History Series / AlteredCarbon

* ThouShaltNotKill: Bancroft's one rule -- though he's quite into consensual death (paying prostitutes for killing their sleeves and reinstating them in better ones), he won't cause Real Death. [[spoiler:Reileen and Miriam manipulate him into breaking the rule so they can blackmail him to kill a proposed law that would allow Reileen's murder victims to speak out as a witnesses against her. Disgusted with himself, he commits suicide to be restored from an earlier backup and [[LaserGuidedAmnesia forget what he did]].]]

* ThouShaltNotKill: Bancroft's one rule -- though he's quite into consensual death (paying prostitutes for killing their sleeves and reinstating them in better ones), he won't cause Real Death. [[spoiler:Reileen and Miriam manipulate him into breaking the rule so they can blackmail him to kill a proposed law that would allow Reileen's murder victim sto speak out as a witnesses. Disgusted with himself, he commits suicide to be restored from an earlier backup and [[LaserGuidedAmnesia forget what he did]].]]

* ThouShaltNotKill: Bancroft's one rule -- though he's quite into consensual death (paying prostitutes for killing their sleeves and reinstating them in better ones), he won't cause Real Death. [[spoiler:Reileen and Miriam manipulate him into breaking the rule so he has motivation to kill a proposed law that would allow his murder victim to speak out as a witness. Disgusted with himself, he commits suicide to be restored from an earlier backup and forget what he did.]]

* ShoutOut: The first thing that season 2's Takeshi hears from Hamilton's original Angelica, Renee Elise Goldsberry, is "I'm not here for you".

''Altered Carbon'' is a television series produced by Creator/{{Netflix}} based on the {{Cyberpunk}} [[Literature/TakeshiKovacs trilogy]] of the same name by British writer Creator/RichardKMorgan. It stars Creator/JoelKinnaman, Creator/WillYunLee, Creator/AnthonyMackie, Creator/MarthaHigareda, Kristin Lehman, Creator/DichenLachman, Chris Conner, [[Theatre/{{Hamilton}} Renee Elise Goldsberry]], James Purefoy, Creator/SimoneMissick, Lela Loren and Torben Liebrecht. The first 10-episode season debuted in 2018, and the second in February 2020.

* MirrorReveal: When Takeshi Kovacs realizes he's been [[BodySurf resleeved]] in the first episode he threatens the medical staff with a scalpel and demands a mirror over the doctor's objections that it wouldn't help his psychological state. One of the techs hands him a metal tray, in which he momentarily hallucinates his [[Creator/WillYunLee birth sleeve]] before stabilizing and seeing his [[Creator/JoelKinnaman new face.]]

** Matt Frewer plays Carnage, a man in a synthetic sleeve that makes his face and hair look stiff and plastic, very much like Frewer's most famous role as the eponymous Series/MaxHeadroom. To put a stamp on it, he deals in data stored on VHS cassette, the media featured in the show.

* FantasticDrug: The pink backpack Kovacs buys in the first episode contains most of the drugs featured in the books: stallion, tetrameth, merge-9, reefer...

''Altered Carbon'' is a television series produced by Creator/{{Netflix}} based on the {{Cyberpunk}} [[Literature/TakeshiKovacs trilogy]] of the same name by British writer Creator/RichardKMorgan. It stars Creator/JoelKinnaman, Creator/WillYunLee, Creator/AnthonyMackie, Creator/MarthaHigareda, Kristin Lehman, Creator/DichenLachman, Chris Conner, [[Theatre/{{Hamilton}} Renee Elise Goldsberry]], James Purefoy, Creator/SimoneMissick, Lela Loren and Torben Liebrecht. The first 10-episode season debuted in 2018, and the second in February 2020. On August 26th 2020, the show was cancelled.

''Altered Carbon'' is a television series produced by Creator/{{Netflix}} based on the {{Cyberpunk}} [[Literature/TakeshiKovacs trilogy]] of the same name by British writer Creator/RichardKMorgan. It stars Creator/JoelKinnaman, Creator/WillYunLee, Creator/AnthonyMackie, Creator/MarthaHigareda, Kristin Lehman, Creator/DichenLachman, Chris Conner, [[Theatre/{{Hamilton}} Renee Elise Goldsberry]], James Purefoy, Creator/SimoneMissick, Lela Loren and Torben Liebrecht. The first 10-episode season debuted in 2018, and the second in February 2020.

* EvilVsEvil: Most of the non-violent conflict in Season 2 plays out between its two main antagonists, [[GeneralRipper Colonel Carrera]] and [[MayorPain Governor Danica Harlan]]. Depending on how your stance is on [[spoiler:the Elders]], it eventually turns into Evil vs. Evil vs. Evil.

** The Wei Clinic mentions a previous person who they serviced before Kovacs is [[spoiler:Lizzie Elliot, whose mind they raped and broke to prevent her from being able to tell her story]].

** Bancroft has a fetish for "consensual death" in that he kills prostitutes, compensating them new and better sleeves.

* ObligatoryWarCrimeScene:
** Jaeger is introduced holding an obvious grudge against Kovacs, and pays back Kovacs's disrespect by blowing out his partner's stack. Jaeger had it pinned on Kovacs, along with his other offenses. Less obvious was that the "foster family" Jaeger found for Reileen was implied to be her being bought by the Yakuza.
** [=CTAC=] isn't above torturing prisoners.
** [=CTAC=] was also responsible for the deaths of everyone at [[spoiler: the Envoy base of Stronghold]]. They went out of their way to take no prisoners and killed even the noncombatants, which included children.

* [[SurprisinglyGoodForeignLanguage Surprisingly Good German]]: Jaeger's few German sentences contained no grammatical or stylistic errors and even his pronunciation was only ''a little bit'' off.

** Reileen Kawahara is a ''much'' deeper, more TragicVillain than the vicious, depraved sadistic crimelord in the novel.

** Colonel Carrera is a hardass mercenary and one of Kovacs' major antagonists in the second novel, but he's respectful of Kovacs at first and [[GreyAndGrayMorality arguably commits fewer evil actions than Kovacs himself.]] Here he's an AxCrazy psycho from the get go [[spoiler:and combined with the show-only character of Jaeger, giving him and Kovacs an extensive backstory they didn't have in the novels and also making him responsible for a bunch of other terrible actions over the years.]]

** Poe and Quell, both comparatively minor characters in Season 1, get much more screentime and importance in Season 2.

** Anyone with enough money can "resleeve" themselves into a new body, even after they die, provided their stack isn't destroyed.

** Isaac Bancroft. In the book, the only one of the Brancrofts' children that was even named was the daughter who found Laurens' headless body, and she spends the whole story in psychosurgery.

* DatingCatwoman: Ortega hooks up with Kovacs. It helps that he got resleeved in the [[DoppelgangerReplacementLoveInterest body of her storaged boyfriend]].

* DiscountLesbians: Gender-flipped. Eliott's wife is resleeved in a male body. After the initial shock, they spend the rest of the time being as affectionate as any married couple. It's a heterosexual relationship that happens to involve two male bodies, thus delving into {{Transgender}} territory. She does eventually get her real body back.

** The AdorablyPrecociousChild that pops up at the Envoy exhibit matter of factly sums up the motive of the villain when relating her own personal problems. [[spoiler: This is because the girl is actually Reileen in disguise.]]
** Bancroft mentioning that even he had limits he would not cross. [[spoiler:Rei had him drugged in such a way that he would kill the first woman he had sex with, which he did at Head in the Clouds, brutally killing one girl (destroying her stack) and causing another to commit suicide, with the latter's stack recoded so she could not be resleeved. Bancroft chose to [[AteHisGun kill himself]] so he could forget about what he did.]]
* GenderBender: It can occur in this series if a person, willingly or not, is resleeved into the body of an opposite gender. Judging by the reactions, it's considered bad form to provide such sleeves, but ultimately acceptable as most people prefer "any body" to "no body".

** Season 2 sees [[spoiler:Quelcrist Falconer]] rejoining the universe after over 300 years on ice.

** [[spoiler:Kovacs uses his Envoy training to impersonate Tanaka in a virtual meeting. Unfortunately the person he's meeting has the same training and quickly realises who he's really talking to.]]

* JurisdictionFriction: This causes constant conflict between Colonel Carrera and Governor Harlan. Harlan's World is part of the Protectorate but has a high degree of autonomy. Carrera is there to deal with the Quellist insurection but seems to have a secondary mission of finding an excuse for the Protectorate to assert more direct control of the planet. Harlan signs a cease-fire with the rebels since peace would end Carrera's official mission and allow her to toss him off the planet. Carrera fights back by finding any excuse to claim jurisdiction and prolong his stay on the planet. He takes over the hunt for Kovacs because Kovacs is using a stolen Protectorate sleeve. He then claims that the Meth killings are a Quellist plot and thus fall under his anti-insurgency mandate. Harlan fights him all the way and finally [[spoiler: declares martial law which puts Carrera under her direct command]].

** And then there's Laurens, who [[spoiler: purposefully resleeved Takeshi into the body of Ortega's lover, because he thought she wasn't doing a good job of investigating his alleged murder and needed to be taught a lesson.]]

** In Season 2, the cop investigating Axley's death mentions that Kovacs' new sleeve contains canid DNA, which tips off Carrera that the sleeve is actually a stolen Wedge sleeve. Although the series doesn't mention why this is significant, in ''[[Literature/TakeshiKovacs Broken Angels]]'', it's a plot point that all Wedge sleeves are imbued with wolf DNA in order to create an [[BandOfBrothers unbreakable pack mentality]] between its members.

%%* OohMeAccentsSlipping: Ortega's Mexican accent is very natural, even notoriously better than her family's, since Martha Higareda has a long and succesfull film career in her homeland. However, she keeps using it even when [[spoiler: Rei is sleeved in her body]]. Even though it's shown with Dimitri that such mannerisms come with the DHF.

* ResurrectionSickness: Normally, being resleeved comes with a period of disorientation, especially when transitioning to a different body. Kovacs has training that allows him to recover a lot faster than normal.

** After having been tortured by his captors for a full episode, Takeshi single-handedly kills everyone involved with the operation.

** Anemone, real name Alice, is a good-natured prostitute killed for little reason than to give Kovacs extra motivation and anger.

* SurgicalImpersonation: Weaponised as a means of execution on Harlan's World, called "The Circle". It involves soldiers in synth sleeves being modified to look like loved ones from the victim's past, who use the appearance and limited memories of that person to psychologically torture the victim while simultaneously beating them to death.

* TwinThreesomeFantasy: Taken UpToEleven; try ''octuplet ninesome fantasy'' just because the prefixes seem to be lacking. Miriam Bancroft owns an island with its own cloning and resleeving facilities -- which she uses to run ''dozens'' of her pheremone-enhanced bodies simultaneously. [[spoiler:Kovacs uses Miriam's standing invitation to take him to that island as part of his plan to make Rei confess to her crimes, sending his double-sleeved 3D-printed clone as part of the distraction.]]

** [[spoiler:Miriam Bankcroft]] kills the unborn child of a woman in a jealous rage.

* WritersCannotDoMath: In [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrbxOAkQbpQ the first teaser]], Bancroft's backup states that he was born in 2019, first resleeved at 99 (2118), and continued doing so for the next 263 years (2381). Then he says that he supposedly committed suicide at 365 -- which would put the date at 2384.

* KillSat: Harlan's World, Tak's birth planet and the setting of Season 2, is surrounded by a dense network of Elder weapon satellites called Orbitals that vaporize anything that flies above a certain height. The system plays an important part in the season's plot.

* PowerPerversionPotential: The potentially perverse uses of BrainUploading are touched upon, such as the rich forcing people to fight to the death or submit to getting raped to death with the promise of having their mind placed into a better body afterwards. One particularly slimy manager of a hedonist resort even offers one of his supposed "clients" (actually one of the main characters infiltrating the facility), after he runs away from a prostitute who was willing to let herself be tortured, a ''child sleeve'' instead.

--->'''Quell''': Life has to ahev kimits or we're not human anymore.

A feature-length [[AllCGICartoon CG]] anime bridging the gap between seasons 1 and 2, ''Anime/AlteredCarbonResleeved'', was made available to stream on March 19, 2020.

** In Season 2, [[spoiler:the heroes prevent the rampaging Elder from wiping out the Harlan's World colony [[KillSat from orbit]] and take out the Elder in the process. The ultra-corrupt governor and Carrera/Jaeger are RD'd, but so is the primary Takeshi via HeroicSacrifice. It's softened by the ambiguity of the whole situation, though, plus a backup of Tak from before he became a Quellist is still around and has joined the good guys. All the other protagonist survived, too.]]

* SummonToHand: Although the guns that Takeshi aquires in Season 2 are merely standard handguns, they are magnetically coded to his sleeve's hands, allowing him to "call" them to him at a moment's notice.