Headscratchers / Murder Drones

• What exactly is the relationship the drones have with each other? One of the worker drones clearly says "my family," yet all the drones were mechanically created, not birthed. What dictates a worker drone's family? Friendship?
  • Drones that want to start families create or take in untrained neural networks in simple shells that they raise. Raising them effectively trains the neural network which will eventually be transferred into a humanoid shell when it reaches adulthood. Presumably the humans would have put them all through an accelerated standard training program rather then this much more personal route which allows them to develop quirks.
  • It could be that once the robots Grew Beyond Their Programming, they developed human-like social skills and may have decided to "adopt" each other into their families. It could also be possible that the Worker Drones build their "descendants" and call them their sons/daughters.
    • We see an infant Worker Drone in the pilot, so it could be this combined with some analogue to aging.
  • Uzi definitely refers to the parent company as "dad", so perhaps they all consider themselves to have one parent.
    • No, she's referring to her own dad for not thinking that they could fight the Murder Drones.
• How does collapsing a planet's core only kill biological lifeforms? Shouldn't it destroy the entire planet?
• How are accents a thing with the robots? They're all robots from the same maker. And while "They were programmed with accents depending on where on Earth they were sent to" comes to mind after a little thinking, that then poses the following question of how and why all the different region robots suddenly all moved to the same area.
  • As seen in the pilot, there are infant Worker Drones with something like developing neurals or something, so maybe they just program their own accents.
• Who sent the Murder Drones? It's mentioned in the trailer that humanity died out in a planetary core collapse but also that the company sent the murder drones to wipe out the now free worker drones, these seem a little contradictory to each other.
  • Considering they came from space, the parent company is probably aliens.
  • It seems like the humans designed the Murder Drones as a backup plan in case if the Worker Drones ever went rogue, and this was the result.
  • Turns out that humanity outside the exoplanet is fine according to the pilot.
  • With the major Tessa reveal and N's flashback in episode 7, it's not unreasonable to assume that Cyn was the one who sent them.
• Why is there an easily accessible^*for a Murder Drone ventilation shaft in the chamber between the doors? Doesn't it kind of make the inner doors pointless?
• If the Murder Drones have such a bad overheating problem, why is N outfitted with a heavy fur-lined trench coat that wouldn't look out of place on the Siberian front? That is to say, a garment designed solely to KEEP HEAT IN.
  • He probably doesn't know and just thinks it looks cool. N isn't the brightest after all.
  • To ensure that even if deployed to a particularly cold planet the Murder Drones will die off after the rogue Worker Drones are all dead. That seems to be the plan, Murder Drones kill all the Workers then without Worker oil they overheat and die.
• If a single teenage worker drone was capable of defeating a murder drone squad, then how on earth are murder drones dominant? They somehow managed to reduce the worker drone "species" to endangerment and living exclusively in hiding, yet a single young not-fully-trained worker drone killed a squad deadset on genocide.
  • Uzi is a little bit different. She can pull stunts supposedly because she watched anime, can build homemade laser guns, and as N's interface so kindly pointed out, she has plot armor. And her eyes turn yellow for some reason. There's probably more to her than meets the eye.
    • To add into this, Uzi had to use Murder Drone's own technology to make her railgun work properly. Meanwhile the Murder Drones themselves can survive, for example, getting their heads blown clean off. There's a pretty good chance that the Worker Drones don't have any conventional weapons to defend themselves or the bravery to go against nigh-unstoppable murder bots, especially if it involves trying to make Murder Drones Hoist by His Own Petard.
    • Episode 4 also seems to suggest that Uzi's mother Nori was a test subject for some kind of research project, one which seems to involve the Absolute Solver.
  • Another easy explanation is that the Worker Drones are simply too afraid to even consider fighting back. Uzi was an exception likely due to pirating anime and growing up with somewhat abusive conditions. Simply, the Worker Drones didn't think that it was possible to defeat a Murder Drone and thus spent more time on building barriers than weapons, so they grew used to not having to fight.
    • In addition, most worker drones seem to be Too Dumb to Live. There are several instances of the worker drones walking into obviously lethal situations without a second thought and dying. The door guard forgave N and gave him free access to Outpost 3 after being handed a crudely drawn apology card. When J describes the workers as being slightly smarter than toasters, she's probably speaking from experience.
• The murder drones are shown to use very similar mechanics and internals to the normal worker drones, so why didn't J's EMP also disable herself?
  • Electronics can actually be hardened against EMPs with the right tech. Most civilian infrastructure isn't because it's expensive but military tech often is. As a result the Murder Drones are probably EMP hardened while worker drones aren't.
  • Assuming that the EMP was specifically designed for J, it's possible that her body was designed to be immune to that specific EMP weapon before being sent on the mission. After all, a useful weapon like that wouldn't be very useful if it ended up hurting its owner too, now wouldn't it? Also, the Murder Drones have been shown to have been designed with countermeasures against their own weapons (like their saliva being able to neutralize their acid), so J being immune to her own weapon isn't that big of a stretch.
    • A later episode brings all of that into question when two Murder Drones (N & V) and a Worker Drone altered by her Absolute Solver (Uzi) are knocked offline by an EMP from a salvaged Murder Drone arm.
    • It should be noted that the worker drone using said salvaged arm wasn't knocked out (there was another drone next to her but we can't be sure it wasn't also knocked out), so there must be something that prevent the user themselves from being affected. Maybe it's not omnidirectionnal and they can choose where the EMP blast will be directed and it's range?
• Murder Drones have the excuse of needing to drink oil and lick wounds to heal, but why do Worker Drones have tongues and teeth? They were built to serve humans, which would never require either of those.
  • I think JC Jensen wanted the Worker Drones to have a deliberately nonthreatening design, so that people would be less likely to object to their presence: hence the clothes, cartoony eyes and round bodies with few edges. To this end, giving them a human-like mouth to "speak", rather than a speaker grille, would make them seem less inhuman.
  • Alternatively, since N describes Worker oil as "sweet", the Workers and Murder Drones might have some sort of chemical sensor in their mouth, to "taste" and identify substances. It'd be useful to identify toxins that would affect human coworkers.
• Why do Disassembly Drones require oil to avoid overheating? N describes it as "warm and sweet", wouldn't it make more sense if what ran through their body was coolant?
  • It probably is. The drones clearly don't have all that much understanding of their own inner workings beyond what's absolutely required. That and it's a means to ensure that once any rogue workers are destroy the Murder Drones die as well.
  • From what I've found, oil that is too cold can result in engine failure for cars, so I don't think the warmth of the oil is a problem.
  • The disassembly drones are probably designed not to last past their mission, in order to prevent more rogue AI from forming. Ergo, they are given a dependency on their prey in order to ensure their destruction after their mission. The drones are probably unable to tolerate sunlight for similar reasons. Furthermore, the pleasure they feel from killing and drinking the workers probably helps in keeping them on mission.
• Does JC Jenson not understand seasons? Using cooling oil, the murder drones might be able to survive the winter without overheating, but if they're at risk of overheating in what looks like below zero, how the hell are they meant to survive in the summer? Was JC Jenson just hoping that by then they'd have already wiped out all worker drones?
  • Given that the entire planet is covered in a frozen wasteland from the core collapse, seasons likely aren't an issue given that its implied the disassembly drones have been on the planet for years. The overheating issue is also probably an intentional design flaw, once all the worker drones are gone the disassembly drones won't be useful anymore.
• Speaking of the previous entry, in Ep. 4 how can Uzi begin overheating if the outside temperature is several degrees below freezing point?
• Why does N mention a toxic death storm to V if machines aren't affected by toxins?
  • Toxic overall to organic life.
    • I think he was trying to flirt by suggesting they hide somewhere together until it stops blowing.
  • It's probably just their counterpart to the weather being extra bad tonight.
• So the murder drones go by serial designations, aka letters, like J, N, and V. However, there are only 26 letters, and it's strongly implied there's hundreds of murder drones on the planet. What do they go by?
  • As of the Pilot, there's just the three on the planet: one pod landed, and you can clearly identify V, N, and J in the opening. However, in the rest of the galaxy… I suspect that JC Jensen only sends a couple of "Disassembly Drones" to a location, lets them kill all their targets and die due to lack of oil, and then reassigns their letter.
    • Actually, it's implied that there are other Disassembly Drone teams as N mentions being the leader of the squad in "this city"
  • Alternatively, it's entirely possible that the alphabet they're using to name the murder drones may not even just be the english alphabet. There's more than one kind of alphabet, and some of them even have more than 26 letters (for example, the Russian alphabet has 33 letters instead). And once they run out of letters for a specific alphabet, maybe they move on to another alphabet to name to the murder drones with. Since we've already seen a drone named "V", then that means they've probably already made at least 23 murder drones for the standard english alphabet. And once they've made drones X, Y and Z, they may start going with another alphabet to name the drones (for example, if they go with the greek alphabet, then the next murder drones that get made after "Z" would be named Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc…). Heck, they don't even have to use letters. Maybe they'll use numbers, colors, animals, etc…
    • Or maybe even something like the NATO phonetic alphabet (Charlie, Sierra, Oscar, Lima, November, etc…) too.
  • As of "Dead End", there definitively are more Disassembly Drones on the planet, but they seem to all be clones of the main three.
    • No, they're not all clones of the main three as some of the more intact bodies have hairstyles that resemble the Elliot Manor Workers besides N, V, and J.
• So Worker Drones are implied to be birthed, and the babies have to develop their own A.I., allowing each Worker Drone to have their own distinctive personality. However, each Murder Drone has a distinctive personality as well. Did they go through a similar procedure, and why did JCJenson allow this despite not liking the risk of "runaway A.I."?
  • This is just speculation here, but the company probably gave the murder drones a pass on this sort of thing, because they were expecting the murder drones to starve and die out after they finished killing all the worker drones. After all, the murder drones need to drink the blood of the worker drones to survive, so no more worker drones means no more murder drones. Basically, the company's mindset was probably something along the lines of: "the murder drones have sentient A.I.s and we don't like that, but we don't have to worry about them because they'll die on their own after they finish killing all the workers, so we don't need to bother destroying them ourselves".
  • Another possibility is that more sentient A.I has much more flexible thinking like humans. So programming a less sentient A.I means less adaptability and less efficiency for their Dissasembly Drones.
• What the hell kind of sorting system is used for the serial designations where J, N, and V, letters that are all nowhere near each other, are grouped together?
  • I figure that they just picked letters that sounded like cool names.
  • Or maybe they were all made at the same time along other murder drones, but the others all got busy with other missions and those specific three drones were coincidentally the only ones available for the mission on Uzi's planet?
• Why did JCJenson program the disassembly drones to destroy worker drones? Wouldn't it make more sense to program them to deactivate workers and carry them to some sort of pick-up point, so that JC could collect, repackage, and resell them? It seems like a waste to just tear them to shreds when there's nothing wrong with them that would prevent them working.
  • Can the Worker Drones even be reused? From the looks of it, their programming is permanent, similarly to that a human mind. Plus, they also "grow" from baby robots. These drones might be advanced enough to the point of artificial life and there's not much you can do with them after they've been trained.
• According to Word of God, Murder Drones are so hot that to touch one of them would cause your skin to melt and fuse to the metal. If that's the case, how is it that in the scenes they're standing in the snow, the snow around them isn't turning to steam, or melting at all?
  • It's just that cold. Deal with it.
  • Given what we've seen of stuff like the AS, there could be plenty of other things that completely defy any sense of logic. Either that, or the nuclear winter could just be so extreme as to enable any melted snow to quickly refreeze.
• Why is the security system a series of doors anyways? Their society seems to be thriving just fine with what they have already, doors could end up letting the murder drones in, and having a system of doors is just waiting for an inciting incident, just like Uzi said. Wouldn't just building walls be better?
  • We actually have no idea how self sustaining Outpost 3 is. Perhaps there are things they need to go outside and do during the day while the Murder Drones have to stay inside.
• So, does colony refer to the planet as a whole, or is that what the Worker Drone communities are called?
  • That's what communities are called.
    • Actually, the colonies are called Outposts with there being at least 9 confirmed Outposts.
• Is it me, or was Khan leaving out some details about giving Uzi's mom a Mercy Kill?
  • What exactly do you mean? Nothing in his story seems to be hiding anything or needing more information. A murder drone attacked his wife, and the attack left her dying, so he had to Mercy Kill her.
    • There is the rather interesting Freeze-Frame Bonus of Khan's picture of his family in his room being half burned with a dried yellow liquid on its edges, presumably nanite acid. If the Disassembly Drones' use of vampire tropes extends to the point of being able to turn worker drones into more of themselves, I'd say its HIGHLY likely Uzi's mom was in the process of turning when Khan killed her.
  • The murder drones having vampire traits.
  • The Absolute Solver has a hologram of Uzi's mom with the same Solver symbol that Uzi now has and also says "It hurts our [Solver's] feelings you don't remember us." Note that the only holograms we see it using so far are that of Drones it's assimilated or tried to assimilate. So this lends credence to the idea that mom was turning into something bad.
    • Maybe something similar to what happened to Uzi during Episode 4 was happening to Nori and played a part in her death? Seeing what happened in Uzi's case, Khan could've easily felt threatened if it was happening to Nori too and she attacked someone, so he may have been forced to kill her in self-defense. He also might've not understood what was going on (he said it himself that he never noticed the chokers Yeva and Nori wore), and blamed the Disassembly Drones for what happened as a result.
• How did Uzi get the door open when she came back to the colony? If there was a way to open it from the outside, the Murder Drones could've just opened it themselves, so how'd she get back in?
  • She took a key with her that likely works both ways. As for why the Dissasembly Drones couldn't get in, the key is stored on a floppy disk which indicates it uses way outdated technology they aren't equipped to deal with.
• If the disassembly drones are incapable of going outside during the day without dying, why do the Outpost 3 WDF work during the day and not just during the night? Sounds like a waste of energy to station guards during a period of time where the enemy is physically incapable of attacking.
  • One might assume the Outpost 3 WDF also do law enforcement on the side and might watch for criminal behavior other drones might attempt during the day.
• If Uzi is the only Worker Drone who isn't deathly afraid of the Disassembly Drones, and thus the only one willing to go near their tower, then how did the Worker Drones get the photo of said tower that she displays on the board during her presentation?
  • It might've been taken during the day by some random Worker Drone who, for whatever reason, decided to venture outside. After all, even simple exposure to sunlight is enough to make the Disassembly Drones overheat.
• Why did Uzi's Murder Drone form develop disturbing biomechanical wings and a tail when her Reality Warper powers are extensive enough to simply construct 'normal' metallic ones? Uzi did use the AS to remove V's scratch on her 'optical sensors' after all.
  • In the first episode, a Freeze-Frame Bonus from when N regenerates his head reveals that, somehow, the AS, or at least part of its abilities, has been been blocked by an Administrator named "CYN"- the same name V calls Uzi while the latter was mid-rampage. Given what J's AS form looked like, it's highly likely that this is what they would probably look like with the limiters switched off.
• One of N's distorted memories upon seeing the Zombie Drone VHS tapes shows that nameless Worker Drone who was standing behind Tessa in Episode 2 appearing to be threatening N while having the AS active, which is a very strange contrast against the more innocent behavior she showed in Episode 2. However, based on N's reaction when he first met her, he was very clearly scared of her from the first moment he saw her. Who is she, and how is she linked to the story? Is she who "Cyn" really is?
  • V referred to Uzi as "Cyn", and said something about her having a "new body" and seeing the "same horrors". If the preceding question is true, are the two connected somehow, perhaps by Uzi being a pseudo-reincarnation?
    • Or Cyn is some sort of AI that spreads through the Absolute Solver Program?
    • That could be possible, since it could still explain why Cyn is referred to as an "Administrator" during a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the pilot.
• Speaking of the regular Zombie Drones ... where are they? There are literal piles of improperly disassembled Worker Drones yet none of them reboot and begin shambling around. Cyn is the only one we see reanimate and she goes AS almost immediately. But regular Zombie Drones? Nothing.
  • N, V, and J ARE regular Zombie Drones, or at least were when Tessa took them in. They all had the "marked for disassembly" bands on their arms, and they were explicitly pulled from the dump, suggesting that Tessa went around adopting Zombie Drones when they reactivate in the piles of drones not properly disassembled. They just don't act like traditional zombies because the "Zombie" part of their name refers to them reactivating on their own, as opposed to pop-culture undead behavior.
• What exactly happened to Uzi's new parts after she and N crashed?
  • Maybe there's something that causes them to not always be out?
  • Dead End shows that these parts are retractable, shrinking away whenever Uzi doesn't need them.
• Related to the above, Murder drones can retract their wings. Why can't they retract their acidic tails which are as dangerous to them as to their targets? J gets stabbed by her own tail, V also suffers this from corrupted Uzi and N is such a dork, that he might as well prick himself by accident.
• One of the things Uzi finds in the abandoned cabin during Episode 4 is a sheet of paper regarding something about sending some Drone in for disassembly. But there's something weird about it. If you look closely, the name of the Drone is a full serial designation for a Disassembly Drone, and given that the first letter of the Disassembly Drones' full serial designations is what they go by, the unknown Drone's name should be "Serial Designation S". What's up with that, and what potential significance does this have?
• How does a bright flash from the Sentinels boot loop any drone it hits? Any idea how that works? Does it short out the optics and trigger a BSOD or something?
  • Given that they're only found in a lab that was run by humans, the Sentinels were probably engineered specfically to take out rogue or escaping Drones, in which case the Drones were probably built to be compatible with said stunning tech.
• With the amount of time that N has gone without killing any drones for their oil, how has he been able to survive for so long without overheating?
  • Uzi is seen drinking oil from a can in episode 5, indicating that the AS afflicted drones don't strictly need to kill to survive as long as a source of fresh oil is present. There's also a literal mountain of corpses outside, which won't go bad since they're robots.
• Why would JcJenson have back-ups for Disassembly Drones when they didn't even create them in the first place?
  • Probably as an extension of their foolish belief they could control the Solver.
    • Still doesn't answer my question.
      • Turns out it wasn't really JcJenson who sent the backup.
• Why would any of the robots feel scared about dying? Couldn't they just be brought back to life through repairing the parts that are broken?
• If they're robots, how exactly is it possible for them to feel anything, or have opinions, or have individual thoughts? AI should not be able to be so advanced, the most they can do is mimic human speech.
  • Simple: It's a series where A.I tech has advanced to that level of sentience, sapience, and intelligence. Like every other series or franchise with these kinds of robots.
  • Also: Strictly imitation is the definition for a VI (Virtual Intelligence), not AI, and is where modern humans are with robotic technology. AI is the level where a synthetic intelligence can learn, grow, and abstract thoughts on its own without outside input, gaining sentience in the process.
• If most of the characters are robots, wouldn't and couldn't a Worker Drone that got killed have their AI backed up somewhere to be transferred into a new body?
  • Maybe the technology that could do that was destroyed during the Core Collapse or the Disassembly Drones.
• At the end of 4th episode we see that the sunlight hurts now AS-corrupted Uzi too. Shouldn't the original Absolute Solver also be vulnearable to sunlight?
• Why aren't he humans' clothes rendered normally in the flashback? It wouldn't make them any less "enigmatic" - their skin and hair could remain a dark shadow but clearly visible clothes would make them easier to perceive.
• What exactly is Tessa up to? In the past she was adopting decommissioned drones which includes Cyn, butimmediately turned onto her once Cyn got corrupted bz AS. Also Tessa rebels against her parents but still comes to the rescue when Cyn threatened to massacre them - actually believing she's doing Tessa a favor (which kind of makes sense). Last but not least Tessa disapproves Jc Jenson and their mistreatment of worker drones but still "encourages" J by teasing her with made-up stories of worker drones wanting paid leave and such, which stirs up J's Professional Butt-Kisser nature. And in the present Tessa is an employee of Jc Jenson - a certified technician actually.
• How come Doll never gets possessed by AS even considering her extensive use of its powers?
• Why isn't Lizzy scared of Doll? Considering she's an accomplice in Doll's vengeance-against-V plan, Lizzy must've been well avare of what is Doll capable of.
• Why did N leave Uzi's side during the confrontation with J-borne Solver? Even if it was just for a short while, it allowed the Solver to trick Uzi with an N hologram and disarm her. Even though N is a dork, he's not a complete moron and actually has fair understanding for serious and hazardous situations. He knew Uzi needed protection but still left her side.
• If Uzi didn't actually wander out of the Outpost would Doll still carry out her plan unchanged? Unlike Uzi she had no access to the doors, although she could simply use her AS to bypass them. But the plan was to lure V to the prom and make her the prom queen to drop her alert and V would've had no way of getting past the doors without the inciting incident taking place.
• Doll was shot from behind and there was a hole in her visor, which means that the bullet passed through. How could she take the bullet out of her head when it wasn't supposed to be there in the first place?

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