoholism and gambling.
Stuff that happens close to the beginning of the game:
Comstock's wife resents Anna, now renamed Elizabeth, who she believes is the product of an affair of Comstock's even though she publicly claims its hers. LC even has Elizabeth locked up in a tower on her own. Lady Comstock confronts Rosalind who she thinks is the real mother. Rosalind explains the truth, and LC decides she has to tell the public. Comstock has her killed and frames Daisy Fitzroy, his servant, of the crime.
The Lutece twins see Comstock's rapidly crazier society and the murder as a mistake that they have created. They attempt to fix this by bringing Elizabeth back into her original dimension and returning her to Booker DeWitt. Comstock has the dimensional travel machine sabotaged as they go through it, which has the exact opposite of the intended effect. Instead of killing them, it now allows them to travel across all of the realities.
On the DeWitt side, nothing really happens to DeWitt. He's a boring guy. He becomes a private investigator and basically wastes his life away.
Let the game begin!
Twenty years after the original abduction, Booker DeWitt is approached by the Lutece twins and told that they will give him an opportunity to get his girl back. He eagerly agrees and allows himself to get brought (unknowingly) into the reality where Comstock exists.
Confused and having memory loss from the dimensional travel, he starts to believe that the phrase "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt" refers to a job offer he was given instead of the original deal he cut to give Anna away. He believes that his daughter died when she was young. The twins take him to the lighthouse, which he uses to get to Columbia.
Okay, now what happens during the game?
This part is actually infinitely simpler. Booker DeWitt meets his actual daughter, Elizabeth/Anna, but has no idea it's her. He attempts to get her out, shoots a bunch of people, etc. etc. etc.
There's a minor sub-plot that happens late in the game where BD sees a reality where he fails to save Elizabeth and one (and NYC gets torched) and the "playable" reality where he does.
Eventually he encounters Comstock and kills him.
And now, for the grand finale and the reveal...
Elizabeth, fully in control of her "tearing" ability, shows BD the many different realities that exist. She explains that Comstock lives in many of them, and will always continue to live in them.
Booker DeWitt asks that she take him back to when Comstock was an "infant" so he can smother Comstock in his crib.
Elizabeth takes him to the river baptism (the one that BD participated in after Wounded Knee), where it all becomes clear- Booker DeWitt is Zachary Hale Comstock. Regardless of whether he accepts or rejects the baptism, an alternate reality will still be created where Comstock lives, acquires the dimensional travel device, and then steals Booker's daughter.
Deciding that it is his duty to prevent Comstock from ever existing, he allows the many versions of his daughters to drown him in the river before the baptism happens, thereby eliminating Comstock from all realities.
There's a teaser at the end which suggests that this results in one single reality where Booker DeWitt gets to keep his daughter.
Interesting facts:
- The Preacher that baptizes Comstock also baptizes "our" DeWitt upon entry in Columbia.
- Despite the difference in physical appearances, DeWitt and Comstock are about the same age. Comstock has been prematurely aged by the dimensional travel device.
- Elizabeth's "tearing" ability is due to her body existing in two dimensions at once (her pinky got cut off, remember?).
- The Songbird is built by Fink, who gets the idea by looking through another dimension, possibly inspired by Big Daddies.
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