Here's the reason behind Bioshock Infinite's joyous dancing bread boy

eurogamer.net:

If you have played Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea DLC you will have no doubt witnessed a boy dancing on the Parisian streets as he joyously holds a stick of French bread aloft (he is not exactly hard to miss). While a charming inclusion in its own right, the mastermind behind Bioshock's «Bread Boy» has now revealed more insight into why he is there.

It was a simple fan post from Twitter user Pocklecool that once more brought «Bread Boy» back to the fore of our minds, commenting on the fact that the game's shorthand for being in Paris was a small boy delightedly twirling a baguette in his arms. The tweet, perhaps understandably, blew up, catching the attention of Gwen Frey.

And who is exactly is Frey, you may ask. Well, she is Irrational Games' former senior technical animator and the one in charge of placing all the background characters in BioShock Infinite and its DLCs… including Bread Boy.

What unfolded was a delightful thread from Frey, detailing how this boy came to be dancing in the street of Paris with a stick of bread as his partner. Frey revealed that they «thought the Paris scene was too static and needed more motion but couldn't afford another AI walking around.

»I figured a chump running in a circle around that cylinder could work since I could just expand the collision of it to prevent the player from running through them. However, we didn't have a looping «run in a circle» animation. We did have dancing in a circle though!"

random sensory flashback to the Bioshock Infinite DLC where they wanted to communicate to the player «you are in Paris, France» so they put a little kid in the game dancing around in the street while holding a baguette over his head pic.twitter.com/E77jzW0Air

This made the dancing