Pictured: Said house

It was a dark and stormy night, and three men in a rowboat were rowing through the dark and stormy water. So begins the tale of Booger Dimwitt, certified Gigma Male™, slayer of pretty much anyone, hero of legends. Or, of this legend at least. Honestly I have no idea why you're reading this compressed ingot of ♥♥♥♥, but to each folks float their different own boat strokes, or whatever. Speaking of strokes, have you had one yet? Just let me know if my gruesome grammatical butcherings are getting to you.

So anyway, the three men row their ♥♥♥♥♥♥ little dingy toward a tall light-type of house, pictured above for your convenience. Actually, only one of them rows it while they argue with the other one. Our hero, for his part, sits in the back, occasionally saying intelligent things like "Hey! Are we there yet or what?" The two tour guides take their psychotic breaks from rowing to talk about rowing, and philosophy or something, and one of them hands Brooder a case filled with enough firearms and photographs to get him immediately arrested in any nation other than Russia. Apparently Booger is supposed to kidnap rescue a girl and bring her to New York. I have no idea how Booger got this far along in the process without knowing what he was being hired to do, but to be fair this does work as an especially strong bit of characterization for his massive intellect. Eventually they reach the docks, the Singing In the Rain extras say some stupid cryptic ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and Booger gets outta there before the wonder twins can start up their quirky quipping again. Now that I think about it, one of them was actually a woman. Damnit. I really thought I remembered this better.

OK, that was the last inaccuracy, everything from here on out is 100% accurate.


Pictured: Our hero, depicted at his actual size


Arriving at the foot of the tall-type house, our hero receives his first objective:


Obviously this is impossible, so he decides to just go with the kidnapping thing for now. Inside the tower there is a basin emblazoned with the phrase, "Wash away your sins," or something like that. Boffer examines his chiseled jawline in the water and says, "Good luck with that pal." This is meant as a subtle hint that Bugger might have a dark past, showing how he is mysterious and edgy. He decides to climb to the next floor without washing his grubby hands like the filthy varmint he is. Upstairs he finds a dead body chilling in a chair, but bizarrely Bokker reacts as if it had just threatened him with a tax audit. There's also a message, written in blood or something, saying "BRING US THE GIRL OR ELSE." Or something like that, I don't really remember. Boggart, ever attuned to his environment, notices the message, sounding it out like a toddler reading Dr. Seuss for the first time. Getting over both his illiteracy and sudden-onset psychosis, our cowardly hero finally ascends to the top of the light-bearing house, where there is a walkway surrounding a large light.

For some reason there is also a set of three bells inscribed with symbols, and Broggert continues his toddler training by clumsily poking the bells in accordance with the pattern on his cheat sheet, which his mysterious employers had wisely chosen to include in his Kidnapping Kit. There's a sound like God getting into a fender bender with Cthulu, and the large-type light retracts into the floor of the small glass house-type area in the middle of the circular walkway. A large chair complete with iron shackles appears in its place. Booger decides to sit in this chair for some reason, and (despite the presence of certain contextual clues) is totally shocked and flaggerbasted when the restraints restrain him. The chair, apparently a fan of classic cartoons, turns him upside down and starts shaking. Luckily for the chair, Beggar never holsters his guns, preferring to just stuff them wherever, and his newly-acquired firearm falls into a couple of large cogs in the floor that grind it up. RIP best gun, never fired and never forgotten.

The chair then turns into a rocket and blasts Booogert into the stratosphere.

Post-Script (Ignore This Part): Did the people who hired Bowser bring the dead guy to the lighthouse just to kill him, or was he just there and they found him? Was he the previous person-for-hire that had failed to kidnap the girl, and if so why is he down in the lighthouse? Did he escape but got caught by his employers in the lighthouse? Could he even escape to the lighthouse? Is the rocket reusable? Come to think of it, why did these people kill Dead Guy at all? Were they just angry at him for an unrelated reason and decided they wanted to scare Booger just before he started the job? How come this one lighthouse with room for just one single-person rocket is the only way to get to Balloon Land? You might think these questions will have answers by the end of the story, but they don't. 95% sure they don't. 85%. Pretty sure. Actually I don't remember.

If you will allow me the briefest of anime flashbacks, I will now promptly explain exactly which strange, oddly racist corner of the stratosphere Booger has just been blasted into.

Basically, a long time ago, there was this dude named Codstock. Now, Constock had a vision from the angel Columbia, and she told him: "Hey, you should build sort of an ark-type thing because people are stupid and God doesn't like them. He likes you though. Also, make it fly." And so he built a city, and he made it fly.

Columbia.

Pictured: Actual photo of Columbia

And yeah, the city flies and whatever. Pretty cool. Chadstock, however, was not content with defying the laws of physics (a cringe atheist invention, remember). He built it and said, "Nah, you know what? ♥♥♥♥ the matrix. ♥♥♥♥ all of you. Everyone who wants to be Based and Godpilled, follow me."


And yeah, some people followed him and stuff. Pretty cool. And they all believed this story he told them (same one I'm telling you right now, actually). If you don't buy it--if you're cringe--you get kicked from the server. Which means you fall three thousand feet and die. Of course, even dirty sinners can always just follow Daddy Clockrock's 3-Step Plan to Purity:

1: Obey me or die.
2: America is best country; George Washington was God's little brother
3: Guns are great (shoot anyone who doesn't like me)

So Columbia is peopled with a bunch of God-fearin', gun-totin', humble and down-to-earth type of upstanding free-floatin' hard-workin' folk, more pure and virtuous than anyone else, ever.

Also, booze gives you superpowers and everyone drinks it.

In which there is a racism

Now that I've taken my infodump, we can get back to the action! Gray clouds and whirling winds whip past Bogeyman's rocket pod chair thing, lashing it with rain and flashing with forked lightning. The whine of the Walmart-bought rocket engine steadily increases in pitch until it seems it simply must give out--at which point the pod bursts through the clouds. We drift slowly past banks of puffy white paradise, past old-timey buildings and giant posters of your grandpa, and all the while Sigourney Weaver rattles off the tourism pamphlet. Gamers agree it's a magical moment.

For some reason, there's some sort of building that catches our pod and lowers it down into the loading screen entrance area. The doors open, the restraints disengage, and the notorious B.O.G. steps out into this new world, all Buzz Armstrong-like. The moment is however punctured thanks to said step occurring directly in a pool of water. As we all know--and as Albert Einstein so famously confirmed--socks once wet tend to stay at wet. This is the law of aquatic exchange.

So Bigby has wet socks for the rest of the game, perhaps explaining the kneecapped cognitive capacities displayed by him therein. Hey, wet socks are distracting.

It turns out the landing area is entirely flooded. Just the whole thing. Not deeply enough to be fun, mind you, just like a few inches, just enough to ensoggen your shoes and make you miserable. Also, there's a bunch of candles everywhere, and pseudo-religious sculptures of Ben Franklin (what happens if the candles get splashed? Do they have backup candles?) There's also a guy who stands near the stairs, just chilling in the water. Maybe he relights the candles? Blabber loudly asks him some questions before realizing he should probably blend in (evidently forgetting he's currently wearing the equivalent of a neon sign when compared with the residents' white robes). The whole area resembles some sort of church or cathedral, just flooded and filled with fire hazards, and with pictures of Grandpa instead of Jesus.

Anyhow, Booger stumbles and blumbles his soggy way into a big hall-type-area, in which other people seem to also be arriving, although they're all wearing white robes.* Meanwhile there's an old crusty preacher dude who's yelling his lungs out talking about how great Big Grandpa is. It's pretty funny actually--if you just sit there and wait he just keeps getting louder and more impassioned until he sounds like he's about to explode. Anyhow, Booger's like, "Hey! Me need get through there now!"

Then the priest guy is like, "Hold up, wait a minute, who dis?" "Uhh. No, no one. None-one. Yeah." Priest sits there for a second more, cogitating, then says, "My son, you must be bathedtised in yon waters of bathism before thee can enter in the kingdom of holiness!" or something to that effect. Booger, being the grubby dirtmeister he is, initially refuses even the thought of a bath, but after walking around a bit he realizes this is a scripted event and he has to do it. So then the old guy grabs Goober and, despite being at least forty years older than our strapping hero, manhandles him under the water and proceeds to waterboard the new arrival for seemingly no reason. I'm not even exaggerating here either--he even acts all smug and evil, like, "Oh boy, looks like our pal here ain't quite clean yet, ain't that right boys! Well, looks like we'll have to dunkee kindly!" Some mafia-boss hillbilly thug type ♥♥♥♥.

Next thing we know, Bogoth wakes up to the glorious sight of Benji Franklin's majestic, eagle-like nose poring down upon him, offering him a brass sword of righteous fury. After a minute or two of tugging, however, it becomes apparent the thing is welded to the founding father, who--after a minute or two of looking--it becomes apparent is actually a large marble statue. "♥♥♥♥," Booger yells, nursing his head. "That guy needs to learn the difference between baptizing a man and drowning him. Bazinga!" Strangely, none of the white-robed pilgrims nearby deign to laugh at Booger's hilarious joke, which of course only makes him more determined to commit kidnapping. Kidnapping in exchange for money, that is. Yeah. He's basically a human trafficker.

Anywho, there's a big parade and a big fair, filled with games and prizes and whatnot. "Sweet!" Booger exclaims, as he repeatedly wastes valuable time by playing games designed for children. I mean, come on, who would ever take time out of their ever-dwindling lifespan to play dumb games that offer nothing other than momentary entertainment?

Oh ♥♥♥♥.

Uh...anyway. So there's a big fair and stuff. We get some worldbuilding and some gameplay tutorials, and some nice fair-type lady even hands Booger a bottle of Bigor. I mean Vigor. Like the absolute lout of an organism he is, he immediately unstops it and chugs down the entire bottle for no reason. Not addicted. Uh-huh. He can stop whenever he wants to. Suuure. But it's all good because turns out it gives you superpowers, and now Booger has the ability to bend man and machine alike to his brutish will. She doesn't know it yet, but that lady just had what could be called an "art school moment." Surely this one won't have any kind of horrible, violent consequences! By the way, the pair of gingers from the rowboat show up and make Booger flip a coin for some reason. They flip a coin, ask him to call it. He gets it wrong. Moving along.

Shouting and music can be heard as Booger winds his way through the area, eventually arriving in a park-type-place filled with lots of peepo. Some chick gives him a powerball for the raffle lottery, and Booger's like "Nah, I'm broke," but she's like, "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ idiot, can't you read, it's free." So then he takes a ball and it's number 77, and what do you know the big announcer guy is like "Hey guys! Guess what? It's number 77!" so Boogers is like, "Well, ♥♥♥♥." The crowd's cheering, the wind's blowing, the curtains are unraveling and oh no. The prize is racism.

Boomer goes to throw his ball, but whether toward the tied-up couple or Adolf Wonka we can't be sure, for a conveniently-placed policeman suddenly appears and grabs his hand. Apparently he saw the Satan mark on it? In any case the cops try to kill our intrepid powerballer with a big spinny thing, but make the critical error of underestimating their quarry's kung-fu abilities. Cop 1 gets a skeletal remodeling while 2 gets brutally beaten to death. Now that he's loaded up on stolen weaponry, Booger has achieved his final form and is now a walking genocide. Suffice it to say CPD has a lot of recruiting to do by the time Booger reaches the gates of the next area, where he meets a normal fireman.


Pictured: A normal fireman

The upstanding first responder swallows his fear (along with lots of drugs, probably) and charges at Booger, determined to put an end to his rampage of death. Unfortunately for him, the level designers fumbled this part, so BB just stays outside the gate and shoots him to death. Then he refills his mana with Salts™


Pictured: Booger every 3.7 seconds

P.S. Oh, also. There was a big poster earlier that depicted the hand of Satan the False Shepard, inscribed with the letters "A.D." Weirdly enough, turns out Booger has the same marking on his hand. Pretty weeeird....

*How did they get there? Are there other chair-rocket-holding lighthouses? How do they navigate to Columbia? Or is it more like a bus stop situation where you have to be there when it passes by? Actually the whole horn-signalling thing from earlier makes it seem like it's the lighthouses that signal Columbia to head on over to catch the rocket chair. Or maybe the other people weren't newcomers at all. Maybe they were just visiting and there's only one entrance to the place.

John Halo gets his energy shield

After war-crimeing his way through an additional fourscore and seven guards, Booger becomes aware that he is hungry. Seeing a nice restaurant nearby, he heads inside to see if he can rob a few footlongs off of whoever happens to be inside. Turns out--and this might shock you--the Gingerade twins are there, for some reason. Booger finds some supplies, and--if he bought the DLCs--a whole bunch of upgrades and Gear™: "No Mom, it's not dress-up! I'm just collecting my Gear™!" Effeminate hobbies aside, Booger also accepts the Doppelhangers' final course, presented on a silver platter. After a few minutes of fruitless chewing, Booger realizes that the object is in fact a magnetic shield that can repel bullets, OG Ironman style. And by "realize", I mean "sit quietly while smarter people explain things to him." Thus the Lettuce Twins grant their greatest gift to their smelly, soggy-sock-wearing prodigy, augmenting his destructive potential even further beyond.

Obligatory image.

Like Texas, but smaller

Dripped up and decked out, Decker leaves the restaurant and forges onward across the courtyard. There were also some more guards he kills and stuff, along with a Half-Life 2 situation where he brings the cops down on innocent bystanders. Whoopsies! 🤪

Eventually Booger reaches a large, evil-looking building that seems to have the power to dim the sun simply by existing. After murdering a second fireman, he waddles past the big statue of Aryan Prime fighting Foreigngandr, completely missing the potentially unintentional visual pun of the sky echoing this subtle foreshadowing in the most literal sense. Inside the building is full of birds and their birdshit and also some money if you look around the left-hand side of the entrance area, just FYI. Anyway it turns out the building is the HQ of a cult dedicated to worshiping racism and also John Wilkes Booth because he shot Lincoln because Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which was, generally speaking, not very racist of him. Also turns out the Kult are also simps for Lady Crock (Comsos's wife).


High Simp Wizard Barley striking his favorite anime pose

Bagazine blasts his way through a second mass shooting--this time of the racist simp militia, very nearly redeeming himself of all the terrible things he's already committed in his short time in Columbialand.

There's also a crow guy mini-boss who is ostensibly the reason for the building's avian afflictions. Bo-Bo claps his ass and moves on with looting every last little box, cupboard, and trashcan he can get his grubby paws into. So much money! Surely he'll be able to buy something of value soon, right?

Right?

This is like that time I climbed onto the railroad tracks

Having depopulated the Klubhouse, Booger presses on to his penultimate destination: a large statue of a lady; also wings. There is, however, a rather inconvenient amount of empty air between him and said statue. To cross the gulf of definite doom, he needs either a pair of wings, a jetpack, or prime Michael Jordan.

Either that, of course, or he can use his Bullshitinator to speed along Columbia's equivalent to a crosswalk (read: floating metal rails). Unfortunately, Colombia's traffic planner must have been too busy smoking crack to do his job correctly--either that, or he was simply a big fan of spaghetti, and decided to try and replicate the chaotic knots found in his favorite dish across the canvas of public transportation. Huh. I guess Columbia is American after all.

Following the proper routes would be, therefore, what we in the business call a pain in the ass. Hogarth however, channeling his inner Gosling, elects instead to ignore both basic societal conventions and all known traffic laws in favor of The Aura™, leaving nothing but destruction and a bad meme in his wake.



Two house invasions later, Bogarth reaches a certain spot that is there for some reason, probably. There's a boatload of soldiers, but Cockstock tells them to stand down for some reason. Possibly he just wanted to flex on Booger by showing he can make people listen to him without threatening them with a gun. Naturally, Booger shoots them all anyway, possibly just to flex on Crockstock by showing he doesn't understand a word he just said.

After the single slowest elevator ride in history (during which Santa Claus gives another boring speech which more or less amounts to: you're dumb and bad and I'm cool), Crockhead launches a barrage of missiles at Booger, making me question his earlier lack of missile utilization. Maybe he just wanted a chance to roast his archnemesis. Drawing on his training in the restaurants of Mexico, Boofer handles the fiery blasts like a pro, then jumps onto the Pope's blimp. Foolishly, Francis had chosen to pass Booger's building (is it a dock maybe?) extremely closely, making this effort no challenge at all, and pretty soon Booger takes command of the vehicle, though it turns out the Pope himself got away and/or wasn't ever in the blimp in the first place. Sticking to his penchant for unnecessary proximity to his enemies, Frank takes the opportunity to fly right in front of Booger's new wheels on a much smaller ship and drop the hardest line in the game.

"God forgives all. But I'm just a prophet. So I don't have to. Amen."

Seriously, who wrote this? Kenny, was this yours? Stop making your space bible game for a second and explain yourself.

At that moment, a small, primitive part of Booger's brain realizes that he should shoot something right about now. I mean, he's right there! No way the glass is bulletproof either. But alas, Booget misinterprets this impulse and instead attempts to shoot an innocent, torch-holding woman standing nearby. Heroically, she immediately sacrifices herself in an attempt to stop Booger before it's too late for the rest of human civilization. Unfortunately for her, Biggar's aforementioned toilet training was too extensive, and he again endures the sulfurous explosions with ease.

Dashing to the conveniently open cargo hold, Biggie Cheese leaps from the burning blimp, falls three hundred feet and catches himself with his Plot-O-Tron on a conveniently placed floating rail. By manipulating the quantum uncertainty inherent in all fiction, you see, the miraculous device on his left arm is able to put plot holes into a superposition--is it stupid or are you stupid? Thusly it dismisses both thousands upon thousands of joules of Booger-crushing energy and an equal number of so-called "criticisms." Really something, those Weasley twins.

Landing safely at the base of the tower-area-type-place, our hero takes a moment to buy an upgrade from a vending machine, watching with eager eyes as it immediately jams and becomes lost to him forever. Not only that, but Booger is now broke AF, having blown literally all of his money on the now-estranged upgrade. After raging impotently, crying like a baby, and experiencing an existential crisis,* he at last decides to valiantly press on into the depths of the tower.

But...uh...then there is a mystery! WHO is hiding in the tower? And WHY are they hiding there? And WHEN can I see the kids again? Questions that can only be answered by subjecting your brain to an additional helping of the literary sludge that is this guide.

Question of the Day (Ignore This Part): Is it sad the flying racism simulator has better public transit than the IRL USA?

*Only kidding of course. Booger's brain is far too small to experience an existential crisis.

Hold on, this isn't Disneyland

Our intrepid hero presses onward, scorning fear and reason alike as he delves deep into the eerie reaches of the Foyer. Inside, there's a bit of a mess and a distinct lack of people. What is present is an audio-diary type thing that the janitor (slave?) made. That's a thing by the way--one of the inventions Codstomp revealed at E3 was this portable recording device that must have some incredible anti-scratch coating, considering the thing uses vinyl discs. Basically, it's like autobiographical Audible, but ambulatory.* Now, Booger makes it a point to listen to these Story Compensators...at least initially, until he realizes that the frequency of firefights makes listening to the distorted audio stories completely untenable excepting an extended stop--which, as a gamer, is more repellent than even a grass-scented shower. Repellent to Booger, I mean. Just to clarify.

At last ascertaining that the aforementioned disc-shaped object isn't actually a demo CD, B-boy zones out and continues waddling through the abandoned tower. He comes across strange, creepy rooms filled with stalker merch: sneaky photos still chilling in red light even though they're already exposed, creepy recordings, that kind of ♥♥♥♥. A grinding noise is heard as cogs turn, the complex cognitive machinery of Swamp's brain finally putting two and two together. "They're... watching her!" our noble hero exclaims, obviously appalled. "Wow, they are," his extradimensional puppeteer agrees, or something like that.

Beyond these bonafide FBI-at-home stakeouts, there lies a loud and large room dominated by lots of Tesla coils, and or very large speakers. It's kind of hard to tell, honestly. Arcs of electricity chase each other through the air, dancing between pylons. There is also another stalker exhibit, complete with crackhead charts, that seems to be very preoccupied with "the subject's" menstrual cycle. Why you would put such a thing in the lightning room rather than the ready-made stalker closets, I have little idea. There's also a little lever that teleports a teapot or something. Bogger doesn't know what to make of it, so he moves on without comment. Apparently, a photograph was worthy of verbal remark, but not an earth-shattering technology like teleportation. Truly, great minds work in mysterious ways.

Past that, there is a loading screen an elevator. Exiting this, our hero finds himself in some sort of back access area--a long and frankly impractical series of hallways and catwalks that provide access to various doors, although for some reason they are split up such that one is required to enter a door, travel in the area beyond, then use a second door should they want to simply travel forward. Downright accommodating of Cockhead to design his tower with scripted sequences in mind, don't you think?

But through the first of these ordinal doors Booger goes, and what does he find behind it? An observation area, complete with one-way glass. Beyond this particular pane, a girl happens to be doing stuff (painting or something?) Yeah, painting. I think that was it. She's painting a painting of the Eifel tower, then casually rips open a portal in midair. Through the space-hole we can see what looks to be a Parisian theater playing Ewok Movie: Luke is Here Too. Before she can go through it, however, a firetruck swerves toward the glowy space portal, gunning for that Splatter medal. The girl pulls the portal closed just in time, then immediately wanders off. At that moment, the automated scriptometers installed in the next door decide it's time to unlock, and Booger hurries out onto the next stretch of poorly designed catwalk. He then repeats this process several times, in each instance hurrying after the girl so he can continue spying on her. Seriously, someone tell him they haven't added Peeping Tom yet.

Eventually there is another elevator, which for some reason leads to a very large metal plate suspended by chains. Presumably, this is yet another, more steampunker elevator. There is no visible button, lever, or control interface to lower this person-platter. Luckily, Booger is so dense that he can even overcome the barrier between figurative and literal density; the massive metal chains immediately snap like twigs upon his stepping foot on their bronzed burden. Lager falls some thirty feet to the hardwood floor below, but--like the indomitable monster he is--merely shakes it off. With his observant eye, he notices that the room is some kind of nerd area, filled with lots of books and boring stuff.

Suddenly, a nerd worms their way out of the woodwork and assaults him with one of the brick-like books! While things could well have taken a dark turn at this point, considering Booger's homicidal tendencies, his bogwatered brain is able to recognize an essential fact: this particular nerd is actually the girl he was spying on earlier, who must of course be the "subject" featured so prominently in the stalker merch! The stalker magnet introduces herself as Elizabeth and stops trying to kill Booker. Rookie mistake, am I right?

But Booger quickly appeals to her desire to escape--rightly. Fair to say it's a bad environment, filled with bad people. I mean, what kind of freak would spy on someone like that?

Oh, uh... anyway. There is a loud, pee-producing noise, and E-girl explains, without actually explaining anything, that they really must leave ASAP. Unfortunately, the door is locked. Our gallant and very privacy-conscious hero produces a key he got from the box he got from the Weasley twins earlier and undocks the loor.

All seems on the up-and-up, and Booger begins to feel pretty good about himself.

Unfortunately for him, this is where he meets Bord.

Bord.

Needless to say, Booger immediately flees in abject terror from the hulking, feathery form of this avian superpredator, who promptly begins tearing the tower apart like single-ply tissue paper. I mean, what are they feeding him? Tyrannosaurs, probably, but where did they get them?

For some reason, Alice knows exactly where to go to escape the tower, even though she's never been outside of her suite before apparently. Maybe she found the building's blueprint in a book? Vogler stumbles along after her, bumbling stupidly through the tilting, set-pieced environs as Birdie violates both OSHA's and Geneva's conventions. Eventually, the two emerge onto an extremely precarious and poorly-railed walkway that is not so much a walkway as a halfhearted attempt at a fake walkway, bolted onto the side of the giant statue angel lady (which, I remind those of Booger's general perceptive persuasion, is also the tower area). They are running, somewhere, maybe. But suddenly the tower lurches--scared, perhaps, of the Birdie himself--and the two are thrown off into a stratospheric freefall straight from Halo 3.

HOW will our heroes survive such a fall?! WHAT is the giant death pigeon, and WHY is it trying to kill them? And WHERE did I bury my blood money!? Lawyers are expensive, guys!

Stay tuned to Stroke Channel for these and other aneurysms.

*Let's pretend I didn't forget to include this information a couple chapters ago, when said fair was being expounded into your hapless skull.

The beach is fake news, just more woke propaganda

Our protagoni fall through the picturesque skies in a moment straight out of the trailer, only slightly different because the devs had to remake it in-engine as opposed to producing a bespoke animation.

Hurtling several hundred feet, Booger yells in defiance: "WHUUUUOOOOOOOOH!" Or at least that's what it sounded like, I think. Airheart yells as well, but it's more like, "AHHHHHH!" Luckily, they happen to pass the Golden Gate Bridge, which--luckerly--happens to have one of those floating rail things from earlier. Booger expertly maneuvers toward Exlax and grabs her hand or something. Readying his Plot-O-Tron 9000, he attaches to the passing rail with the power of magnetotism.* The immense surge of kinetic energy involved in arresting the momentum of two entire people attempts to isolate Bojack's arm, but he easily retains his grip, demonstrating a frankly disturbing level of physical prowess. Their terminal velocity safely converted, the pair's screams somewhat abate as they realize they're gonna be A-OK! Then the rail collapses. Apparently Dimwitt's descent desistment was too much for the large structure (which is strange considering it just kind of floats, occasional balloons aside). It also doesn't help that Bord is back on their tail, dive-bombing everything except Bomber himself. Maybe he was just really excited to finally get to chase something. Endearing enthusiasm aside, Bord divebombs the bridge and destroys it. Or maybe he just breaks the rail thing. Either way, Betty and Buttleather are once again freefalling toward certain doom. A front of something blue and watery rushes toward them at lethal speed.

With an explosion of bubbles, Boogie dies.

Just kidding. Apparently Columbia got their water from Mojang, cause the whole "physics" thing doesn't seem to apply here. Thus, the water safely breaks Bongwater's fall. Then there is a jumpscare.


Said jumpscare. Yes, I'm too lazy to make another picture.

However, Chicken got his contact lenses from Temu, so they start cracking and imploding faster than the Titan DoomCan itself, despite the fact Booger and his killer bird boy are only in like 12 feet of water tops. So it is that Founding Feather has to fly away, but not before giving Blubber a bit of a cheeky smack.

With a slightly smaller explosion of bubbles, Boogie dies. Fr fr ong

He awakes in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ office painted in Xbox 360 beige, sitting at a bottle-strewn desk. Turns out, everything I just told you was actually a dream and didn't happen. Booger immediately attempts to drink from the nearest bottle, which is obviously already empty. Before he can do so much as swear, there comes a knock at the door, and a suspiciously distorted voice yelling, "Give us the girl and wipe away the debt! Mist-er Dim-witt! Open this door! Mister Dimwitt!" Stuff like that. More knocking ensues. "What the hell," the dimwit in question mumbles. He might actually ask the door person who they are and or what they want, I can't really remember. But he does for sure waddle over to the door. A door containing a glass pane printed with the words "Booker Dewitt, Private Investigations/Private Eye/Detective/whatever" Before we can figure out who exactly this Booker guy is, our intrepid illiterate opens the door. Rather than a hallway, a blinding flash of light flares in his vision. I know what you're thinking, and no, he didn't get swatted.

Booger awakes again, this time on a beach kind of area. I guess the door resurrected him? It's also possible that whole office scene was a hallucination and or dream and or flashback, but as you'll soon see the resurrection hypothesis is pretty much confirmed. How and why the astral office resurrects Booger is just one of the many mysteries present in this epic narrative, which will surely receive a satisfying explanation in due course. In any case, turns out that thing I just told you about how everything I just told you wasn't true wasn't true, and that stuff did actually happen. Probably. Elizabreath is there too, on the beach area, and she's like, "Wow Mister Dimwitt, check this place out! Wow, Mister Dimwitt, is that music? That's music! Can I go wander off please?" And Booger, whose resurrection tolerance is apparently much lower than his Quirky™ companion, is like, "Fine, whatever." Then he blacks out again. I guess even his brick of a head can't just shake off a kilometer-long drop into water, which of course is pretty much equivalent to a kilometer-long drop into cement. Of course, this isn't quite regular water, as aforementioned, so maybe it was somewhere in between. A 500-meter-long drop into gelatin?

When he awakes (for the third time this section, for those of you counting along at home), the sun is lower and stuff. Pretty atmospheric. He has a "stove moment" when he realizes that maybe letting the single most wanted person in Columbia just kind of wander off unattended is probably a bad idea. Therefore, he rushes through the carefully crafted environment, completely disregarding the diegetic exposition, carefully couched worldbuilding, scripted animations, and general aesthetic of the level around him. He doesn't even stop to pick up the voxophone hidden on the far left side of the stretch, opposite the beach, behind one of the cart-stand things dotting that area. Probably, this is for the best, seeing as the entire area is riddled with Amish Impostors: I Can't Believe We're Not Amish! Now With 42.0% More Racism!

Turns out Extrabismuth is still just dancing, presumably in the same exact spot as the previous however-many-hours-Bootleg's-brain-was-fried-for. Volkswagen belligerates his way through the crowd and says something like, "Eli!" Eliza is like, "I'm still dancing!" And then he's like, "ELI!" And she's like, "Oh wow, Mister Ducktwit! You should totally dance with me!" "No..." Confused by his lack of enthusiasm, Lizardbooth is like, "But this is totally amazing! There's like, fresh air and stuff, and music, and people are here too." "People are here," Boomer agrees, trigger finger twitching ominously. "But what about if we go to Ratatouille Land and see that Ewok movie?" He thusly stumbles onto the correct incentive--and thanks to a stroke of interpretive genius on Eleigh's part, she understands what he meant. "Paris?! But, like, how, would we, like, do that?" Suddenly, a plot blimp passes by in the sky behind her. Bookbinding points his thick, stubby finger toward the new shiny thing. "What 'bout blimp?" "Like, Blimp is, like, totally cool." So they leave the beach area, which it turns out is fake, with the water being pumped through pipes.

Beyond it is a building area, where there is a shop and stuff. After an awkward but missable moment involving segregation and the bathroom (this has been your Hourly Racism Reminder), our favorite Gruff Protector/Innocent McGuffin duo make their way through to the ticket desk, or maybe it's more like a security booth kind of thing, or something. There's some redhead chick who bumps into Ellie and says, "Oh wow, Jeff! Crazy meeting you here!" And Ellie's like, "I'm like, not like named Jeff, though. I'm actually Elizabeth McGuffin." Then the redhead is like, "I see. Interesting... HMMM..." And moves on. Joel, evidently still feeling the effects of his TGI**, notices nothing unusual about this interaction.

In the ticket/security/checkpoint area itself, Billy goes up and asks for two tickets, please. But the ticket guy's on the old-timey telephone, saying stuff like, "Yeah, they're here." "Hurry it up pal," Booger says. Then he finally notices how all of their fellow occupants are suspiciously waiting around doing nothing. With another grinding noise, he puts two and two together.

"Five!"

They all whip out guns and attack.

*Magnetotism: Like magnetism, but more comic-booky.
**Traumautic Golfclub Injury

fun for the whole family

And when I say they all attack, what I mean to say is that Blooger commits another mass massacre. Unleashing his pent-up bloodlust, our hero ruthlessly slaughters all of the people present. Of course, most of those people were actually undercover cops, so maybe it's morally OK.

Horrified by the violence, Jenny runs away, fleeing in abject terror from the murderous man in the rumpled vest. Blaggert pursues her, blasting more meat on the way. Eventually, he corners her in a gondola thing and pushes the metal stick to get it going, something Nettlehead was evidently unable to accomplish. Stress makes you dumb I guess.

In the slow-moving, script-driven gondola, there is exactly the right amount of time for a nice, character-building conversation. It goes something like this:

"Y-you killed all those people! You're a monster!" "Duh."

Then Bluebell bandages Gockspittle's hand, depending on whether he shot first or second.* Now is a good time to mention that she wears this silver thimble thingy over her missing pinky finger, which she twists as a nervous tic.** The gondola clunks home and unleashes Blog Enthusiast onto a fresh killing ground. This one happens to be some sort of theme park area, which--as Mary explains--is indeed a theme park, though one with the express intention of brainwashing young children. Just imagine if real theme parks exploited the naivete of children for the sake of unscrupulous shareholder interests! We're lucky corporations like Disney are such family-friendly, conscientious companies completely free from the taint of greed. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah.

Presently we pass a clump of the little brainwashed blighters lollygagging around a stage, upon which dance two caricatured characters: an Aryian poster-boy-type thing, and some stupid bumbling baffoon. "Oh, look! I always heard about these growing up, even though supposedly I never left my tower." Booger delivers a blank look; Salamaider, an incredulous one. "You're telling me you've never heard of Duke and Dimwit?" Arduous cogitation ensues. "No, don't think so. Must be a Columbia thing," Booger grumbles. A pause. "What'd you call the dumb-looking one again?" "Dimwit. Oh..." Booger scowls and pushes through the gaggle of young children irritably.

Actually, I don't remember if Merriam explains the point of the place or if we just kind of figure that out. In either case, our duo needs to reach the plot blimp they saw earlier. Otherwise, how is Bigger supposed to kidnap his new friend? And in order to reach the plot blimp, they need to get through the theme park.

So it is that, an astoundingly short time after their arrival, Bincome Tax enters a shootout in the busy area, kids and their fragile bodies be damned.

"Those little ♥♥♥♥♥ can catch these rounds" ~Booger Ditwit

Booger, feeling invigorated after a nice stretch of murder and looting (both bodies and bystanding storefronts, if you were wondering), eagerly presses onward toward Plotblimp Island. It floats somes ways aways, nears the neighborings cumulus. Luckily, another gondola awaits, conveniently-placed, to ferry them there. However, they then encounter what is known as an issue. This particular gondola is depowered, and requires a battery. Furthermore, the particular battery so required is in fact not a battery at all, but Coldsock's own proprietary brand of battery: Sock Jockey. I mean, Shock Lockey. Glock Hockey. Shack hackey. Flakk Krakey.

It's like shock juice.

*Hean shot first.
**File this away in the back of your brain-meat.

Shock Juice, as it turns out, is pretty rare, having only been introduced very recently, at the fair I mentioned earlier.* That tells us two things: It doesn't make any sense for such a recent invention to already be integrated into Columbia's infrastructure, and our heroes need to get some of it ASAPY (as soon as possible yesterday. You're welcome).


Shocking.

Handily, this very island (are they islands? They are, right?) features an attraction advertised to advertise shockstrap. Our coprotagi therefore enter this attraction--the Hall of Heroes, an exhibit dedicated to showing how cool Cloddock is, and also how Native Americans and Asian people are dumb and bad. No joke, there's actually an Asian person jumpscare, which really kicks the stuffing out of Tower Lady. Maybe they do deserve each other after all.**

Also, Wendy opens another portal in the elevator (was it this elevator? I think so) and almost gets them killed by Max Wingspan again. Just to remind you that, yeah, she can do that. Not sure why she doesn't just open up that Paris portal again and skip all this "gameplay" stuff, but there you go.

Inside the Hall, there is a spotlight that tracks you while a voice taunts you as you navigate the theatrical environments. Then a bunch of spider splicers crawl along the ceiling! Just kidding. It's only more racist militia men, which Booger shoots handily, and the voice in this case is that of some dude named... uh... Steve? Captain? Flint? I'll remember eventually, just bear with me. Anyway, this Flintlock guy says he used to know Booger, that they fought together. He's rebelling against Telecomm, since the sacrifices he and his men made fighting for Columbia/USA are being glossed over and forgotten in favor of additional Grandpropoganda. Silver wants to go out the warrior's way, so he's throwing his men at Bowler, knowing he's sending them to fight a plot-armored, arsenal-toting, superpowered psychopath who will simply respawn when killed. Pretty smart guy, that fishsticks. OK, I wasn't trying there. Colonel?

The duo wind their way through the two main exhibits, each depicting a different racism incident and how cool Big Grandpa is. After slaughtering dozens and dozens of the suicidal soldiers, Voom-Voom presses on to the final exhibit, which instead details how Mother Mary Lady Comstock was murdered by her garrote-slinging slave, Daisy Fitzroy, and how Daisy subsequently escaped and formed a militia called the Vox Populi ("Voice of the People", and that's about the only time those 2 years of Latin I took have come in handy). The room's recorded announcements proclaim that Joseph Smith Sr. then hid away his child ("The Seed of the Prophet", and yes, you may make the yucky face) in the angel-statue tower. This, of course, must mean that Exlax is actually Comstock's daughter. She is, understandably, shook. But they must continue onward, and there's not much Butcher can offer here anyway. He's not exactly an emotional support animal. Or any type of emotional support, really. Though he is definitely an animal.

Beyond the exhibit is another gift shop, filled with Motorized Patriots (read: gun robots). Most are, most luckiestly, nonfunctional. Except for one.


Make Automatons Great Again!

After alternating between attacking and desperately scurrying away for a few minutes, Booger fires the last shot and the Donald finally falls. All those cheeseburgers finally caught up with him I guess. Beyond the gift shop a courtyard waits, filled with the last of Kentucky Fried Colonel's men. Julie summons in some turrets and ♥♥♥♥, while Booler "does his thing." Although dangerous before, Spooler has truly ascended to warcrimehood with the addition of Jessie's Spacetime Spite.

Beyond the area beyond the shop beyond the exhibit beyond the other exhibits beyond the elevator beyond the theme park, Captain sits sulking. Either he has a booboo, or he's weal tired. Silverhand is like, "Just kill me bro, my mom says I gotta get off anyway." Here, as at a precious few points in the game, our hero has a choice. Does he do as the man asks and put him out of his misery, or does he leave him alive, refraining from killing? (This is where you laugh). Truly there's only one answer our hero understands, and it comes jacketed in a copper cartridge.

After blasting his former friend's brains out, and at long last, Boober obtains (and immediately imbibes) the Juice.

Pictured: Said juice

After he's done convulsing, screaming, and generally tripping balls, our shoe-squelching hero realizes something important: There's actually an "h" in Sock Juice, and no, it doesn't dry (nor even knock) your socks off. Ever-soggy socks aside, Booger and Co(mstock Jr.) head back to the battery thing and zap it with juice. The gondola starts its scripted sequence, slowly sliding down the cables toward them--along with a veritable army of baddies. No, not like that.

Luckily, there are a whole lot of conveniently placed rail thingies around, so Bigot makes short care of the work problem. But, despite looting everything he has hitherto come across--and snatching everything Sally has so far thrown his way--Bugboy could still hardly afford upgrades or ammo, despite the many waves of ammo-having policemen*** already looted by our favorite cartridge goblin. His favorite weapon's ammo was running low. The artificial sense of urgency was ramping up, and their enemies were spawning closing in. One thing was clear: they needed an airship. ASAPY.

*Strange how, if he had just arrived prior to the expo, Columbia would be a hell of a lot less unusual.
**Appreciate/wince at this joke while you can, cause it's going to age more gracelessly than Simon Cowell by way of Empire Strikes Back.
***I say policemen, but Columbia's forces are actually gender-inclusive. Kind of strange for such an uber-conservative state, if you think about it.

brain trauma

I mean, it is, if you think about it. An entire flying city and they pick perhaps the one blimp guaranteed to be well-guarded. Now, it is true that you don't see many other blimps flying around, but you do see a whole lot of small flying jet-skiff things, so I don't see why they couldn't take one of those. But, uh, obviously there is a reason, which I shall shortly provide: lorem ipsum lorem et ius ipsum

But anyway, they fight through all the bad guys and board the rtardis. That takes them up to the plot blimp area I think, and from there they probably do some shooting and looting and stuff. You know how it is. And there are problems--issues, even--which are resolved with solutions (bullets, mainly) in due course. And there is other stuff, too, which I am omitting due to artistic consideration. Definitely not cognitive shortcomings.

{Look, I'll be honest. I really don't remember this part all that well. Now, I know that might make you question my abilities as a storyteller, and by extension the veracity of this account, but let me just put it like this: If I forgot it, it probably wasn't important. So let's just say, you and I, that I didn't forget that stuff, and was instead a most excellent stuffer. Sound good? Here we go}

...and then they board the blimp! Excitement! Alright, alright, settle down. I know that last part was really something, but this next one is important. Refusing to lose his focus, Booger makes like a middle-aged female celebrity and keeps his nose to the grindstone.* He sets to work piloting the plimp, playing whack-a-mole with the various levers and delicate controls. The ship tilts slightly, causing an oddly ominous wrench** to slide across the dashboard-thing, toward Barbie: Prisonbreak edition. Meanwhile, Miss McGuffin is exuberating: "Oh wow Mister Dwitt, Paris will be so amazing and pretty and just like from Ratatioille!"

Booger bumps another lever, finishing the carefully-memorized sequence of coordinates. Just kidding, he used another cheet sheat. That lights Mary Jane way the ♥♥♥♥ up, and the resultant atmosphere is anything but relaxing. She's all like, "Now hold on. That ♥♥♥♥ is not the coordinates for Paris. That's New York!" And Booger is like, "Well, yeah. I'm bringing you to Yew Nork to sell you off and pay my gambling or drinking debts or something."

It is at this moment that Molly realizes exactly what kind of creature she is currently traveling with. She immediately breaks down into tears, perhaps remembering the various war crimes she has recently enabled for his sake. Booger feels a very slight, very subtle twinge of sympathy, and awkwardly reaches out. Actually, maybe he just found the noise irritating. We don't really know for sure, because it is at this moment (this one, not the other one) that Mollywhopper swings Chekov's Wrench into the Blather's weakened temple. With a burst of pain and a neat visual effect, Flatter is swallowed by unconsciousness.

Conveniently-timed flashes of awareness reveal the events thereafter in confused, filter-laden bursts. Blue lady trying to steer the ship. A second, and possibly a third or really even a fourth and fifth ship, swooping in for the attack (look, it's hard to count airships by sound alone). Extragizzard running away, or something. A bunch of new people, ethnically diverse but united by the color red.

Eventually the game director gets tired of the slideshow gag and lets a proper cutscene through. This one features a groaning, bound-up Booger and a certain Daisy Fitsy. Keen readers may remember her as the Virgin Mary Murderer.


This gal

"Gimme guns and stuff and I'll give the blimp back," said gal says, surrounded by soldiers in big puffy armor and glowing red eyes. Really they look like LED pumpkins, which would make her some sort of All-Organic Garrote. But she's still intimidating and stuff, so maybe just toss that comparison out with the rest of the garbage. They're scary, I mean it! Booger sure knows it--I'm pretty sure he ♥♥♥♥♥ his pants before Dialtime tosses him overboard, at which point he falls some 35+ feet*** onto his back.


POV: You have just suffered a concussion

Around our fallen hero spreads sprawling scenery of impressive scale, and also some playable space, too. Docks and their accompanying airships (unattended and available for stealing, just to reiterate) jut out from a massive, whimsical factory-type thing straight outta Charlie, though I doubt any Chocolate is made in this Factory, and if it is, it's probably unsweetened with peanuts in it. Booger wrenches his skull out of its latest crater and staggers ungainfully to his still-somehow-soggy quadruple-stink feet. Ahead, a head is blaring out its babble to the general area. A head displayed on a large, retropunk television display. A head with a very distinctive, very much canon and definitely not completely fabricated appearance. Should he wish to rekidnap his exkidnappee, it seems as though our very own stalwart concussee must face his greatest foe yet.

Peanut allergies!

*Cartilage is for betas anyway.
**If I had a nickel for every time this game did the ImSim Thing while simultaneously doing the exact opposite of the imsim thing, I'd have two or three nickels. Not a lot, but it's depressing that it happened twice, right?
***~9 meters, for you filthy Comstack-hating Europeans.

Welcome to Funkytown

Our hero stands before the sprawling factories, soon approaching the aforementioned automated announcement-thing. Said thing provides some helpful information, which I shall pass in a paragraph or so. Beyond it lies the Gigafactory itself. Wreathed in steam and yet not very punk, the stricture is a Kafkasqian labyrinth of brass and propaganda, exuding an atmosphere of committee-approved quirk. From its soot-stained nethermost reaches to its executive casinos of minimum wager, the place is a corporate capstone sure to make even Jex Bezor blush--no kryptonite needed!

The see-ee-oh in this case is Mr. Peanut himself, the Wolly Winka of crime. I mean, big business. Gaze upon his glory!


Pictured: Jeremy Fink, participating in one of his many advertisements

But I'm getting a head from myself. First, there is a chase--one at roughly the pace of that one scene from Obi-Wan Kenobi. OK, that was a little harsh. But basically, Blackguard chases Sissiphone--shooting through some people that happened to be in the way on the way, by the way. They pass another rocket skiff, which Tinkerbell fails to commandeer because it is crammed with big mean men. Too bad she doesn't know anyone capable of shooting a couple of people! Pressing on/away from her pursuer once more, Inkblot tries opening some space-holes to stall Soldierboy, which works, and to stop him from catching up to her, which doesn't work. Ah lass, alas! If only she had listened to Fink Industries' new Work Ethic Lectures, now available at 5% off for a limited time only! Hamstrung by lazy plans and slothful solutions? Sink with Fink--into Excessive Investment! New Fink Industries Work Ethic Lectures: We'll Put the "W" in Work! Available wherever horribly overpriced upgrades are sold.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Space holes. Said holes include lots of fun little scenes, such as a marching band... a bunch of balloons, I think, and a train maybe, and something else probably. They also seem to have some strange speed-sapping aura, which just so happens to prevent Blemish from sprinting ahead of through or past them. Either that, or they're invisible walls. I mean, a bunch of balloons aren't that heavy, right?

Eventually, said blemish encounters a collection of his least favorite substance: Unleaded Peepo...line. Like a true patriot, Blam-Blam quickly enleadens the poor and leady, rescuing Mary Hoppins from her erstwhile kidnappers. Good riddance, right?

Reunited with his kidnap victim, Nanner explains the situation to a reluctantly cooperating Cinch, and the two delve deeper into the festering bowels of Finkdom, determined to procure additional armament and pay off their latest crippling debt. Now we get to the part where they enter the big factory area--most of which is actually traversed via elevator, in order to facilitate another character conversation.

Exiting Elevator the Umpteenth, our plotinauts encounter a greasy redhead who looks like the love child of Percy Weasely and General Hux. Greaseball proceeds to proffer said naughts a nice case of gunnery. Evidently, Pux's boss is Funkypants himself, who is, apparently, expecting Biggest Dumbwit, or something. Doesn't really make much sense for him to give said Dumbitt a gun, but what do I know about business?

Outfitted with shiny new Gear™ and sweet new deathment, Vsauce leads the way through the gates and into Finktown--the expansive yet easily traversed company housing district maintained by Walt Disney and his company. I guess after the last few fumbles they just gave up on entertainment and solidified their sweat shop department.

At first, loot flows freely, and all is well. Then, not half a block downstream, they meet a Handyman. Which I may or may not have forgotten to introduce during the fair section earlier. But a picture's worth a thousand words, am I right? Without further ado, the most accurate and detailed depiction of the Finky Handyman to date:


The mighty Auto Joe. Once stricken with debilitating brain degeneration, he walks again as a true patriot of Columbia

Boggart gets his sweaty ass handed to him, and in case you haven't noticed Handymen have really, really big hands. Luckily, Lizzy Stride has a clutch shot of crack to shoot into Bollard's strangely large forearm. As we all know only too well, crack is indeed sufficient to dissolve the bands of death, so not only do all these people talking about Jesus don't know what the hell they're talking about, but Bollard Ball is alive and well once more (they proceed to pull this little trick just about every time Vlogger dies, by the way. I can only assume Sally once hailed from a different kind of Columbia). The only downside to this particular maneuver is that some of Bogbrain's money falls out his ass and into the ether every time it's performed.* No trace, nothing. It just disappears! Maybe it's going through another space-hole.

At any rate, and suitably irate from both the dying and the crack, Blastcap pops a cap in Handy's metal ass. Or rather, he pops several dozen in his extremely vulnerable glass-fronted heart (?) chamber (not like a real heart chamber, but a heart-chamber. You know?) And don't ask why it's there, because I don't know. Once past the Mannyhand (and after carefully collecting his Gear™), Bob the Builder and Wreck It Riley finally reach their objective, where additional plot twists lie in wait, just wait-ing to spring upon the unwary player reader.

Cliffhanger! Yeah, we're still floating in the sky. Easy to forget that sometimes.

*Same thing happens after the door thing, too. I think the only difference is that the door thing happens when Bizzy isn't with you? Is it a hallucination, produced by whatever cocktail of drugs is rebooting Bugger's fried brain? Genuinely confused here.

Uh, or rather I would be, if it weren't for the satisfying and distinctly definitive explanations provided to me by the game, which I shall soon relay to you, faithful reader!

Question of the Day (Don't Ignore This Please, Unless You're a Cop, in Which Case Thank You for Your Service and Have a Good Day, No Need to Continue Reading): If I, hypothetically, owed a lot of money to some very dangerous people--say, due to a crippling gambling addiction--and were, additionally, financially insolvent following a particularly bad divorce (just for a random example) and I, hypothetically--again I say hypothetically--were looking for a particularly efficient agent-for-hire, would perhaps the wise and well-connected readers of this humble guide be inclined to provide pertinent contact details of such a person? If the answer to said query is yes, drop 'em in the comments ASAPY.

Just like Easter, but more American

After manhandling the handyman, our dynamic duo finally enter Gunbo's shop, which is the place where Gunbo makes his guns. Actually, he's called Lin.*


This guy

Actually, said Lin is nowhere to be found. So, ignoring its oddly shoehorned and overly foreshadowing name, Bummonk and Gumdrop leave Guns 'R Us: RIP, and fight their way to--then through--this theater-type thing, where Peanut was wanting to test Boomie, or something. IIRCAIBID**, this was because he had an opening for his security officer and noticed how Bowelblock was pretty good at killing people. Apparently he didn't additionally notice which people Buffer had been killing.

But basically there's just a couple waves of enemies and a few miniboss-like encounters Peemutt tosses at us, none of which pose any lasting threat to our favorite vest-wearing MAD-man. At that point Peeper is like, "Wow fella, you sure are good at killing folks! What about that job offer, eh?" To which Beeper responds, "Nah. Can I kill you now?", and Leeper's like, "OK, come on!" So then they do, and head ahead downstairs.

Downstairs, and also unfortunately, Chin is dead. "♥♥♥♥," Boogle comments, insightfully. "Right? This is so terrible," Juno agrees. "Poor Limb! Plus, how are we gonna get our guns so we can trade for that one specific blimp we positively absolutely have to have?" Moobmaxxer nods stupidly, producing an inarticulate noise of assent. Actually, he was probably just irritated he didn't get to kill someone himself this time. Our heroes have at last lost, and it appears the Plot is at an end.

But is it? Might the W yet remain within reach? Take the "L" out of Plot, and what do you get? Well, the writer quickly smokes that down, and soon enough the solution becomes clear. "Booger..." "Huh?" "There's a tear here!" "Yeah, I know. It's flashing and stuff on my screen." Indeed it is. But this space hole is special. Looking through its crack, Loosie notices that Chimp is gone--whereas in the current world he is still sitting on his torture-chair, definitely dead. "We can go through it," Leinstein reveals. "How come?" "Because if Chin-Chin isn't on his chair, that must mean..." "That he's alive!" The two thusly congratulate each other on this completely unfounded assumption, displaying a shocking disrespect for the scientific method verging on a distinct enthusiasm for the pseudoscientific methhead. I'm also pretty sure the Wonder Twins apparate in out of nowhere and help that realization along, but I'm not sure sure, just regular sure. Sure. Sure, sure, sure. Sure. Doesn't really sound like a real word anymore, huh? I've always wondered why that happens.

Anywho, the two amateur astrologers leap their way through logic and the space hole with equal ease, spreading the latter open wider and wider until it swallows the entire world. Or something. Although the vast majority of everything looks exactly the same, the former Flimp corpse is now fanished, fust fas Fizzy's feory fuggested. They quickly backtrack through the level, passing a few strange flickery feeple who seem to be having a nosebleed and just generally tripping balls. In another stroke of unfounded insight, Fizzlesticks figures out how said feeple were actually the feeple Fooker killed on the way down to Dim, and surmises that, seeing as they are now not quite as dead, must be suffering some kind of inter-dimensional jet lag--let's call it Shrodingeritis. They don't seem to be able to be shot, though, so Bicker moves on without much comment.

Reeentering the theater area, Bloodhound's bloodlust is finally sated (temporarily) as he unleashes his raw piece-slinging psychopathy upon an additional developer's dozen of hapless--though surprisingly spongy--enemies, who it seems have never fought Booger in their timeline. Poor, innocent children. They never stood a chance--particularly if Blaggert is playing on a lower difficulty level. From there, the theater-thing is exited, and the soldiers outside, eliminated, and the murderous monkey man, excited, and the street to Chumbucket's, evacuated, and the loot strewn there, emancipated, and yours truly, newly indicted.***

At last, they return to the shop. At last, they re-locate Whim. Actually, he's still called Lin. But like, the other Lin.


This guy

Apparently, that little space-stretching maneuver cost Columbia a little more than fifty-one years, because now Limey's wifey worships Grandpa instead of Buddha. And also apparently Gin's tools were confiscated by Colonsock's cops, so he can't really make any guns. And also Grin has a severe case of Schrodingeritis and probably couldn't make so much as a chamber pot. So it is that our intrepid ingrates leave Guns 'R Us: Wait, We're Not Dead? and instead head on ahead down to Slummy Town, which is apparently where the police station is, or something. Not the most intuitive place for a police station, but even Columbia has to break with historical racism now and again, I suppose.

*Just goes to show how inclusive and progressive Peanut really is, if you think about it. It might be a sweatshop labor town, but it's an equal opportunity sweatshop labor town, dammit.
**If I Remember Correctly, And I Believe I Do. You're welcome.
***Word to the wise: Never hire a Chinese hitman. And if you do, never hire said Chinese hitman via Craigslist. Just an unrelated piece of advice.

Corporatism is Fair and Balanced

The long elevator grinds ever downward, descending through another carefully-constructed setpiece. After another characterization conversation I can't be assed to remember, the doors ding open and our two hero-type characters are disgorged into the smoky, soot-stained warren of the Slum Area. We pass a lot of starving and/or depressed people, subtly showing how Peanut and Grandpa are dumb and bad. A makeshift podium (i.e. a soapbox, and perhaps more literally than you might think considering the ramshackle nature of the environment), occupied by some sort of street preacher extolling those very sentiments--and also how Daizy Fiddly is smart and cool--is passed as well.

Ahead, a clump of rabid bums accosting an innocent vending machine presents an impassable obstacle--until Lucy points out the convenient space hole nearby. Pulling that one open dumps a fat load of food into this dimension, and the rabid bums immediately lunge upon it, intent presumably on eating as much as they can before additional bums arrive. Toward the left there's an Infusion, but this one is guarded by a couple guys who don't want Booger getting his fix.* I'll just let you imagine how that probably goes.

Down the other street, Ebooger and Belizabeth get jumped by a couple of unfortunate souls. Poorly armed and comprehensively unarmored, the men are quickly consigned to the space-food's fate. The first part of it I mean--being dumped on the street and all. Booger doesn't eat them or anything. Probably.

A ♥♥♥♥♥♥ little bar and or tavern thing awaits, and inside there is a basement. Inside the basement there is some loot and also an optional little scene where Ellie sings Take On Me with Booger on guitar, luring an urchin out of the woodwork so Ellie can hand him an apple. Truly, we have now solved child hunger.**

And, um, there was probably a point to going there, too. Maybe they got a key from it? Or directions? At any rate, at some point we enter and fight through the police station, demotorizing a Motorized Patriot and knocking back a couple more Infusions. B&E's intrusion reaches its zenith, or rather its nadir, in yet another basement-type-area, this time deep within the police station. There they find a gargantuan pile of crates and the assorted weaponry they contain, all chained together with large iron padlocks. No, that's not a joke. "It's way too heavy to move," Booger observes, insightfully. Indeed, it is. One wonders, in fact, how they got this far along in the process without realizing that a grand total of exactly two people are perhaps not quite enough to move several tonnes of weaponry.

But, before the giant death-pile, there lies another space-hole. Really the unsung heroes of the plot, those holes. This one in particular precipitates a bit more uncertainty from our spacetime-swirling protagonists. "Should I, like, open it?" Excess continues, rather nervously. "I mean, what if there's more of those, like, people we saw before? They were, like, totally creepy. Half-dead and half alive! What if there are unforeseen consequences?" At which point Booger finally notices the tear. "Do it," he orders, probably having blanked out each and every word of caution. At which point Elordan Freeman obliges, opening the second or possibly third mega-hole, still not deigning to explain why these ones seem to meld entire timelines rather than summon a dinky little gun crate or something like that.

On the other side, everything is pretty much exactly the same, except that the enormous pile of cartoon confiscation is missing. "Look!" Miss Wormhole says. "The guns are all gone! That must mean that..." "Daisy's people have them!" Embracing this latest and most egregious leap in logic, the Time Lord wannabes scramble back to backtracking through the back areas of the station, soon arriving amid fierce fighting, or possibly just the remnants of it. Outside, though, there is most definitely fighting, and boy is it fierce. The CPD and or Columbian Army lies spread out, embroiled in dire conflict with hordes of red-themed rebel-type NPCs. Somehow, someway, Bawking and Leinstein were right.

Organic Garrote and her Veg Populi have at last their fabled Chinese firearms, and have taken them on the offensive. Their rhetoric, having long since taken root, has at last borne fruit. The revolution has begun!

And wow does it involve a lot of red, pumpkinesque uniforms, duct-taped weaponry, and tastefully-placed particle emitters.

*I may have omitted Booger's crippling addiction to these Infusions, which enable said Boogey to augment his energy shield, the density of his body-meat, and his tolerance for Salts. They're basically just Plot Juice.
**Actually this scene is pretty neat.

Just like France, only less baggueaute

Outside the station, the redoats have driven out the blueberries--a group of the latter are lined up before our very eyes and shot. Our pearl-less pansy nonetheless clutches at her chest in horror; our gormless Bancy nonetheless loots through their corpses for root. Picture more scenes of that nature, more or less, along with a lot of distant explosions and smoke, and you've got the picture.

We pass posters, and people singing songs of revolution and or soul-type vibe, probably due to the whole slavery thing. Tattered red banners flap and roll majestically in the acrid wind, distant gunfights softened in the clouded sky to crackling pops of jubilant light not unlike fireworks. "It's just like Les Miserables!" Lizzibette says breathlessly. "I guess. There're far fewer side tangents about sewers and nuns," Booger replies, momentarily breaking character to facilitate an overly niche and overall lackluster joke. A particularly large poster comes into view, depicting none other than our very own Booger. Booger Dimwitt, the inscription reads. Hero of the Revolution! "What the...?" Booger quips cleverly, confused. After all, Bollock himself is neither heroic nor revolutionary, yet there the poster hangs. And it can't have been put up by Booger, seeing as he can't write. Suddenly Booger's nose begins to bleed and his vision goes all fuzzy wuzzy, his many addictions seeming to momentarily catch up with him. Lady Bird talks him through it, smacking him a few times to help disperse this most recent front of Booger-brand brain-fog. "Focus! We're like, real close now!" And so he does, and indeed they are.

After fighting/stumbling/wandering their way through the fires of revolution and all its many animations and scripted scenes, POV and Co. ascend from the chaos of Unslum and arrive at a certain place.


Said place. Just pretend this is from the base game and not the DLC. I mean it's almost identical, so who even cares. Look, I just happened to have a good screenshot of this area from the DLC, OK?

Behind that glass wall/window thing, what do you know, there cowers Mister Peanut himself. Suddenly Peanut is slain in brutal fashion by none other than Daisy Lady herself! Booger nods in appreciation and steps up to the glass, yelling stupidly. "Hey! Daisy! You've got your guns now, so give us the plot blimp back!" But Flowey is having none of it. "My Booger Dimwitt was a real hero--and I saw him die for the revolution! So who the ♥♥♥♥ are you two?" Booger drools absently, perhaps realizing that it doesn't make any sense to make a deal with someone from one dimension/timeline/thing, then hop into a different D/T/T where they already have what they wanted out of the deal, and still expect said person (or, really, another person) to honor the deal they possibly never made in the first place. Yeah.

Suddenly there are soldiers in the place! "Get 'em, boys!" Dozer Fiddle taunts, safe behind what must be the same impenetrable glass that Clodstock used in his blimp. At first, Bookbinding handles the soldiers handily--but suddenly a Smashing announcement blares out from behind the fourth wall.



The battle is fierce, replete with rockets and desperate dodges. Magazine after magazine runs dry and is hurriedly discarded, their contents proving terribly ineffective when haphazardly fired at the leaping, roaring, oddly toddler-like Handyman. Boojie tries to escape via floating rail-thingy, but even this has been accounted for, as the Jaundiceband leaps into the air and wraps his cartoonishly large fingers around said rail-thingy, electrocuting the metal structure with the tesla coil hidden up his metal ass. Booger falls with a thump to the planks below, meaty body sizzling. A desperate lunge toward a nearby Health Bag™ repairs his punctured organs enough to enable a final offensive of blazing lightning, flickering fireballs, and actually mainly just a bunch of crows, since those are far more effective at stalling Handmasters.*

After Handyman and Smallerman are finished throwing hands, a triumphant but battered Buddwiser meets back up with Larry at the weird clock-tower/dock-type building, pictured above. At that precise moment (or maybe at a different one. It all gets mixed up, you know?) Daisy Lady is about to kill a child, because angry. "What? Why?" exclaims Emigrationpolicy, horrified. "'Cause you gotta pull 'em all up by the roots," Daisy Flower says, without even a hint of guilt for either the pun or the whole child-killing thing. "Quick! Distract her," Esmuth whispers, clambering through the convenience-vent on the nearby wall.** "'Kay," Booger mumbles, and does as proscribed, distracting Dishsticks by thumping stupidly on the glass and bumbling through a sorry excuse for a gymnastics routine. Daisy pauses momentarily, stupefied, before shaking herself free of Booger's brain-sapping aura. She raises her knife gun, mere moments from killing Peanut Junior, when a pair of shears plunges through her neck. Blood sprays everywhere, flowergirl falls dead, and Peanut Kid runs away, toward the area where Daisy's rebels are currently looting and shooting around. He's probably fine.

Unlike his savior, who has one of those "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ I just killed someone" moments. Relatable, right? Right? Heh. Uh, anyway. In a brief moment of clarity, our dazed heroin heroine lifts the shears as Booger approaches, as if to possibly strike him down as well. Unfortunately, she seems to abandon that idea, half-listening as Bumble offers his equivalent of comforting words. Not a half-dozen of those words are spoken before she turns and (perhaps having gained enough lucidity to accurately assess their quality) jogs away through the tower/dock building toward the plot blimp. Booger, suddenly afraid he'll be ditched like the sack of ♥♥♥♥ he is, hurries after her. Inside, our distressed dress enthusiast is nowhere to be seen, but Boober decides to pilot the plot blimp away anyway, apparently assuming she went off into another blimp room rather than any other type of room.

After a time--one-half of a cutscene, actually--Emdeeihmay emerges, confirming for the frustreenth time a completely unfounded protagonal theory. Apparently, she's better now, but more serious and edgy, and with the outfit from all the promotional material, more-or-less. Maybe she's more serious because of the new dress? I mean, Booger's Gear™ can do some pretty wild things, so perhaps this is just how Columbian clothing works. If her dress does have a buff, we can infer it may relate to IQ and or initiative, for at last she addresses the elephant hitherto following them around Funktowne. "Well, Mister Dimwitt, I'm tired of this ♥♥♥♥. Just tell me already--New York or Ewok Land?"*** Bolddigger says something intelligent like, "Uhhh..." and momentarily threatens to experience character growth.

Conveniently, an ambush Bord swoops out of the literal and figurative blue at that exact moment.


*I may have neglected to mention that Barry got said crows by drinking the Krowmaster's bird juice, back in section five.
**Figures the plot-vent would be near the plot-blimp.
***A nice euphemism for, "Are you gonna be a good person, or keep kidnapping me?"
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Got 'em.

Whoops, I meant Emporia

Bordie makes short work of Plot Blimp, needless to say, and our forgetful pair are once again in the midst of what is known in the biz as a hard landing. A roar of ripping metal and snapping wood accompanies the briefest of loading-screen blackouts. Somehow, they both survive without apparent injury, though the blimp's single door was wedged shut in the fall. Barbie yoinks fruitlessly on the indomitably stubborn portal until--finally roused from his latest concussion-induced catnap--Buttleather applies his own dense mass to the issue, easily breaking it open. Maybe. Or maybe she actually got it open and went out ahead of Grogger. Not really sure.

In any case, they both rush headlong into a meeting with the Ginger Twins, who are playing the piano amid the rubble and general missile en scene. So quirky! They're playing some sort of song, which they hint has something to do with Turkeybird. Lilo freaks and makes them stop--apparently said song summons said Burkeyturd, or something. Then the Pepperheads teleport away without a trace--not even so much as a bottle of Salt. Except for the piano. Pretty sure they leave that behind. Eh, I tried.

Having dealt with the piano-fiasco, Boneheads #1 and #2 proceed out of the former building-turned-impromptu-crash-pad, entering a sort of park-like area filled with evacuees being evacuated, ostensibly due to the recent resurgence of people. You know--those people, with all those scary colors. By which I mean red. Red as in the rebels.

And also black and brown, because racism. We pass some overflowing, evacuation-enabling rocket-skiff things, which are--once more--just sitting there, practically begging to be boarded. They do admittedly seem to be experiencing a "Titanic moment", what with the overflowing and all, but you can't convince me Booger wasn't ready to blast them all overboard with Undertow given the choice. Alas, they instead head on ahead (yes I'm overusing it) directly into a head-to-head with the aforementioned people. The red ones I mean. Not red people, but just their outfits. I mean, I suppose some of them might be reddish-looking, I don't know.

Booger, of course, doesn't either. Like a true ally, he doesn't see color, and mows all peoples and ethnicities down with equal vigor...s. Eliza shows some character growth (?) by continuing to support said mower with ample fuel.** They ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ those ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and enter a large transit-station sort of area, complete with little shops and tiny bathrooms and other ancillary Stuff. In an optional sidequest-like thing, Boogie backtracks a bowel-loosening distance to unlock a hidden backroom in one of these ancillary areas. After all his squelchy stomping, back-stomping, and ambush-enduring, Bungalow finally enters this secret area. Inside, there's some loot and some sort of poster advertising some sort of lady, and or possibly her bar. Or something, idk. "Seriously? All this just for a drawing of some broad?" Elaine exclaims, incredulous. "I think I knew her," Booger says, deftly navigating the otherwise-awkward scenario. "Yeah, I bet you did..." Nevermind.

In either case, they press on through the atrium-type-arena, where a fresh combat encounter awaits, complete with lots of weapons-and-ammo-holding space-holes--the little ones, not the "meld entire timelines" kind. Past the atrium arena, Emporium proper awaits, where all the rich people live...d. Bogwater extinguishes another innocent Fireman, and we press on through the cobbled corridors lined with fancy hice, where we find lots of racist advertising talking about racial purity and ♥♥♥♥ of that nature (this has been your Hourly Racism Reminder).



Big Brain Advertising, censored for your convenience

This area is a little less linear, so Bailiff and Betty just kind of wander around until they encounter a large lodge-like mansion-type house, far larger and more lodger than all the other hice. "Nice," Bogogogogogogoth says, noticing all the spare ammo and conveniently placed cover-granting barricades dotting the arena. I mean the area. But alas, the court remains empty of fresh fleshbags to fill with lead. What's worse, Salazara skips (in a sad, depressed sort of way) up to the front door of the place and tries to open it without so much as a fuss! Luckily for Bloodlust, it doesn't open. Some disembodied automated voice announces that Extradress looks just like her mom (First Lady Somclock, remember) but seems to be missing her fingerprints.

Now, am I crazy, or does this imply that Columbia has somehow advanced far enough in electronics, optics, and computing to enable the creation of an automated system that can not only assess and verify fingerprints, recognize and distinguish physical appearances (as well as potentially any fine variations and associations thereof), but also generate a synthetic voice and or manipulate a recording database?*** Actually, don't answer that.

Technological implications aside, Boo-Boo follows Betty as she makes a beeline for the cemetery, where her mom and her fingerprints lie Lenin-like in a glass casket. Boil's brain works overtime the whole way, bouncing up and down in this thick, bone-cramped skull as he attempts to reason out the implication of this action.

Go ahead and fetch a drink, folks. We'll be here all week.


*Actually that tracks (baseball, huh) because there was this sort of Comstatue-chime alarm thing that went off just before Bord attacked, back at the Statuetower.
**Bucker fuel:
Amnphetamine salts, 1 bottle
.50 caliber cartridges, 2 pounds
Gasoline, 1 jerry can
Demon blood, 1 pint
Cokeaine, powdered

Bring the gasoline to a gentle simmer, adding the salts gradually until dissolved. Take off heat and mix the cartridges with the blood in a separate crucible, increasing heat until homogenized. Add to salt mixture when cooled and mix thoroughly. Garnish with cokeaine, adding extra salts to taste. Serve via intravenous injection.

***Admittedly, when they boarded the blimp earlier, Emmeline switched out of her blood-imbibed blouse and into one of her mom's old dresses, as she so helpfully explains. Perhaps the unseen machine is merely recognizing the dress?

In fact, and now that I think of it, I'm reasonably certain this is mentioned--addressed, if you will--at the gate of the mansion. So what this implies is that anyone, even Booger himself, could be recognized as Lady Comstock so long as he wore that particular dress. Also, did they really keep the Virgin Lady's actual clothes in her old ship--the same ship they were holding public tours of? But of course, you'd still need the fingerprints to get in. Which honestly makes the whole dress-recognition function seem a little redundant.

Now, soon enough our heroes reach their sought-for cemetery and approach the glass casket of Miss Smith. Finally realizing what his companion/kidnap victim/accomplice is intending to do--that being, cut the fingerpads and or hands from her own mother's corpse--Booger quickly intervenes. "No, wait. Let me do it!" Suddenly there are those speaker/tesla coil thingies from earlier, and they start blasting some Cardi B like it's a bad block party. Obviously, this induces extreme pain in Sally, whereas--as a true sociopath--Booger is largely unaffected. A convenient Intercomstock informs us that he knew we would arrive in this spot because of prophecy and blah blah blah. Apparently, the speaker thingies drain Leech's spacetime-spiting abilities. Also, there's a glowing green ghost chick outside who starts charging up like it's Dragon Ball.

And here we are, ladies and gentlemen, the one good line of dialogue in Bioshock Infinite. The best line of dialogue, in fact, ever writ by human hand. The only unpolluted drop of perfection to grace our unworthy ears, an ingot of artistic achievement so fresh from the fires of genius it burns in my brain even now.

"Elizabeth... Why is your mother a ghost?"

Need I say more. Need I say more.

So anyway, it turns out Ellie's mom is actually that one lady from the Exorcist, and she's gonna haunt stuff really hard unless we deal with her. And by "we", I mean Booger. And by "deal with her", I mean kill her. Several times, actually. This is Booger we're talking about, after all.

So we meet Mom and she's like, "EEURRAAAHRMMA!" And Lizzie is like "No, stop.." Booger starts shooting the ghost with bullets because he's Booger, but turns out Boogger was actually in Ghostbusters, so he knows how to shoot ghosts and stuff. Yeah he was. He was in it. You know, that one guy with the glasses. Chris Pradley or whatever. After Booger shoots mom enough she's like "AEIGHHHH!" and explodes into cytoplasm. But Elizabeth is like, "No she's not dead, we gotta find her or smn," so Booger sniffs out some photoplasmic footprints, making good use of the skills he learned back when he was on Border Patrol.

So they run all over the city like a pair of goofy goobers until Booger gets bored and notices an unguarded bank nearby. Naturally, he immediately enters it, hoping to snatch some fat loot so he can finally afford a single ♥♥♥♥♥♥ upgrade for his stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥ nerf gun. Unfortunately, it transpires that Mom is onyx rank in COD, because she's camping the vault like a figurative and literal nolife. As if that wasn't enough, she's also summoned some racist shooter Notzees to help her out, no doubt recruiting them from their natural habitat. That is to say, the aforementioned COD lobby. After a second shootout mom dies again, and our intrepid heroes spend an additional thirty minutes scouring Emporium for her, searching high and low for any subtle clue that might hint at her presence. Of course, no such hints are to be found, so they decide to fall back on following the trail of glowing green footprints.

These lead them back to the mansion from earlier--the one with all the conveniently placed bulwarks and assorted ammunition and nearby upgrade nook. With a realization worthy of Hunk from Breaking Bad, Booger realizes what this must mean. He immediately opens fire on Mom for a third time, and this is the toughest fight yet. Her final form is even more irritating and Karen-like than the previous two, and she has an even bigger army of zombie Notzees. This reminds Booger of his second-favorite video game franchise, Wolfenstein, and suddenly he knows what to do. Guns blazing gloriously, he leaps out from behind cover and instantly dies. After a quick shot of crack he reconsiders the value of cover. This reminds Booger of his third-favorite video game franchise, Halo, and suddenly he knows what to do. Guns firing intermittently, he heroically stays behind cover, peeking out occasionally to whiff a few shots and instantly lose his shield. After several agonizing hours of this--1999 hours, to be precise--Mom finally keels over, too laden with lead to continue defying the laws of physics.

Just before our glorious hero can deliver the final blow, Lizard steps in and is like, "Hey, you're my mom!" And Mom is like, "Oh ♥♥♥♥, you're right." Quickly getting over their prior disagreements, the two women engage in an exemplary example of what is sometimes known as "girl talk." Bored by the lack of senseless violence, Booger begins to compulsively switch and reload his weapons, his primitive gamer brain overriding higher functions for the sake of fleeting and infinitesimally small hits of dopamine. Eventually Sally's like, "btw, we gotta break into that house right there but for some reason we can't break into one of the windows or climb over the entrance area or even just use our explosives to make a hole in the wall or anything like that." Then Mom is like, "Say less," and casually rips open the grenade-proof gate before dipping to the spirit world. Upstaged and emasculated, Boocker runs headlong through the retired gate and on to the security checkpoint-type area, determined to prove himself a worthy hero by killing additional people.

Unfortunately, he instead gets powerbombed by the giant metal death bird and loses Lizzy for the umpteenthiest time. At first, Lead Zeppelin over here is really just beating the absolute ♥♥♥♥ out of Batter, folding him more thoroughly than your average piece of Damascus steel. I mean, it really wasn't any more of an actual contest than that one time Krillin got Oppenheimered™, and one begins to wonder how much punishment even Booger's adamant skull can take. Eventually, however, Ariel's like, "No stop, please, don't hurt him! I guess I'm gonna cry now!" Birdbrain looks at her like, "Bitsh?" but Shelly says she'll let him bring her back home--just as long as he doesn't find out what Booger-brand brain-jam looks like. Then Hawkeye's more like, "I'm still pissed at you, but OK." He grabs Princess Peach and bounces, leaving Booper to faint or something I can't remember.

Eventually Besticles wakes up or comes back to life or whatever, finding himself still laid out in the leaning tower of Frieza. Like an absolute unit, Bricker simply ignores the seven concussions and numerous compound fractures riddling his broken body and immediately starts running toward the big house they were trying to get to. I'm honestly not sure how he knew that was where Big Bird had taken his damsel-in-da-dress, but it is the largest, most populous thing in the vicinity, so he probably just went by instinct.

Insert cliffhanger here.

*Cockblock House
*Clockrock House
*Cluck
*Croc

Mount Flushmore hangs in the stormy sky, seeming very creepy and foreboding. Bootleg bumbles onward, up the strangely long floating bridge thing, until a sudden snowstorm swaddles his swollen head. Unluckily for any nearby onlookers, the obscuring storm soon dissipates, revealing once more the misshapen visage as its owner pries open the doors ahead. Strangely, they seem to be rusted and in poor repair. Beyond this doddering doorway lies another room kind of area, the details of which are left to the reader's imagination and or memory due to intentional artistic choice and definitely not dementia. Weirdly, this room too is of a rather advanced air, to put it tactfully. Balzheimers advances further, glancing around. Strangeirdly, the whole place seems to be some kind of haphazard slapdash-mishmash of Victorian asylum, Soviet grade school, and your average post-apocalyptic Cracker Barrel, skipping between these general aesthetics like a confused cosmopolitan cosplayer.

Bloomers winds his way through this surreal space, picking through rubble and up loot and from among his arsenal. He does his picking uneasily; the audio is eerie, the environments run-down, the echoing halls deserted of all occupants.

Except, of course, for the patients. Remember when I mentioned cosplayers?


And also there are the anti-sneak snitches that guard them.


Pictured: A stealthy boy

The former are generally placid, wandering vaguely around their little area, occasionally crying to themselves and generally being unsound in mind and body. The latter, however, possess the keen senses of a hunting hound, the drip of a Sirenhead cosplayer*, and the general disposition of your average Starbucks Karen. Together, they turn the place into some sort of colonial-era convention. Coloncon?

Blackrock blumbles his squishy boot-slogging butt through this unholy maze, utilizing the hitherto-underutilized crouch key as he navigates the Hornheads' color-coded vision cones, and also their leather-colored cearing hones. Tension builds inaudibly as they twitch and gangle singlemindedly, scanning back and forth with the robotic precision of a cybernetic cockroach. Inevitably, The Booger finds himself dead locked in their irons sights, and with a piercing screech the current crowd of In-Patient Cannibals erupt into a seething mass of murderous intent, not not resembling torbid, turgid, mask-wearing maggots.**

"Snbitches!" Buddha says, probably, beating the absolute ♥♥♥♥ out of said snibritches. He unloads with furious firepower both literal (courtesy of his Vigor-powered fire-arms) and slightly less literal but not really figurative if you think about it (courtesy of his powder-powered firearms). Astonishingly, the Curious Georges soak up most of the asSalt with ease, halting their bumbling advance only once a suitably punishing amount of ammunition has been expended. Slowly, BLT dawns upon the revelation that this area is meant to be played stealthily, probably. It's possible he realized this earlier, actually, but there has literally never been so much as a hint of a stealthy approach even implied thus far, and some of the rooms are extremely tedious to navigate without alerting the local Simonsaid. In fact, I'm pretty sure the first room is impossible to stealth, and a few others as well potentially. Or all of them? Idk.

But it's all well and good, because now the ammo scarcity is really kicking in, augmenting the tense atmosphere, sending it up along Bogarth's strings and through the fourth wall beyond. We soom arrived (or actually maybe this was at the beginning?) at a room-type room hat thase a large elevator-type elevator in it. We can also see how Ellievator has been kidnapped and needs help and stuff, I think. "Hey! Open this thing up! Let her go!" Moobmaxxer bellows. But there is no one to hear him. Doubly but, the elevator won't work without its lever being yanked, and coincidences of coincidences, it's all the way dab-smack clear away off on the other side of the level. Ever-obedient and respectful of saidevator's colliders, Flooger works his way into the next area. Pay attention to this moment. Seal it in your mind. For this is, as far as I'm aware, the one and only instance of Goopgut respecting boundaries.

Then again, maybe just don't do all that, and instead wash this bit away with videos of cats, or something. Might save you some brain damage.

Attritioning through the grueling guck, a bullet-hungry Biosock soon squelches his way to another aesthetic shift, the room this time resembling a cross between a police department locker and a school. We can, at long last (<1 hour), get our ammo fix, snort some Salts, and also find a room with a projector thingy, which is still running despite the decrepitude of the debris-riddled duilding. Projector "I'm Immortal" Thingy is playing a sad Exposition Video backed by Pachebel's canon in minor key. Exposition "Hey, I'm a Story Compensator, Too" Video (narrated by an older-sounding Elizebath) explains some weird ♥♥♥♥. According to said account, Big E was abandoned by Bohner after the Leaning Tower incident, and also she now agrees with Coldrock, too. And she's depressed.

"What the hell," Boojie mutters, probably. Or maybe he just stays silent and doesn't comment on the apparent paradox. Around the corner are a set of stairs leading to the lever we needed to yank, I think. We yank said ♥♥♥♥ and get jumpscared by a teleporting Screechyhead, then ambushed by a bunch of CPD cops. Blooj readies his weapons and takes cover in that order, a subtle smile on his energy-shielded lips as he surgically enthiggens their ranks. There also might be some story stuff or something on the screens, idk.

Returning to the earlymost area, Hugger enters the elevator and buttons the press, finally leaving Barf Marango's Quietplace.^ There is thereafter a creepy, even more run-down though significantly less enemy-filled room, which we enter for some reason. Ahead there is a higher level and also a distinct lack of stairs, in keeping with the rubble chic vibe. There, a shadowy figure calls out to us, helping us up out of the trouble-strewn ruin. Shockingly, the shadowy figure is actually Excessbread! But older! "Yuck!", no small number of the Puppeteerate exclaim, adding a fresh belch of Mountain Dew-infused BO to their simmering miasma of sweaty whaleness. "♥♥♥♥!" Booger echoes in alarm, before settling back into relative calmness like a particularly placid rhinoceros. "I'm old now, Booger," Old Now says. "It's been ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ forever." "But I was gonna save you. I was right there..." Old Now, blissfully unaware of Blister's definition of "saving", smiles sadly and explains what exactly has happened, wisely trimming all the unimportant bits, like Why and How, in favor of the What. "Timeline ♥♥♥♥," she summarizes. "They've been brainwashing me for decades, and eventually I made like Grandstock's knees and cracked. I'm pretty much Hilter now."

Apparently, the snowstorm from earlier was actually a time-traveling snowstorm, and we are now in the future. Yeah, we're adding time travel to this ♥♥♥♥♥.

Old shows Batastrophe her shiny new invasion of New York. Then she uses up all her Timespite to send him back in time.

*Look, can you think of a fresher reference that's still applicable? And yes, I'm using the same "joke" twice. Bite me.
**Maggots? Maggots! Maggots, maggots, maggots. And bits of piss and ♥♥♥♥, in all likelihood, considering their general level of executive functioning and the general dearth of diapers.^

^Also: don't worry if you don't get the reference, it's unfairly obscure. But do go and watch Garth Marenghi's Darkplace on TouYube. Maybe that way we can salvage a chuckle or two out of this disaster.

The hand is actually a Boat.

1912. I mean, 1918. No, 1912. Pretty sure it was that one. Weooger emerge from the time hole, eyeballs blasted apart by the glittering glow of the golden scene before us, so sharp a break from the previous level you'd easily mistake it for a compound fracture. We sit and bask in the bloomed-out puffy pulchritude for a fat minute, allowing our gamer brains a moment to simmer down from the rolling boil of plot holes/twists and such sudden story-shifting additions as dimension hopping and time travel. Or maybe that's just me.

Then we leave, making our way through what seems to be a pre-rubble version of the area we were just in. Or maybe it's an unrelated area, kind of hard to tell. We hear Blueberry screaming, or maybe just and or pass a big glass cage-type-area, where Moniz and Igor are prepping said Imbezzlement for some sort of ♥♥♥♥♥♥-up surgery experiment ♥♥♥♥. "Hey! Letter out!" Bellow eponymizes. But alas, Avail remains absent. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flake, never shows up when you need him. Borture Device grits his teeth and, in a rare moment of perceptive deduction, follows the giant glowing power-cables that seem to be powering the gLass-Container's set of power-sucking speaker-coils (see Tower, earlier). Suffice it to say, all the king's Handymen and all the king's policemen, couldn't put themselves back together again. Or something like that.

Having finished his killing spree, Bumpty-Dumpty dumps his newly re-soaked sock containers across the newly-soaked floor, killing the two technicians apparently hired to just sort of stand there and watch the power lever. Noober flips those thangs faster than a MacDogald's line cook at the grill and rushes back to the Lass chamber. Periwinkle-In-Time, refreed from her sappy-shackles, sends her would-be lobotomists off into the multiverse of deadness, probably. Then there's sort of an awkward moment where Booger has to help Nancy with her dress, or something, and also remove this gross injector-hose-thingy from her back, thereby inflicting upon his unwary puppeteer both primary varieties of cringe in one fell crunge. Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, Powernap has a bit of a tense moment, quite understandably, when Blastard suggests he should confront Conman alone: "I'm going too!" "Nuh-uh, stay here." "Really Booger?" Hoodwinked asks dramatically, popping open another death-hole into tornado-land. "And what exactly are you going to do to stop me?"

"I mean...OK...jeez..." Mook mumbles, probably. I honestly don't remember if Booger mentions the whole time-travel side tangent he just returned from, but I guess it won't matter either way, soon enough... (This is the part where you're intrigued. And also reassured in my capabilities as a recounter, too). And so they set off together once more, plowing through another couple pegatonnes of penemies on their way. Outside, it appears we are once more in the general era of Veg Populi v. Bar-Brohydrates, though the Diet War seems to have settled down for the moment. What hasn't settled down is the weather, which rages on moodily whethertheless.

After another tough fight, Hero and Heroin board one of the jet-skiff thingies. "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, so they could've done this at any point?" a certain indignant puppeteer exclaims. The fourth wall's flimsiness aside, the jet launches from its jetty into the stormy skies, sailing slowly toward the hulking form of the Prophet-Hand 2000, Flagstone's flagship. It's actually a blimp. Flagblimp?

Before they can reach said Flagblimp, several waves of cops get the hops for B&B's own boat. Unfortunately for them, Booger read this guide and knows that Undertow's alternate attack can send an entire boatload of yet-to-board enemies sailing into the void with a single button press.

"Winds howling," Geralt observes, studying the screaming slurry of cold wind around them. Then he vanishes into the ether once more, leaving our own more canonical characters to board the Good Year of Our Lord Blimp by themselves, and that's all the explanation you're getting. Said blimp is so big and bloated that the only way to reach the upper decks is via skyline (floating rail-thingies, for my more cultured readers). Said lines are so overstuffed that the only way to use them is to launch Coddlesmock's collection of Hellpod-wearing Motorized Parrots down toward the distant earth. Really they look like that one scene from Toy Storey with all the Buzz Lightyears sitting in their plastic boxes. Predictably, this takes some time--about enough for a few waves of enemies, which Brave Robber confronts with equal predictability. Things spice up a bit when the Vogue Populace pull up, capybara-like, and start making trouble, capybara-unlike.

Overcoming Columbia's horrid transit designer for the umpteenthienstest time, we at last arrive at the upper decks. Within, Mogger makes sure to stop by the easily-missable Comcaptain's quarters. Afterward, he rejoins his pinky-twisting companion and enters the garden-like Central Chamber: A Basin is Here Too, for Some Reason. And there he is. Grandma. I mean Grandpa. Crohnsdisease. "Oh, my child..." he says, or something, and Emery rushes over, though Board lingers back a ways ominously. "Wait what? Wait what's going on? Whaa?" Child rushes, or something like that. Basically she just starts asking questions. Cockletruck soon takes hold of the conversation, however, and begins vaguely implying things. "Oh, if you only knew what I did for you," for instance, and "If you only knew the truth about what he is," for another. Also, "Me? Why, just ask him! Tell her what you did, Dimwitt!", etc. Despite all expectations, this seems to be going pretty well for him, and Eddy begins to give heed.

Unfortunately for him, this is where Booger gets angry.


Pictured: An angry booger

The raging, blood-red Booger lunges forward and wraps his huge hands around Washingman's throat, yelling out some Freud-level projections that cast a fore-shadow worthy of Jung. "It's not over! You kidnapped her, abandoned her, locked her up in that tower! You sonavabitch!" Stuff like that. Meanwhile, Emma goes for the Emmy. "Stop, stop! You're killing him!" Stuff like that. Blooger, however, continues strangling Old Guy, blanging his head on the plot-basin nearby before crushing it beneath the water, which erupts in a storm of blood and blubbles. Before he knows it, Comstock is dead. Bum lets the bruised body slump to the floor, snorting and puffing like a humanoid hippo. "Great! Now we'll never know how the ♥♥♥♥ this plot fits together!" Endstate exclaims. "Tell me Booger. How are we going to figure out my finger now?" Forget the finger, lady! What about the 99 other mysteries we've yet to resolve? Ahem.

Our system of interpersonal tension heads up to the bridge, where the shlimp's controls await, along with another one of those chimey-whimey statue thingies. Through the bridge's windows, Booger and Elizabeth see several Vox airships arrive, sweeping crosshairs and spotlights over the uppermost deck. "Kill the prophet and his stupid daughter lady!" one Vegetable calls out, solidifying their faction's dubious dislike of Emancipation and her Buddyguard. Considering the enormous armada arrayed before them, the odds look grim for even our illustrious murder machines.

Then the chime machine goes off and an awfully-familiar screech sounds in the sky. Chelsea panics, whirling around, and Schlocks the Chime out of the Thing, playing the GingerTwin song just in time, thereby turning Bord friendly. With his help, Booger faces the surging horde of rebels in a climactic battle. Actually, he plays Tower Defense with the generator for about ten minutes.

After the battle, our duo use Bord to destroy the power-sapping tower statue, and Ellie's godlike powers are unleashed. Really, they could have done that earlier. Just saying.

"I can see all the doord, and what's behind all the doord..."


There's always a tall, light-type house...

Suddenly, Booger and Elizabreath are in BioShock (2007). The inimitable atmosphere of Walt Disney's Rapture encompasses us, practically dripping with glorious art-deco detail. Actually it is dripping, but that's beside the point. The point is, what the ♥♥♥♥, and look, Bord is outside the window. Well, we know how well Birdie and water get along. Which is to say, not at all. Caught in the terrible crush of the sea, Bird begins to thrash and convulse, filling the water with murky inkiness, eye-lenses cracking until they pop and go dark. RIP.

Another door leads to some sort of other-structure. It's a house! A tall house, containing a light. Before them blazes a sunlit sea, filled with thousands upon thousands of such hice, their blazing house-lights gradually accumulating into an astral aggregate sprinkled across the evening sky hanging above. Boardwalks snap together as they walk across the water, Jesusly. "OK, what the ♥♥♥♥ is going on?" Beelzebub blubbs.

Undeterred by Laggard's well-established intellect, Ellen proceeds to explain the quantum conundrum: "They're all the doors," she says, gesturing at the impressive backdrop. "Doord to other worlds. Constants and variables. Some things change, some things stay the same. Alphonse Karr." "Constants?" "There's always a man, there's always a city, and there's always some sort of, um...you know those houses with the lights in them?" "Yeah. But variables?" "Like, in this universe you're really stupid and annoying, for example, but in another universe you're just kind of stupid and annoying--and the plot makes marginally more sense!" "So which universe is canon?" "The one where 2K kept producing BioShock games instead of turning into EA Lite." "Ouch."

A few wooden lego-sets later, we go through another light-like house. This one leads us to a large but not enormous river-type region, occupied currently by some sort of baptism club (led, incidentally, by the same old waterboard enthusiast from the beginning). At first, Booger's primitive brain is enraptured by the scene, immediately reenacting his old actions. It kind of gives the general impression of a memory. Maybe that's just cause they added a desaturated filter for some reason. Booger breaks free at the last minute, prompting Lizard to ask him some unimportant question I have quite frankly forgotten. Strangely enough, they head for what looks to be a Shrek-type outhouse, but the door is another teleporter--or maybe Ellizahah can just turn any door into a teleporter. Maybe she's trying to be conservative with her space-holes? Turns out the teledoor just puts them back a dozen meters or so. "Huh? Why we here two time?" "All roads lead here, Booger." "'Kay."

Then BOogiegercounter's nose sharts blood and his vision goes all fuzzy-wuzzy, static-like. "Your nose, Booger. It's bleeding," Ellie says, oddly menacingly. "It does that sometimes," Booger observes (does this count as a pun?) Then, "Oh ♥♥♥♥. Wait. That must mean..." What it must mean, dear reader, is that he's from another dimension, kind of but not exactly like those half-dead nosebleed feeple from earlier. The door takes us to a sequence of exposition elucidations. We're Booger, back in his office in Ynew Nyork, holding his baby. A man at the door knocks, repeating the lines we've heard every time we died. Or actually more like a third of the times we've died, since the other instances were prevented with a shot of Bucker Fuel.

"Give us the girl!" the man calls. "Mister Dimwitt!" "But I done wanna," Bugger says. Fizzy eyes him impassively. "Wait here all you want. You'll have to do it eventually," Levine comments. I mean, Elliebereavie. They're right, of course. You really do have to hand off your baby to some random door-to-door salesman. Another door, and suddenly we're in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ little rowboat from the beginning. "Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt!" Accuserbest calls, still in that strangy angrely voice. In case you weren't aware, the whole "bring girl wipe debt" thing is sort of this game's catchphrase. And I don't say that facetiously, since I honestly don't know how often or whether at all I've brought it up. Also, can games have catchphrases?

Back on topic, Ballstone scrambles his deep-fried cognitive clockwork, slowly fitting the pieces into place. Another few Exposition Expos, and they finally snap together (Booger, you see, was never what you could call a Lego Kid). We see Booger chasing Oldstock through a spacehole, trying to retrieve his swaddled baby: "No, I take it back! Take-back! Pwetty pwease? Blub blub blub. Waaah!" OK, fine, he didn't say that. Pretty close though. Despite being younger and stronger than Clokroc, Booger still manages to lose the tug-of-war. In fact, he only managed to delay Dadstock's tugging long enough to Doctor-Strange his own daughter's pinky finger clean off as the portal snaps closed. Booger raises his branded hand. "A.D..." "Anna Dimwitt."

That's right, folks. Eleanor Comstock, formerly Anna Dimwitt, is Booger's own daughter.** By now I believe we have returned to the same watery river Shrek-type place from before, though this time there's no baptism club. Presently, additional Eleanors appear from out of frame, apparently teleporting in from all across the multiverse. "He's Booger Dimwitt." "He's Zatchery Codstrok." Booger looks around, composing his ultimate comment. "No... I'm both." Then they drown him. To death.

Just one little Booger, drowned. Apparently that undoes the entire multiverse of Boogers and Codclocks, despite the fact that there would be an infinite number of them so regardless of however many Elizas were drowning however many Boogers there would still be more, unless literally every Booger ends up getting drowned by their Eli even though we see that it takes multiple Elies to drown one Bloodbath, and despite the fact that our Bog is ostensibly just one of an infinite set as opposed to the "first" or something like that, and setting aside the fact that this seems to imply that all it takes to undo the Columbia multiverse is for all Boogers to die, which really means it should've been undone already since they will all die of one cause or another, except of course it's implied here that this exact drowning scenario is occurring throughout the Columbiaverse even though the variation inherent in alternate worlds should mean such a specific scenario won't always occur, so maybe all it takes is enough of the Boogers to die at the specific point in time just prior to when they would have the "coin flip" moment leading them to become either an uber-racist or an alcoholic degenerate, which itself seems a contrived scenario--those are really the only two possible outcomes after BB's PTSD?

We see all the murderous Elizebaths fade away into presumable nonexistence, nicely synchronized with soft piano notes, until just one remains. Cut to black.*

And that, technically speaking, is indeed the end. Also, just ignore that giant run-on text wall for now since I haven't established a lot of it. Don't worry--the next section will be me explaining all this to the best of my abilities. So maybe go look up a summary.

In Summary:


*This implies the final Elizabeth survives somehow, even though she was just established to be Booger's daughter, and seeing as there must be no more of said Boogers left (assuming the Columbian subset of the multiverse did indeed collapse) she should probably be erased from existing. Yeah.
**If that makes you feel a little weird, drop a "Booger ate my cat" in the comment section. Don't forget to like and subscribe! 🤪

Alright people, let's do this one last time.

Welp, I just got convicted, so I guess I might as well tie up any loose ends for you ungrateful lot before the feds find my hidden basement and lock me in the longhaul. Think of the following summary not as a story, but as a collection of narrative components, interchangeable and interconnectable, allowing for infinite interpretation and easy avoidance of pesky "plotholes." Narrative Megabloks, I'm calling it.

Basically, a long time ago, there was this guy, Booger Dimwitt. He served with the U.S. military and he fought at this battle called Wounded Knee (IRL battle IIRCAIBID, BTW, just FYI). Apparently, some of the other guys bullied him because they thought he had a bit of Native American ancestry. So, to expunge this stain upon his honor, he went psycho mode and butchered a bunch of Native Americans at said battle.

Afterward, he felt a little bad, so he ♥♥♥♥♥♥ around for a little bit before going to this baptism service, hoping to feel better. The baptizer dude was all like, "Do ya feel bad? Do ya wanna be reborn?"

And Booger said, "Actually, nah."

After that, he became a Pinkerton (also an IRL thing; mercenaries specializing in union-busting), got into drinking, got into gambling, and eventually moved to New York and became a private investigator. At some point he somehow had a daughter, though it seems the mother died or left or something. Now, at this point his debts were six-feet-deep kind of bad, and suddenly some dude showed up offering to pay off--wipe away, if you will--all Booger's debts if only he would hand over his infant daughter. Being a piece of ♥♥♥♥, Booger naturally agreed.


Actual psychopathic behavior.

Let's take a step back. You know how I said Booger refused the baptism thing? Well, in about half of the realities (Google "Many Worlds Theory"), he actually took it. Really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard, to the point of reinventing himself as an entirely new man: Zatchery Hale Cockblock, and never mind the fact he has differently colored eyes and a different face shape.


Reborn as Clouttrout, he turned himself into something of a religious figure. Eventually, he had--or claimed to have--a vision of some angel named Columbia, who told him to build a flying city, yadda yadda yadda.


Pictured: Tagged pic of Columbia

By some stroke of cosmic luck, he happened to meet the Weasley twins, who were for some reason such giga-geniuses that they invented quantum ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ technology and world-portals in the year 1893. Yeah. Crafty Cogcock struck a deal with them: They make his new city fly, and he gives them lots of money. Not sure where he got that much money, but there you go. Soon enough the city was flying, and Clakktrap wanted an heir, particularly after Columbia broke up with the U.S. Problem was, he was mega infertile, possibly from being around all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ quantum technology (not that that makes any sense, seeing as all of Columbia ought to be sterile in that event). So, he hatched a plan: Steal a kid from an alternate version of himself and bring said kid to Kolumbia. I mean Columbia. That way, you see, it would still technically be his kid. Of course, even more technically, it wouldn't, but whatever.

Now the two sides meet. Booger agrees to sell his kid, and Comslop buys her. But Booger has a sudden change of heart, resulting in the portal incident where "Anna" lost her finger. As a mark of shame, Booger burned her initials (A.D.) onto the back of his hand, ensuring he would never forget about her. He then promptly forgot about her.

A little while later, the Lettuce Twins are low-key assassinated by Comstuck for knowing too much. Gee, better hope none of your quantum ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tech ever needs upgrading nor repairing! Long-term planning skills aside, the assassination goes sideways Marvel style, with the sabotaged quantum bullshitinator granting its twin victims superpowers. In this case, they can teleport and ♥♥♥♥.

Eager for some revenge, the twins go and recruit Booger--or at least whatever bit of him is still left after his extended soak in booze-fueled degeneracy. They bring him through to the other world where Columbia roams, relying on the convenient phenomenon of such actions consistently generating false memories within the extradimensional visitor (this being one in a long line of "brain trying to explain" type-explanations used throughout fiction). Thus, Booger's mind rationalizes the situation as another job for the Pinkertons--this time, kidnapping a girl to wipe away his drinking debt. Aforementioned hijinks ensue.

This same pattern apparently occurs/has occured over and over thousands upon thousands of times, forming one branch of the wider BioShock multiverse. Apparently, by bringing Booger back in time to the point just before that crucial baptism choice, then killing him there, Eleanor can somehow undo all of that...even though we've already established that "Booger" (Dimwitt variant A) is already past that point. Why not kill all Commhocks (variant B; the one that actually does the ♥♥♥♥), or else the set of Boxers that haven't made that choice yet, or even the very first Dimwitt--if there is such a thing? Why does anyone do anything in this godforsaken videogame? Because quantum! Because Schrodinger's cat lady! Because it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Superposition! Because, uh, because of something I guess maybe. Look...

I'm not sure how to break this to you, but I'm basically an idiot. I know, I know. It's hard to believe. But it's the truth. It's medically attested my mother should be arrested for skipping that particular pill. Still, we had fun, right? Remember that time I made an awful joke? Or what about that time you gently exhaled through your nose and got Booger germs all over my guide?

"But it still doesn't make any sense!" I hear you protest. Well, neither does algebra, but we all pretend to understand that anyway. So, for old time's sake, let's just call those questions better left unanswered! Or some sort of platitude along those lines.

But again, just to reiterate: Booger became Codstock and built Columbia--a violent place filled with racism and slavery--ultimately because he felt bad about being racist and killing people.


Actual clownopathic behavior.


And there you have it folks. The Whole Story. The inimitable narrative. The fabulous fable, the delectable diversion, the awesome account accurately and alacritiously accorded by yours truly--of BileSock Unlimited
Bibletime Turbo
Bowelblock Unbounded
BioShock Infinite, clarified, rarified, and purified of all plotholes, contrivances, and unanswered questions. If you somehow made it this far, seek professional help.