Rapture is a fictional underwater city that is the setting for the games BioShock and BioShock 2. The game's back-story describes the city as envisioned by business tycoon Andrew Ryan in the mid-1940s as a means to create a utopia for mankind's greatest thinkers to prosper in a laissez-faire environment outside of increasing oppression by the worlds' governments. However, these ideals would not hold up, turning into a dystopia, and on the eve of 1959, a class war broke out, leaving much of Rapture's population dead.

The remaining citizens either become psychotic "Splicers" due to the effects of ADAM, a substance that can alter genetic material, or have barricaded themselves from the Splicers to protect themselves, leaving the city to fail and fall apart around them. The player first experiences Rapture in BioShock in 1960, a year after the fateful riots, as a man named Jack that has come to Rapture after a plane accident over the ocean where it was located; during this, they come to learn more about Ryan's motives and those that he struggled against to keep the city's ideals until the very end. In BioShock 2, the player takes the role of a "Big Daddy", a heavily-modified human in a armored diving suit designed to protect the Little Sisters girls as they collect ADAM from Rapture's dead; this takes place eight years after the events of the first game, and while Ryan has been killed, there remain those that vie for the vacuum left in his position of power.

The concept of Rapture was the brainchild of Ken Levine, founding member and creative director of Irrational Games, (briefly renamed 2K Boston just prior to BioShock's release, but later returned to their former name). Ken Levine had studied the works of Ayn Rand, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley and other works of utopian and dystopian societies as part of his "useless" liberal arts degree. He had also had fascination with the story of "Logan's Run".

Levine also considered the nature of the horror genre, noting works such as The Shining where there is the need for a feeling of loss for the horror to be effective. Rapture is an underwater city, located in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. It is only accessible by a system of bathyspheres.

The city was designed to be self-sufficient, growing and raising its own crops as well as using the surrounding sea life for food, and taking advantage of submarine volcanoes to provide geothermal power to its population. The city is comprised of many "skyscraper"s, inter-linked by walkways and tunnels, with airtight doors between neighboring sections to isolated areas that become flooded from the rest of the city. The buildings, both inside and out, feature a distinctive art deco design motive, reflecting on the era during which it was built.

In addition to living quarters, Rapture features shopping areas, entertainment venues, laboratories, manufacturing plants, medical facilities and other functions of a city.

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