History Series / AlteredCarbon

Hunters Entertainment held a Website/{{Kickstarter}} [[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/huntersbooks/altered-carbon-the-role-playing-game campaign]] for ''TabletopGame/AlteredCarbonTheRoleplayingGame'' set in the world of the TV series in 2020 and managed to raise $372,547 from 3,940 backers, 1863% it's goal of $20,000.

* 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 re-sleeving facilities -- which she uses to run ''dozens'' of her pheromone-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.]]

* WrittenByTheWinners: Quellcrist Falconer failed to overthrow the Protectorate and now her Uprising movement is remembered only as evil terrorists who slaughtered children. Not only that the final act that destroyed the Envoy movement was [[LastStand called the Battle of Stronghold,]] implying [[TheEmpire the Protectorate defeated]] the evil rebels in glorious one on one conflict. In truth [[spoiler: using intelligence from Reileen]] they ambushed Stronghold with a stack-destroying computer virus that drove them all mad and when [[PragmaticVillainy they were most vulnerable came in and slaughtered every single person down to the last child.]]

** [[spoiler:Reileen uses Ortega's sleeve to find out if Kovacs and Ortega have joined forces against her, and to discover the extend of Kovacs feelings for Ortega. She's also revealed to have been impersonating various people including a little girl, using her Envoy training to inhabit different sleeves without problems.]]

** [[spoiler:Issacs makes a clone of her father's sleeve and uses it to close a lucrative business deal, in an attempt to prove to his father that he's worthy of him.]]

** It also means that killing a person is a valid method of subduing a person who is needed alive (which presumably makes things difficult in the target has Neo-Catholic coding on their stack).

** Detective Ortega doesn't have a family pressuring her to become Neo-Catholic and against re-sleeving in the book. [[spoiler:Obviously this means they don't [[TargetedToHurtTheHero get killed]] by the Ghostwalker, either]].

** Detective Ortega doesn't have a family pressuring her to become Neo-Catholic and against re-sleeving in the book. [[spoiler:Obviously this means they don't get killed by the Ghostwalker, either]].

** Detective Ortega doesn't have a family pressuring her to become Neo-Catholic and against re-sleeving in the book. [[spoiler:Obviously this means they don't get StuffedIntoTheFridge by the Ghostwalker, either]].

* StuffedIntoTheFridge: Many times.
** Sarah, who was killed by [=CTAC=] just to be a dick to Kovacs, right at the start of the show.
** Anemone, real name Alice, is a goodnatured prostitute killed for little reason than to give Kovacs extra motivation and anger.
** [[spoiler:The entire Ortega family, gratuitously murdered by Rei as revenge for Kristen killing a pile of her clones]]. What makes it worse is the killer recorded his actions, kidnaps the person whose family died, and then forces the person to relive finding the scene many times over in VR.

* DeathlessAndDebauched: The use of the [[BrainUploading cortical stack technology]] has effectively granted everyone immortality (as long as their stack remains intact), but Methuselahs (or "Meths") are those who are rich enough that they can have [[BodyBackupDrive cloned sleeves]] made from scratch and on demand, and can afford to live with a continuous presence in the world for centuries. The downside is that they're prone to boredom, and their money and influence is an effective shield from legal or moral consequences, so many of them tend to become arrogant monsters who indulge in their darkest fantasies as a pastime. For example, making the poor take part in GladiatorGames or get raped or tortured to death with the promise of a new and better sleeve.

* CompositeCharacter: In the books, "the Envoys" were a governmental Special Forces agency operating under the United Nations, under who Kovacs was trained and served before he later joined up with LaResistance, which was named "the Quellists" as the organisation was lead by Quellcrist Falconer. The series takes these two organisations and mashes them together, changing the Envoys to have been Quellcrist Falconer's rebel organisation all along instead. Another significant difference this creates is that in the books, the Envoys are still very much an active government agency of which Kovacs is merely an ex-member, but in the series the illegal organisation was stamped out by the authorities, making Kovacs the LastOfHisKind.

** [[spoiler: Prescott willingly helps Tanaka take down the Bancrofts after they ruined her life]] because of manipulations by Kovacs in his investigation.

* HumanPopsicle:
** Season 1 begins with Takeshi being revived 250 years after his death.
** Season 2 sees [[spoiler:Quellcrist Falconer]] rejoining the universe after over 300 years on ice.

* DiscountLesbians: Gender-flipped. Eliott's wife is re-sleeved 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 reason stack technology exists is regularly emphasised throughout the show, from the very beginning; the pay-off for this is the Season 2 climax. [[spoiler:Stack technology only works because it's based on alien technology that humans barely understand, and Harlan Songspires exist on a world that is full of the raw material stacks are created from. The Season 2 climax happens because the Songspire acts as a form of stack technology for the Elders; when Harlan's founders killed an Elder's nursery, the victims' consciousnesses were backed up in the Songspire, identifying their murderers in a mirror of Season 1's Neo-C debate over spinning up murder victims to be their own witnesses. This happens in the show only; Songspires aren't capable of the same in the books.]]

** [[spoiler:The 3D clone printer Bancroft's youngest son used to clone and fake being his father comes back so Kovacs can put through his plan to make Rei confess to her crimes.]]

** [[spoiler:The nanovirus used to destroy the Envoys at Stronghold gets used to kill one AI and then to infect Rei's backups.]]

** Leung appears a few times standing in one location, observing things before seeming to vanish before his proper role is developed.
** [[spoiler:The Adorably Precocious Child at the museum, the woman with the snake at Bancroft's party and the dark-skinned man who hired Dimi to find Kovacs were sleeves used by Rei so she could keep an eye on him -- and the girl is also used to get Ortega to let her guard down so Rei can take her.]]

** The Wei Clinic breaks out a special torture program to use on Kovacs as a last resort, stating that the only other person on whom it was used went insane. This is later revealed to have been [[spoiler:Lizzie Elliot, who was intentionally tortured into insanity to prevent her from talking]].

** Season 2 isn't the first time Jason Schombing is investigating what happened to Michael Shanks, as happened before in an episode of ''Series/{{StargateSG-1}}''.

** Season 2 isn't the first time Jason Schombing is investigating what happened to Michael Shanks, as happened before in an episode of ''Series/{{Stargate SG-1}}''.

** Season 2 isn't the first time Jason Schombing is investigating what happened to Michael Shanks, as happened before in an episode of ''Series/{{Stargate SG-1''.

** Season 2 isn't the first time Jason Schombing is investigating what happened to Michael Shanks, as happened before in an episode of [[StargateSG1]].

** Season 2 isn't the first time Jason Schombing is investigating what happened to Michael Shanks, as happened before in an episode of [[StargateSG1].

* DoppelgangerReplacementLoveInterest: Officer Kristin Ortega keeps following Takeshi Kovacs around town after his personality has been downloaded into a new body. He later discovers that this is because the body used to belong to her deceased boyfriend, Officer Elias Ryker. This was arranged by his client Laurens Bancroft to punish her for failing to solve his own murder. Kovacs later falls into bed with Ortega after an AfterActionPatchUp, though she acknowledges that he's not the same person.

''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.

* InterrogatedForNothing: Takeshi is captured and tortured by Dimitri's minions, after he killed Dimitri's twin. They assume he was a hired assassin, but Takeshi killed him in self defense. His captors don't believe him.