History WesternAnimation / Pantheon

Maddie soon hooks up via Chatroom with Caspian Keyes, a sullen yet intelligent teenager whose parents have been keeping secrets from him involving [[MegaCorp Logorhythms]]. Maddie suspects Logorhythms has faked her dad's death and is keeping him prisoner, and the two begin a small-scale investigation into the company. Meanwhile, idealistic engineer Vinod Chanda hopes to use the "U.I" technology to usher in utopia, but his employers have far more sinister plans and target him as the latest test subject.

* AssholeVictim: Mr. Prasad. Given he was a corrupt snake who killed numerous people in his Uploading experiments, including Chanda, while posing as a benevolent businessman, ''no one'' would mourn when Chanda kills him. That said,[[spoiler:Chanda killing Prasad's innocent wife and children as well makes his revenge far less satisfying.]]

* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler:Heavily implied so far to be the case for U.I's. Logorhythms trapped David Kim and another subject in their databanks to use their minds as resources, and in turn given them every reason to rebel. And it only gets ''worse'' by episode 3, where Chanda discovers those who fail the process are trapped in the grid as amorphous, mute wraiths, yet fully remember their human lives.]]

* BadassBookworm: Every successful UI is one by default. All of them were gifted programmers and technicians before being uploaded and becoming digital super-beings who can bend their environment like clay, move at superhuman speeds, and a whole host of other fantastic abilities. Nowhere is this more evident than the final battle between David and Chandha.

* BigThinShortTrio: Maddie(short) and her two teenage friends, Caspian(thin) and Justine(big), although only technically since Caspian and Justine haven't actually met.

* CanonForeigner: The show is adapted from a trilogy of short stories(and a few others in the shared universe) so most of the cast (including Caspian, his parents, Justine, the Logorhythms staff, Cody, and Hannah) were created for the series.
* CantKillYouStillNeedYou: [[spoiler:When he's at the mercy of Prasad, Chandra begs his boss not to kill him. "Fortunately" Prasad feels Chandra's mind is still a valuable resource, but he didn't say that included his body....]]

* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Logorhythms is led by people who are willing to do anything to see their late founders' dreams achieved, even if it means holding people prisoner as sentient programs and resources. Chandra's boss arguably outclasses them, as [[spoiler:he not only turns his pupil into a U.I through a horrifying and invasive procedure, but casually mentions he's done this to other people. [[LackOfEmpathy With less successful results.]]]]

** In the season finale, [[spoiler:the entire internet is forcibly disconnected as a short-term solution to all-powerful UIs running about, now that their existence is public knowledge]].
* CyberneticsEatYourSoul: [[spoiler: Episode 4 reveals this is gradually happening to U.Is. They start out as their human personalities, but as their code breaks down they become more volatile and unstable. Laurie wants to prevent it when she senses it coming, but Chanda seems to have gone over the deep end when he burns Mr. Prasad and ''his entire family'' alive in revenge.]]

* DisposableVagrant: [[spoiler:Mr.Prasad casually reveals that before Chandra, he picked several guinea pigs from the slums of Mumbai to test the uploading process on. Chandra is horrified by this inhumanity while Prasad doesn't blink an eye at these lost lives.]]

* DigitizedHacker: A U.I is a digital copy of a human mind that can freely move through cyberspace and meddle in any computer system. Laurie Lowell wrecks havoc on Logorythms after her transformation and David hacks Maddie's school to dish out some justice on the teens tormenting his daughter. This is done by the Russians to a quite literal extent, using the digitized mind of a genius hacker who is naturally even better at his job as a digital ghost.

** [[spoiler: Pope often treats Peter disrespectfully, and it appears that Peter may have given his mooks the wrong address to prevent his former friend David from being captured again, rather than David spoofing the tracking algorithm like Peter claims to Pope.]]
** [[spoiler: Mr. Prasad secretly had several poor slum denizens gruesomely experimented on to create a UI program, with the failures trapped in the cloud as digital monstrosities. When he succeeds with Chanda, the failed uploads help Chanda escape, and Prasad ''really'' starts paying for his atrocities when a very angry Chanda hacks his apartment.]]
* DomesticAbuse: Renee and Cary's "relationship" is this, with him being critical and dismissive of her, throwing her into a table the day Hannah visits the house, and eventually breaking her arm with a hammer ([[spoiler: though Renee did the last part herself since Cary didn't have the stomach for it]]) and abandoning her and Caspian when Caspian retaliates. [[spoiler: This indicates that Stephen Holstrom's parents had a sincere case of this.]]

* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: Despite what a horrible man Prasad is, he begs Chanda to spare his family when he goes out for blood. Chanda, apparently having fully embraced his inhumanity, [[KickTheDog refuses.]]

* ExpendableClone: UIs are able to create limited copies of themselves that can imitate the behavior of the real thing while lacking the original's will. The way [[spoiler: Chanda looks at his partial copy before leaving]] could be interpreted as having some misgivings about following this trope. Presumably Logorhythms could have gone this route and only deleted a ''copy'' of David to satisfy Ellen if not for Pope's doubt of Peter being able to sell the lie.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Mr. Prasad, whose such a patient and rational man while [[spoiler:he's having a terrified Chanda's brain sliced open to be digitized, and telling him of the failed test subjects he went through behind his back.]]

* AGodAmI: [[spoiler:Stephen Holstrom wanted to correct the degradation flaw not to make all UIs immortal, but to create a single UI that would be superior to all others, which is explicitly given a God-like biblical reference by Pope.]]

* InstantAIJustAddWater: Discussed and averted. Despite the setting having more advanced software technology than in the real world, it's discussed how immensely complex general intelligence is and how humanity lacks an understanding of how it works, so the cutting edge companies of the setting don't expect artificial intelligence research to bear fruit. Instead, what they ''do'' have is an adequate understanding of how to destructively capture the physics of neurology in vivo and model it digitally, allowing the creation of U.I.s instead through a very specific process.

** Laurie, the chronologically first successful U.I., resembles the Major from ''Anime/GhostInTheShell1995''. David later mimics the extended finger typing from the 1995 film, saying he saw it in a movie once, while Maddie has a pin like the Laughing Man symbol from [[Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex Stand Alone Complex]] on her backpack.

Despite a second season having been completed prior to the show's premiere, it was announced in January of 2023 that [[https://deadline.com/2023/01/pantheon-scrapped-amc-1235214158/ the series had been cancelled]] for the purposes of a tax write-off. The show was subsequently pulled from AMC+ and Creator/HiDive that same month. However, it was [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4zqd3k3yg later announced]] that season 2 would be released on Prime Video on October 15th 2023.

Despite a second season having been completed prior to the show's premiere, it was announced in January of 2023 that [[https://deadline.com/2023/01/pantheon-scrapped-amc-1235214158/ the series had been cancelled]] for the purposes of a tax write-off. The show was subsequently pulled from AMC+ and Creator/HiDive that same month.

''Pantheon'' is a 2022 ScienceFiction {{Drama}} AnimatedSeries produced for Creator/{{AMC}}, based on the short stories of author Ken Liu. The series premiered on September 1, 2022.

* EnhanceButton: Defied. When showing a satellite image, David comments that he's zoomed in as far as he can without losing resolution.

* InstantSedation: Possibly. The camera cuts away from the struggle shortly after Chanda is grappled and injected, so we don't see how long it takes to subdue him.

* EnhanceButton: Averted. When showing a satellite image, David comments that he's zoomed in as far as he can without losing resolution.

* EverythingIsOnline: Generally averted, with things only slightly more online than in the present day. When Laurie performs a DDOS attack on Logorhythms, they mitigate the damage by disconnecting as much hardware as they can. After they beef up their firewalls, she needs Maddie to bring a wireless device onto the premises to access their intranet to be able to pull off the same trick. The Norway black site provides a similar access puzzle.

* HighHeelFaceTurn: Averted. The two female members of Pope's inner circle are the most amoral and committed among them, respectively.

* InstantSedation: Possibly averted. The camera cuts away from the struggle shortly after Chanda is grappled and injected, so we don't see how long it takes to subdue him.

''Pantheon'' is a 2022 ScienceFiction {{Drama}} AnimatedSeries produced for Creator/{{AMC}}, based on the short stories of author Ken Liu.

The [[https://youtu.be/9rht4XTs2Sw first episode]] was uploaded on September 1, 2022. Though the series already had a second season ordered before the first had premiered, it was announced in January of 2023 that the series had been cancelled and the first season was pulled from AMC+.

The [[https://youtu.be/9rht4XTs2Sw first episode]] was uploaded on September 1, 2022. Though the series already had a second season ordered before the first had premiered, it was announced in January of 2023 that the series had been cancelled and the first was pulled from AMC+.

The [[https://youtu.be/9rht4XTs2Sw first episode]] was uploaded on September 1, 2022.

Madison "Maddie" Kim is not a happy kid. Her father, brilliant programmer Daniel Kim is presumed dead. Kim was a lead designer of the "UI" (Uploaded Intelligence) project for tech corporation Logorhythms, a brilliant advancement to [[BrainUploading scan human minds into the cloud]] [[{{Transhuman}} and become more than human.]]

When Daniel was stricken by illness, he volunteered as a test subject and was believed dead when the process went haywire. She faces intense abuse and bullying at school and hasn't any friends. One rainy day, she receives messages from a mysterious stranger who seems to be interested in helping her navigate her issues. This strange new friend soon launches digital vengeance against Maddie's bullies and Madison's mother Ellen is alarmed-especially when Maddie's "friend" begins communicating in ways only her late husband would.

{{Awesome/Pantheon}}

{{Heartwarming/Pantheon}}

Heartwarming/Pantheon

Awesome/Pantheon

** Laurie, the chronologically first successful U.I., resembles the Major from ''Anime/GhostInTheShell1995''. David later mimics the extended finger typing from the 1995 film, saying he saw it in a movie once.

* AdaptationExpansion: The show is based on author Ken Liu's trilogy of short stories, which only followed Maddie. As such most of the other characters and plotlines(including Caspian and Logorhythms' arc) are either original to the series or expanded upon from the source material.
* AdaptedOut: The final story of the trilogy introduces Adam Ever, head of "Everlasting Inc", who spearheaded a mass uploading movement and supposedly is an old friend of Maddie's father. Neither he or is company are even alluded to in the show, although that may change in season 2.

* {{Animesque}}: The show's art style is very reminiscent of popular late-90s and early-2000s anime.

* AmicableExes: After talking things out and agreeing that they can’t be husband and wife anymore, David and Ellen settle into being friends.
* AmoralAttorney: Pope’s lawyer is aware of all his unethical activity and even pushes him to be ''less'' moral for the sake of reducing risk, arguing for David’s continued captivity when Maddie is trying to free him and arguing ''repeatedly'' that Caspian be killed despite Pope being firmly unwilling to do the latter. Presumably threatening Ellen and Maddie with a smear campaign was her idea.

* BadBedroomBadLife: While not derelict by any means, Caspian’s bedroom has his computer desk positioned in the middle of the room and facing the door, like someone looking over his shoulder was his chief concern when arranging the furniture. [[spoiler: This reflects the non-specific intuition he’s had that he’s being spied on.]]
* BadLiar: Pope accuses Peter of this, explaining that he made Peter genuinely transfer David’s data into the hard drive because Peter wouldn’t have been able to convince Ellen to come if he didn’t believe himself that they’d be doing what she wanted. The audience can see some of this in how he stutters in his voicemail to Ellen when describing Pope as a good man, but there are other lies he tells that land better.

** When is seems like [[spoiler: Peter’s team is about to raid the Kim household for David’s servers]], instead [[spoiler: they enter an arcade, having been sent to the wrong address.]]

** [[spoiler: Pope shushes his underlings when they tell him David and Laurie are trying hack the Norway site. He knew that would happen and is having Peter’s team trace David’s signal so he can be apprehended while occupied with the hack. The plan goes awry when the mooks end up at the wrong location, which Peter claims was due to David spoofing the tracking algorithm. Either David anticipated something like that after being shut down in Oregon, he caught on when Pope called through the compromised satellite phone, or Peter lied to protect his former friend.]]
** [[spoiler: David drained Pope’s phone battery with the expectation that he’d then leave it unattended on its charging port and David could take the opportunity to find a vulnerability in the area.]]
* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Cody argues with Laurie about how he never gets to make the major decisions in their relationship. To his horror, she’s rendered comatose shortly afterwards and he is the one to agree to the upload procedure on her behalf.

* BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil: The particularly cruel way in which [[spoiler:Chanda is uploaded]] sours him on humanity as a whole, starting with [[spoiler:murdering his boss and forcing him to watch his family die by setting his entire building on fire]].

* BodyHorror: Some elements of cyberspace are represented visually this way: [[spoiler: the failed uploads look like ghastly wraiths, Laurie’s manipulations of herself and David involve stretching and duplicating body parts, and David distorts horribly when his server starts being shut down mid-operation.]] The upload procedure itself, with the skull opened and then vivisected with a laser as blood drips down, is a more classical example.

* BrokenBird: Maddie. Poor, poor Maddie. Maddie lost her father at a young age, has no friends, and is an outcast at her school, where her bullies e-mail messages telling her to kill herself. In the first episode, it’s clear that Maddie is depressed.

* CastFromLifespan: [[spoiler: With current methods, [=UIs=] have a design flaw that causes them to gradually degrade the more processing power they use. Figuring out how to prevent that problem is the motivation for most of Logorhythm’s current schemes.]]

* CheatCode: In a flashback, David intends to use an external cheat code to respawn himself while he’s playing Lords of Winter with Maddie (with the implication he does this regularly), though when Ellen argues that’s teaching a bad lesson and leaves in a huff, he follows her rather than going through with it this time. In the present day, he reacts to a raiding party of other players interrupting his and Maddie’s conversation about Ellen not talking to him by unloading the environment’s graphics and then those players. Maddie voices worry that he could expose his presence to government agencies doing that.

* CrazyJealousGuy: Downplayed example with David. He disrupts Ellen’s date with Gabe shortly after he learns about them, but when he and Ellen finally have a conversation, he concedes that “til death do us part” means they’re not married anymore even if he could be considered still the same David and that he shouldn’t and won’t stop her from pursuing a new relationship with someone else.
* CultOfPersonality: [[spoiler: When Cary reveals to Caspian that he’s a clone intended to bring about Stephen Holstrom’s utopian vision, Caspian calls Pope’s inner circle a cult. Cary agrees.]]
* CutTheJuice: [[spoiler: Logorhythms begins disconnecting David’s servers in Oregon, forcing Laurie to compress and download him to keep him out of their clutches.]]

* DeadlyEuphemism: Pope’s lawyer refers to the prospect of killing Caspian as “terminating the project.”

* DeathFakedForYou: Logorhythms told Cody and Ellen that the upload process for Laurie and David failed, respectively. Easy to fake the dead when “alive” doesn’t have a body.
* DefectingForLove: [[spoiler: Familial love. Cary defects from Logorhythms to save Caspian from the possibility that they’ll kill him for failing to align with their goals.]]
* DisposableVagrant:[[spoiler:Mr. Prasad casually reveals that before Chandra, he picked several guinea pigs from the slums of Mumbai to test the uploading process on. Chandra is horrified by this inhumanity while Prasad doesn't blink an eye at these lost lives.]]
* DigitalAbomination: [[spoiler: The failed uploads look monstrous and initially seem threatening to Chanda, but it turns out they’re just trying to help him escape.]]

* DomesticAbuse: Renee and Cary’s “relationship” is this, with him being critical and dismissive of her, throwing her into a table the day Hannah visits the house, and eventually breaking her arm with a hammer ([[spoiler: though Renee did the last part herself since Cary didn’t have the stomach for it]]) and abandoning her and Caspian when Caspian retaliates. [[spoiler: This indicates that Stephen Holstrom’s parents had a sincere case of this.]]
* DontThinkFeel: When trying to get David to analyze her directly using UI senses, she chides him for thinking like a programmer and trying to grasp what she’s doing on an intellectual level. When his love for Maddie is what allows him to repel her, she tells him to lean into that feeling, which is what then allows his breakthrough. Downplayed in that logical analysis is what she’s trying to get him to do once he’s ‘’past’’ that hurdle.

* EnhanceButton: Averted. When showing a satellite image, David comments that he’s zoomed in as far as he can without losing resolution.

* ExpendableClone: See SelfDuplication below. The way [[spoiler: Chanda looks at his partial copy before leaving]] could be interpreted as having some misgivings about following this trope. Presumably Logorhythms could have gone this route and only deleted a ‘’copy’’ of David to satisfy Ellen if not for Pope’s doubt of Peter being able to sell the lie.

* FinancialAbuse: Possibly implied by Cary and Renee’s argument, where he accuses her of outspending his income but she insists it was just one dress and her clothes are falling apart.
* FiveSecondForeshadowing: We see the car that was ‘’supposed’’ to pick Chanda up moments before Chanda is grappled and sedated by someone in the back seat of the car he entered instead.
* {{Foil}}

* GasolineDousing: [[spoiler: Chanda facilitates Prasad’s home burning down by causing the gas pumps in the interior parking lot to pump out their contents.]]

* GrewBeyondTheirProgramming: Pope uses the term to describe David’s ability to bypass the LaserGuidedAmnesia and other control measures in place on him and values its potential for advancing UI as a field. Peter’s description to Ellen frames it as the digital model emulating the neuroplasticity present in a physical brain.
* GroundHogDayLoop:[[spoiler:Chanda ends up imprisoned in one after his successful uploading, where he relives the same boring day over and over, completely unaware what's really happening. But he breaks out when the failed uploads show him the truth and he slips out of his virtual prison unnoticed.]] David and Laurie were subjected to something similar, but in their case the loop was broken because emotion was reintroduced in an effort to improve their problem-solving, which had been worse than expected when emotion was removed. That emotion then allowed their memory to adapt and remember each loop, leading to their attempts to break out. [[spoiler: In Chanda's case, Prasad had already identified that flaw when working on the failed test subjects, so his engineer picked a careful mix of love and annoyance to avoid that, leading to him remaining stuck until the outside interference of the failed uploads.]]
* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe: The news report on the accident that rendered Laurie comatose describes her as being “nearly bisected” by the crash. When a flashback shows her in the hospital afterwards, the lower half of her body is completely absent at that point.

** Renee also becomes this as the show goes on.[[spoiler:She is cold, manipulative, and abusive, pushing Cary to throw aside his morals for the project, threatening Hannah for faltering in her role(even calling her a slut), and manipulating Caspian's love for his "mother". Unlike Cary, she has no real care for her son as his own person, and is prepared to murder Caspian when he sees through the facade, even shooting Cary as well for confessing.]]
* HaveYouToldAnyoneElse: Invoked and defied. Peter never asked who she’d told or suggested Logorhythms might kill her, but Ellen scoffs that she can’t be killed off because she’s already told the New York Times she’s ready to break her NDA.
* HaveYouTriedRebooting: When David is overclocking himself on Logorhythm’s servers demanding freedom, one of the programmers suggests rebooting from source to [[LaserGuidedAmnesia erase his memory]] now that he’s [[NoSell No Selling]] other methods of doing so.
* HeWhoFightsMonsters:[[spoiler:After escaping his virtual prison to seek revenge on Prasad, Chanda becomes just as vile as his former boss when he murders Prasad's wife and children solely to hurt him further.]]
* HighHeelFaceTurn: Averted. The two female members of Pope’s inner circle are the most amoral and committed among them, respectively.

* InstantSedation: Possibly averted. The camera cuts away from the struggle shortly after Chanda is grappled and injected, so we don’t see how long it takes to subdue him.

** In a flashback, Renee’s foreplay with Stephen Holstrom is interrupted by Cary bringing files Stephen had asked for earlier. Renee didn’t want Stephen to get up, and Cary offers to come back later when he sees Renee, but Stephen says he’ll get his laptop and transfer them immediately.
** Ellen and Gabe are starting to get intimate when David starts messing with the electronics in Gabe’s house. Ellen snaps at David to stop, and Gabe kicks Ellen out when she refuses to explain what’s going on.
** In another flashback, Cody’s surprise gift for Laurie gets her in the mood while they’re driving through the forest at night, so she has him pull over on the side of the road, gets out of her seat to straddle him, and they start kissing and feeling each other up. Then a drunk driver who doesn’t see their car through the dark and the snow rear ends them. Cody is mostly fine since he was still strapped in, but Laurie isn’t so lucky.
* ItsAllAboutMe: A character flaw of Laurie's. The night of the accident, Cody criticizes her for always being the one to make major decisions in their relationship, which she doesn't have a good counter for. After she's uploaded, this dynamic goes even further since he's her “hands in the physical world,” but he's so happy she's alive he no longer minds. Moreover, she didn't break David free for his sake, but because she thought he could [[spoiler: fix her design flaw]] and impulsively tries to kill him when he says he can't.
* IWantGrandkids: What Chanda’s mother asks for [[spoiler: in the simulation his UI is trapped in]]. When he has a phone conversation with her [[spoiler: after escaping]] she similarly tries to pair him off with a girl.
* KidsAreCruel: Samara gets Maddie’s entire class to mimic Maddie’s fidgeting as part of the bullying campaign against her.
* KilledToUpholdTheMasquerade: [[spoiler:Chanda blows up Laurie's server hub with a hijacked cruise missile to keep her from exposing the existence of [=UIs=] to the world, warning Maddie that he can do the same to her father should he follow in her footsteps.]]
* KissMeImVirtual: Defied by Ellen, who insists she can’t have a relationship with a partner that lacks a physical body both before and after David returns as a UI. Played straight with Cody, who continues his relationship with Laurie once he finds out she’s alive as an AI.

* LaserGuidedAmnesia: Since UI’s memories are part of their code, their captors can selectively partition memories away or reset them to a prior memory state. Learning to NoSell this is what lets the [=UIs=] start going rogue, though the more thorough method of rebooting from source is suggested to still potentially work.
* LiteralMetaphor: When Cody complains to Laurie that he’s never in the driver’s seat in their relationship, she replies that he’s in the driver’s seat of their car at that moment.

* LoveMartyr: [[spoiler: As part of her act,]] Renee begs Caspian to stop attacking Cary after he “broke her arm” and begs Cary not to leave when he walks out on them. [[spoiler: Presumably the Mrs. Holstrom she was emulating was the genuine article.]]

* NightmareSequence: The third episode opens with Maddie bringing her father to class for “take your parent to school day,” only for Logorhythms to take him from her to run further tests.

* ObfuscatingStupidity: Renee pretends not to know what UI is when Caspian brings it up, or to remember the correct term when she asks him if he’s still looking into it later. Driving home without the groceries she was getting may also have been part of her helpless housewife act, or she may genuinely have forgotten after talking to Pope.

* OverclockingAttack: [[spoiler: In a literal example, one step of David’s cyberattack on Logorhythm’s Norway site is to overclock Pope’s satellite phone. This doesn’t make it explode, just drains the battery, prompting Pope to leave it on its wireless charging station where David can use it to access a laptop that’s also been left there to charge.]]
* PoorCommunicationKills: The first time we see Pope’s lawyer suggest Caspian be killed, Pope shuts her down in no uncertain terms. However, Cary and Renee don’t hear that because Pope had muted his microphone prior to that part of the conversation. When she argues for it again when Pope isn’t present but Cary is, [[spoiler: Cary is convinced that’s genuinely under consideration and goes rogue to try to save him.]]
* PowerEchoes: Laurie’s voice reverberates electronically at several points while confronting David in his simulated office space.
* ThePowerOfLove: Discussed in the opening narration of the second episode and in Stephen Holstrom’s presentation, which posit love as what sets humans and [=UIs=] apart from simple A.I.s. When implemented, [=UIs=] cut off from their emotions don’t have the same creative problem solving that they did as humans, and reintroducing love to fix that problem can cause them to “evolve beyond their programming” due to it stimulating neuroplasticity. [[spoiler: David, Laurie, and Chanda are motivated by their love for Ellen and Maddie, for Cody, and for Chanda’s mother, respectively. In particular, David’s love for Maddie is what lets him repel Laurie’s murder attempt.]]
* PowerPerversionPotential: In flashback, Stephen Holstrom discusses with Renee how uploaded intelligence could allow people to have even better sex in the virtual world using [[FantasticArousal senses humans didn’t even know they had]]. In the present, Cody alludes to he and Laurie managing to stay intimate using electronic sex toys.
* RealDreamsAreWeirder: Maddie’s NightmareSequence has an odd premise (Maddie openly bringing her uploaded father to school for “take your parent to school day”), jumbles the situation (the hard drive containing his compressed data file is instead a lunchbox that contains him as a Lilliputian along with her lunch), merges characters (Peter starts in the role of her teacher before he then takes David back for Logorhythms), and doesn’t maintain continuity (her classmates vanish between shots).

* RefugeInAudacity: [[spoiler: After Logorhythms tracks down David’s servers in Oregon, the protagonists don’t feel they have time to set up servers for him out of reach on a boat like Laurie has, so they set up his new servers in the Kim household basement.]]
* RevealingCoverup: [[spoiler: Logorhythms installing chips on Caspian’s computer to monitor him, which allows them to alter the Google Earth pictures of the Norway site before he can take a screenshot, confirm to him that he is indeed being monitored by Logorhythms when he disassembles his computer and finds them.]]

* StreisandEffect: Invoked by Ellen, who says that Logorhythms can’t kill her because she already told the New York Times that she’s ready to break her NDA with them.
* StylisticSuck: The voice quality of the The Lords of Winter players that invade Maddie and David’s game is atrocious, indicating they have cheap microphones.
* SuperIntelligence: In addition to the SuperReflexes below, [=UIs=] can develop the ability to visualize the make-up of digital systems they interface with, enhancing their capacity to understand it. It’s unclear what other capabilities may be boosted, since all the extant successful uploads were genius programmers to start with.
* SuperReflexes: [=UIs=] can think at accelerated rates if they devote the processing power to do so. The intended use for the extant [=UIs=] was for them to simply keep performing the programming jobs they had as humans, but faster. [[spoiler: We see Chanda experiencing a day’s worth of work in a much shorter span, and then accelerated to experience multiple weeks of workdays within a single day.]] David complains that Ellen refusing to talk to him for a few days felt longer from his perspective.
* TearsOfBlood: [[spoiler: One of Chanda’s eyes bleeds slightly during his upload procedure.]]
* TomatoInTheMirror: [[spoiler: Cary informs Caspian that he is a clone of Stephen Holstrom and that his life has been manipulated to the best of Logorhythm’s ability to mirror Stephen’s. The hope was that it would make Caspian similar enough to be able to solve the problem Stephen was on the cusp of solving when he died.]]
* TooMuchInformation: When Ellen wonders how Cody could be happy in a relationship where his partner isn’t physical, he explains they’ve managed to remain intimate using “devices. That you plug in.” Ellen cuts him off saying she’s got it before he gives any more detail.
* ToughLove: Cary frames his emotional abuse of Caspian as helping him live up to his potential, but it’s not terribly convincing. [[spoiler: This is actually more genuine than it seemed, since putting Caspian through the same traumas as Stephen Holstrom was meant to mold him into the same kind of genius.]]
* TrailersAlwaysSpoil: The trailer for season 1 spoils [[spoiler: Cary bringing Caspian to the Norway black site]] and [[spoiler: Laurie’s ocean servers being destroyed.]]
* TransferableMemory: Since the UI’s memories are just a part of their code, they can be manipulated, reset, or fail to transfer. The initial plan for harnessing [=UIs=] was to put them in a virtual work environment without any life memory outside that context, and to continually reset their memories so they don’t catch on to the situation, but [[spoiler: the memory reset began to fail for Laurie and David when emotional memory was reintroduced to get their productivity back up, and for Chanda when the failed uploads interfered.]] When [[spoiler: David’s server in Oregon is shut down,]] he isn’t transferred completely in time and loses the past day or so of his memory.
* TroubledAbuser: [[spoiler: Cary has misgivings about the harm he’s put Caspian through for the sake of turning him into the next Stephen Holstrom.]]

* UnwittingTestSubject: [[spoiler: When hired to play the role of Caspian’s girlfriend, Hannah is told that he’s the subject of a social experiment.]]
* UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans: Stephen Holstrom espoused a utopian future for humanity through the use of UI, and Logorhythm’s villainy in the present day are in service of that vision.
* WaxingLyrical: During a presentation on uploaded intelligence, Stephen Holstrom asks the audience to [[Music/TheBeatles “Imagine. It’s easy if you try,”]] prompting chuckles from the audience. Caspian sarcastically calls him [[LampshadeHanging “real original.”]]

* WordSaladHorror: [[spoiler: Chanda’s begging for his life devolves into disconnected babbling as the laser cuts into his brain to upload him. As Laurie's condition continues to deteriorate due to the flaw all UI have she's more likely to mix her words up or backslide into random babbling.]]

* XanatosGambit: Pope’s goal is to figure out how to crack the UI integrity problem, which he thinks David may play into. He ‘’won’t’’ accept Ellen’s request to delete David, but when Maddie and Laurie hold Logorhythm’s systems hostage until he releases David, he decides that letting David develop on the open internet and potentially be recaptured later is better than trying to wrangle his current state back into compliance in captivity. Note that Peter gave six minutes as the timeframe for when he could capture the part of Laurie conducting the attack (which we later see they did successfully do), but it takes Maddie and Ellen almost fifteen to leave the premises, so apprehending them before they left was an option he chose to pass up on.
* VirtualGhost: BrainUploading to create these forms the central premise.

* NoPlansNoPrototypeNoBackup: Despite being copyable and being able to fit on a small hard drive when compressed, none of the [=UIs=] have backups.

** When first meeting, Hannah and Caspian make pop culture referencing including how their names are also in The Chronicles of Narnia and Hannah Montana.
** Maddie likens her arranged dinner for her parents to The Parent Trap, and is dismayed when Justine hasn't heard of or seen either version.
** Laurie, the chronologically first successful U.I., resembles the Major from Ghost in the Shell. David later mimics the extended finger typing from the 1995 film, saying he saw it in a movie once.

Maddie soon hooks up via Chatroom with Caspian Keyes, a sullen yet intelligent teenager whose parents have been keeping secrets from him involving [[MegaCorp Logorhythms]]. Maddie suspects Logorhythms has faked her dad's death and is keeping him prisoner, and the two begin a small-scale investigation into the company. Meanwhile, idealistic businessman Vinod Chanda hopes to use the "U.I" technology to usher in utopia, but his employers have far more sinister plans and target him as the latest test subject.

Madison "Maddie" Kim is not a happy kid. Her father, brilliant programmer Daniel Kim is presumed dead. Kim was a lead designer of the "UI" (Uploaded Intelligence) project for tech corporation Logorhythms, a brilliant advancement to [[BrainUploading scan human minds into the cloud]] [[{{Transhuman}} and become more than human.]] When Daniel was stricken by illness, he volunteered as a test subject and was believed dead when the process went haywire. She faces intense abuse and bullying at school and hasn't any friends. One rainy day, she receives messages from a mysterious stranger who seems to be interested in helping her navigate her issues. This strange new friend soon launches digital vengeance against Maddie's bullies and Madison's mother Ellen is alarmed-especially when Maddie's "friend" begins communicating in ways only her late husband would. Maddie soon hooks up via Chatroom with Caspian, a sullen yet intelligent teenager whose parents have been keeping secrets from him involving [[MegaCorp Logorhythms]]. Maddie suspects Logorhythms has faked her dad's death and is keeping him prisoner, and the two begin a small-scale investigation into the company. Meanwhile, idealistic businessman Chandra hopes to use the "U.I" technology to usher in utopia, but his employers have far more sinister plans and target him as the latest test subject.