u/Independent-Worry905

26 What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. 27 If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. 28 But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God.

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

(Mind you, this is a first draft, so try to look past any edges that need to be worked on, I just wanted to get my raw emotions out before refining this)

Because BioShock Infinite follows the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there are an increasingly infinite number of universes present at any given moment, each one distinct from the other to varying degrees depending on the diverging point and how long ago that was. When selecting a destination in the infinite expanse of the multiverse, the universe that Prime Elizabeth picked required the following variables:

1. Columbia, and the Bull House Impound they are standing in, must necessarily exist. Whether this requires that Columbia be a city in the clouds or stationary on the ground, I cannot say; all I do know is that there must be a Columbia and impound.
2. A Comstock, or a similar figure, must necessarily exist and live a life similar to Prime Comstock so that Columbia exists.
   1. Whether this means that the universe needs a Lutece is debatable, as one could argue that Columbia could have achieved flight through another figure.
3. Chen Lin’s tools are not at the impound.
   1. This does not necessarily mean that they are back at the shop, nor that they even exist in the first place, just that this universe doesn’t have the tools at the impound. The language of the conversation between Prime Booker and Elizabeth strongly implies that they concluded that the tools are in the shop only through speculation (“they aren’t here, therefore they must be there”).

In the infinite expanse of the multiverse, anything else does. This could be a universe in which Columbia is not racist and is welcoming to all people willing to contribute to society, the city could be ruled by robots, everyone could be muslim instead of pseudo-Christian, they could have laser guns, everyone could be dead, everyone could have the ability to turn into a fish person, and so on. The fact that Revolution Comstock, Fitzroy, Fink, Songbird, and the Vox not only all exist in this timeline but also have personalities and histories similar to their Prime counterparts is so astronomically unlikely as to be impossible.

Now, what does happen in this timeline before the Vox turn against Booker?

1. Prime Booker and Elizabeth travel from the Near Future Timeline to the Revolution Timeline.
2. They make their way out of the impound and into a war-torn Shantytown, wherein the Vox Populi are leading a revolution against their oppressors and abusers.
3. They make their way through Shantytown, fighting alongside the Vox.
   1. At some point, after finding a large poster that states that Revolution Booker died a martyr to the Vox, they encounter a Vox member who sees Prime Booker and says, “You… you’re Booker DeWitt, the hero of the Vox!” Take note, students, because this will be the only time any member of the Vox ever attempts to talk to Booker, before they turn against him or after.
4. On our way through Finkton Proper, we continue to fight alongside the Vox. Across streets and bridges, through bullets and missiles, we help the Vox in fighting for their freedom, even if inadvertently, even going so far as to destroy an entire airship for them. And never once do any of the Vox show any signs of wanting to hurt Booker (again, remember this, kids)
5. We take an elevator (a trip that takes merely two minutes) in which we engage in a conversation with Daisy Fitzroy over the phone.

Booker: “Ummm… Hello? Fink?”
Fitzroy: “I saw you die, Booker. Saw it with my own eyes.”
Booker: “Fitzroy. Listen, I got your guns. I’m here for my airship.”
Fitzroy: “But my Booker Dewitt died for the Vox Populi. You either an imposter… or a ghost. My Booker Dewitt was a hero to the cause. A story to tell your children. You… you just complicate the narrative.” 

1. Immediately after exiting the elevator, the Vox tries to kill Prime Booker, and from now on, 100% of the entire Vox Populi across all of Columbia want to shoot Prime Booker on sight, without question, hesitation, or ever trying to capture him for interrogation.

Now, for all that to happen, the following variables must be present in this universe around the time when Prime Booker and Elizabeth arrive:

1. Revolution Booker must exist in this universe. If Booker never existed in this universe, then the Vox would probably pay no mind to him, as his gruffy appearance and usage of improvised Vox weaponry would not give off the idea that he is loyal to Comstock.
2. Revolution Booker must have worked for the Vox and done so extensively enough for him to have become a martyr after his death. If Revolution Booker were alive but didn’t work for the Vox, sure, it would be weird for there to be two of “that one guy” running around, but I’d hardly call it a reason for immediate execution.
3. Revolution Booker must have died, and long enough ago for him to ascend to official martyredom among the Vox. Again, the primary reason Revolution Daisy wanted Prime Booker dead was that his being alive “complicated the narrative” of Revolution Booker’s martyrdom. 
4. Daisy Fitzroy must exist in this universe, which is not a requirement for the revolution to happen, as no matter what, if this universe’s Columbia is as racist and abusive to the lower working class as Prime Columbia, civil unrest was inevitable. 
5. Daisy Fitzroy must be working for the Vox in a high position of power. In the time between Prime Booker and Elizabeth’s arrival in the Revolution timeline and entering the elevator, not one member of the Vox object to the idea of Booker being alive, in fact, the only time we ever interact to the Vox, he simply acknowledges our heroism in this universe, we carry on with the revolution, and it is only after our talk with Daisy that the Vox turn against us. Therefore, according to what the game presents to us, if it wasn’t for Daisy, the Vox would have never turned against Prime Booker.
6. Daisy Fitzroy must be alive at this time. Again, no Daisy, no “you complicate the narrative”, no Vox turning against us.

In the time between the two’s arrival in this universe and their entering the elevator, the following variables must be present:

1. Daisy Fitzroy must not be held up or preoccupied with other matters, otherwise she would not be able to have learned about Prime Booker. She could be stuck in a shootout, she could have been captured, she could be stuck in a bank, she could be on the other side of the city, or she could even be dead.
2. She simultaneously knows where and when Booker enters the elevator, but doesn’t have the resources to know that the only thing he has been doing since getting to this universe is killing Columbians for the Vox.
3. She has the resources to know precisely which elevator the two enter and when they enter it.
4. She has the resources to make a phone call to Booker in the elevator (mind you, in 1912).
5. She not only convinces herself that Prime Booker should die, but also (offscreen) constructs an argument so compelling that it convinces 100% of all Vox members across all of Columbia to want to kill Prime Booker on sight, without any opposition, seemingly within the length of the elevator ride.

And lastly, within the length of the elevator ride:

1. 100% of all the Vox, in all of Columbia, are convinced to kill Prime Booker and Elizabeth on site. After exiting the elevator, we immediately encounter Vox who want to kill us, we come to Daisy, Daisy uses some nearby speaker system to announce “kill the imposters. Burn their bodies when youŕe done”, we are forced to fight the Vox, we kill Fitzroy, and now the state of the universe is that every member of the Vox wants to kill us. Before Daisy, 100% of the Vox were on board with Prime Booker and were willing to fight and die alongside him, and after Daisy, 100% of the Vox enthusiastically want to see him dead.

…
(Wait, if we took the elevator back down, would the same Vox that we fought and suffered alongside turn their weapons against us? Also, why did she say impostors plural if Revolution Elizabeth was moved straight from her tower to Comstock’s fortress, and therefore the two never had the opportunity to meet?)

One more variable we need to look at before we destroy this mess, Revolution Booker:
First, let’s look at Revolution Booker’s own audio log.

“Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt.” As Plans go, I’d seen worse -- except this girl was already gone. Monument Island’s a damn ghost town. Seems like they evacuated her when they heard I was here. An old friend told me Comstock spirited her off to a fortress of his. As a one-man job, this just went from bettin’ on the river to… drawing dead.

Combine this with the information we get from other characters, and we get the following picture:

Revolution Booker came here to steal Elizabeth to pay off his debt, unexpected variables force him to join the Vox Populi, his skillset and efficiency apparently made him a hero amongst the oppressed and downtrodden, and he died during a Vox operation at the Hall of Heroes.

Now, what is Prime Booker doing in the Revolution Timeline before the betrayal? He came here to get an airship to leave Columbia, and to do so, he has to plow his way through Columbians, until Daisy decides that his presence “complicates the narrative”.

Put these two together, and what do you get? Booker came here to do something selfish, but the obstacles in his path force him to do something to the Vox’s benefit: killing Columbians. Yet despite all that, Prime Booker is called an imposter… despite doing the same things Revolution Booker did.

Now, after all that, what do we get:
In the end, the Vox Populi’s sudden and absolute reversal from allies to enemies is not just poorly executed—it is structurally indefensible. The game asks the player to accept that, within the span of a two-minute elevator ride, an entire revolutionary movement unanimously abandons all prior experience, logic, and self-interest in favor of immediate, unquestioning hostility. This shift is not earned through character interaction, gradual suspicion, or ideological conflict, but instead hinges entirely on Revolution Fitzroy’s offscreen decision and her inexplicably perfect ability to disseminate and enforce that decision across all of Columbia instantaneously.
What makes this especially egregious is that everything leading up to this moment directly contradicts it. The Vox fight alongside Prime Booker, benefit from his actions, and even recognize him as a hero. There is no internal dissent, no buildup of distrust, and no attempt to reconcile the contradiction between the “martyr” Booker and the one standing in front of them. The narrative does not explore this tension—it simply deletes it. By reducing the Vox to a monolithic entity that can flip from total acceptance to total rejection without resistance or nuance, the game undermines both its own worldbuilding and any pretense of political or thematic depth.
Worse still, this outcome depends on an absurd chain of hyper-specific conditions aligning perfectly within an already astronomically unlikely universe selection. Rather than using the multiverse concept to justify meaningful variation or complexity, the story selectively enforces sameness where convenient and divergence where necessary, resulting in a contrived scenario that exists solely to force the plot forward. The many-worlds premise, instead of enriching the narrative, becomes a crutch used to excuse inconsistencies that would otherwise be unacceptable.
Ultimately, the Vox Populi betrayal is not just a failure of character writing or pacing—it is a breakdown of narrative causality itself. It exposes a story that prioritizes shocking turns over coherent development, and spectacle over substance. Instead of presenting a believable ideological conflict or tragic misunderstanding, the game opts for a forced and illogical twist that collapses under even minimal scrutiny. In doing so, it turns what could have been a compelling exploration of revolution and perspective into one of the weakest and most contrived moments in the entire narrative.

For me (Warhammer 40,000): "Don't worry, it gets worse."