Case 63 is an Audio Play series created and written by Julio Rojas. It's definitely Science Fiction, and has sometimes been called a Psychological Thriller as well.
It's about Time Travel—or rather Alternate Universes—and a future ravaged by endless waves of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The story begins in 2022 when a man wakes up naked in an airport bathroom, claiming to be a time traveler from the year 2062. He's taken to a hospital, registered as Case 63, and assigned a psychiatrist who begins treating him for his delusions. As their sessions unfold, the psychiatrist begins to question the boundaries of what is possible and what is real.
The Chilean original came out in 2020, and it was so popular other countries proceeded to jump all over it with Foreign Remakes.
| Title | Version | Starring | Out | |
Caso 63 | original | Chilean, Spanish-language | Antonia Zegers & Nestor Cantillana | 3 seasons + Spin-Off Enigma |
| Paciente 63 | adaptation | Brazilian, Portuguese-language | Mel Lisboa & Seu Jorge | 3 seasons |
| Virus 2062 | adaptation | Indian, Hindi-language | Richa Chadha & Ali Fazal | 2 seasons |
| Case 63 | adaptation | American, English-language | Julianne Moore & Oscar Isaac | 2 seasons |
Adaptational changes
Adaptational changes
- Adaptational Location Change: Most are set in their country's biggest city. The pivotal plane flight is to their country's once colonial power.
- The Chilean original is set in Santiago. Pedro is Mexican, born in Mexico City. Flight 6433 is to Madrid.
- The Brazilian version is set in São Paulo. Pedro is Brazilian in this one, but born in Porto Alegre—far enough away from São Paulo that the difference in accent can be discussed. Flight 6433 is to Madrid.
- The Indian version is set in Mumbai. Flight 262 is to London.
- The American version is set in New York City, and the Big Applesauce setting is Conversed. Peter is English, born in Essex. Flight 262 is to London.Peter: Have you thought about that? What the end of the world will be like?
Dr Knight: No, not really.
Peter: I find that hard to believe. Come on, we're in New York. How many times have we seen the city blown up by aliens in the movies? Everybody here must think about the end of the world sometimes. Nuclear explosion; an asteroid; massive tidal wave that reaches the tip of the Empire State Building.
- Adapted Out: In 1.05 of the Chilean original (and Brazilian version) Pedro says that during the time of cancel culture he was too young to experience the brunt of it, but some of his elder brother's friends were Driven to Suicide. This brother's existence does not fit into the timeline. Elisa makes the call introducing Pedro's parents on November 24, 2022, and Pedro is born in short order in 2023. This brother is either a half-brother, or a really egregious case of Writers Cannot Do Math. The American adaption drops the brother, and the people who committed suicide are just said to be people Peter knew.
- Artifact Title: Episode 1.08, "Gaspar Marín." In the original Chilean version, Gaspar Marín is the name Peter confesses to be his real identity. In the American version that name is changed to Oliver Collins, yet the episode title remains the same.
- Dub Name Change
| Chilean | Brazilian | Indian | American | |
| The female lead | Elisa Beatriz Aldunate Cifuentes | Elisa Beatriz Amaral Fontes | Gayatri Bindiya Rajput | Eliza Beatrix Knight |
| The male lead | Pedro Roiter | Pedro Roiter | Peter Pereira | Peter Roiter |
| Patient Zero | María Eva Beitía | Maria Cristina Borges | Malini Bansal | Marie Eva Baker |
| The female lead's sister | Daniela "Dani" Aldunate | Daniela "Dani" Amaral Fontes | Danielle "Dani" Knight | |
| Conspiracy Theorist and Sci-Fi writer | Gaspar Marín | Gaspar Marín | Oliver Collins | |
| Roiter's Alternative-Self Name-Change | Vicente Correa | Vicente Correa | Vincent Caldwell | |
| The name the female lead is hospitalized under | Emilia Sanz | Emília Sanz | Emily Saks |
Tropes
- 20 Minutes into the Future: The dates are the same across the different adaptations. Peter is traveling from the year 2062. He's 39 years old, and was born in 2023. Episode 1.01 — the protagonists' very first session together — is dated October 22, 2022. But since the versions didn't all come out at the same time, the relationship to that date changes. When the Chilean original first came out (November 2020) October 2022 was slightly in the future. By the time the American remake came out (October 2022) it had become contemporary.
- Alternate SelfPeter: Time travel involves jumping to another universe, but once you get there you keep running into the same people who were in the universe you just left behind, although for some reason they're never playing the same role they were when you knew them. In my original universe, you're a doctor, and I was a farmer, and we were married, and you died because of Pegasus. In this new universe, here you are again, but you're a psychiatrist and I was your patient. And in another universe I died and you were the time traveler—I don't know. All I know is that we exist in all universes. Our souls, our identities, they seem to cycle through every universe.
- Alternate Universe: What's initially presented as Time Travel is later revealed to actually be Alternate Universes. This succinctly resolves the issue of the Temporal Paradoxes usually associated with time travel.Peter: Time travel doesn't exist. What does exist is the ability to jump from one universe to a past point in another universe.
- Animal Motifs: Pegasus is a symbol motif throughout the story. The catastrophic COVID strain is named Pegasus because "under a microscope it has a white membrane, it looks like it has wings." In episode 1.04, Dr Knight dreams of a white horse with wings that she has to kill. In some future timeline, Dr Knight gets a tattoo of wings on her back.
- Apocalypse Maiden: Marie seems pretty sweet. She makes jewelry for a living. She's willing to fly across the world to donate her blood to help her ex who has leukemia. Through no fault of Marie's, within her body a definitive COVID mutation will first occur and she will be Patient Zero for a devastating new variant that will destroy the world.
- Audible Sharpness: When Beatrix pulls a knife, it makes an audible "shing" sound.
- Bald Mystic: Eliza shaves her head at the end of season 1 as an Important Haircut. When she begins season 2 as a mysterious bald woman talking about things outside of general understanding, she fits the trope to a T.
- Breakfast in Bed: Peter has a prophesy, a vision of the future further along than either of their timelines right now. He's bringing Beatrix breakfast in bed. The Pegasus tattoo on her back is visible and remarked upon, implying she's topless.Peter: I dreamt two things, and you were in both. [...] The second: a room filled with light. You were sleeping. I was bringing you breakfast in bed. Then you wake up and look at me. You had a tattoo, a tattoo on your back. Wings. The world was a good place. Through the hotel window, a city, Rome.
- But Not Too Foreign: Peter is from far enough away that he should have an accent, but not so foreign that the the language the podcast is in isn't his native language. The specifics are adapted by version. In the Chilean original, he's Mexican. In the Brazilian adaption he's still Brazilian, but from Porto Alegre while the story's set in São Paulo. In the American adaption, he's English.
- Conspiracy Theorist: Olivier Collins. Because he's already inclined that way, when time travel really is going on, he's an easy person to enlist for help, he's quick to believe. But he's also a somewhat unstable.
- Conveniently Unverifiable Cover Story: In their very first session together, Dr Knight suggests that, if true, Peter's story could be verified by doing a DNA match with his currently-living mother. She's expecting it to be conveniently unverifiable story, for Peter to say no, they can't intervene with his parents' lives, that would create a Grandfather Paradox. To Dr Knight's surprise, it's Subverted—Peter encourages her to go talk to his not-yet-parents.Dr Knight: But if I contacted your parents, that would alter the future in some way, right?
Peter: True.
Dr Knight: They wouldn't get to know each other and you wouldn't be born, we wouldn't be—
Peter: —we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Dr Knight: Correct.
Peter: In four weeks—not sure of the exact date—but precisely because of the fact that you will believe me, you will contact my parents. And this story of an American psychiatrist who called my parents talking about their time traveling son who hasn't been born will seem so funny that my dad will go looking for my mom. They'll go out for some beers, and they'll start to date. - Crazy Jealous Guy: Downplayed. In episode 1.07, Dr Knight brings in her physicist friend to scrutinize the physics of Peter's proposed time travel. Peter antagonizes the man, partly because he suspects this guy has a crush on Dr Knight.
- Critical Psychoanalysis Failure: Zigzagging. Dr Knight is really rattled by Peter and increasingly believes his story. Sometimes she really questions herself. She ultimately decides to drop the case because she's lost objectivity and can't be professional. However, Peter's not crazy, he's just in a crazy situation.
- Culture Police: Peter describes how cancel culture — what he calls "the egregore" — gets really bad in the 2020s, and people are Driven to Suicide. It culminates in the Berlin Purge on May 11, 2030 when a mob sets a building on fire where a group of clandestine Buddhist students are meditating. 132 students are killed. After that, the world is so shocked and horrified that the social media websites that facilitated it are shut down, and society swings back toward individualism.
- The End of the World as We Know It: The Pegasus strain of COVID destroys the world. It's a very specific vision of the end of the world, playing specifically on the fears of its time.Dr Knight: If this mutation, Pegasus, starts to spread in November of this year, and you said the end of the world takes place in 2053, and if Pegasus really is as lethal, as you say — airborne transmission, et cetera — why didn't it kill the population immediately?
Peter: Because like I said, the horrible thing about the end of the world is not that it happens in the blink of an eye. It's the slow and progressive burn out of our species. It's the getting used to it. We learned to protect and confine ourselves with the first pandemics. With Pegasus we thought, "Oh, it's just another virus, back to lock down."
Dr Knight: And the vaccines?
Peter: The vaccines kept Pegasus at bay. They worked for a while, but then there was a new variant. Over and over again: vaccine, variant, vaccine, variant. 30 years of wear and tear, then everything started to crumble. - Epistolary Novel: In a Found Footage type way. The story is told by way of recordings that Dr Knight makes of the sessions in-universe. It's punctuated by Conveniently Interrupted moments where Dr Knight turns the recording on and off — sometimes for practical reasons, like she got a phone call which interrupts the session, and other times because it seems she's getting uncomfortable with the session.
- Fan of the Past: Peter makes contemporary pop culture references. This strikes Dr Knight as anachronistic, and feeds her skepticism that he's not actually a time traveler. He says he's just The Movie Buff.Peter: Doctor, no, there's no machine. Let's leave the DeLorean out of the equation.
Dr Knight: You don't remember historical events that could convince me, but you do remember a small detail—
Peter: Of course I— It's a pop culture— Come on. No, no, just because I like going to the movies, just because I saw The Godfather and The Man from Earth, that doesn't change the fact that I'm a time traveler. It just makes me a time traveling movie buff. - Florence Nightingale Effect: Played with. Is it appropriate to flirt with your psychiatrist if you already know she's the Alternate Self of your wife? If it's not appropriate and you're trying to not flirt, how successfully can you restrain yourself?
- Have We Met?: Marie thinks Eliza looks familiar. This is either an echo from another timeline, or because sisters Eliza and Dani share a family resemblance.Marie: You look really familiar to me. Do—have—do you think that we've met before?
- Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Apocalypse Maiden Marie is hard to kill.Peter: You may be wondering, why don't we just send someone to kill Marie Baker sometime before she boards that plane to London? You'd think it'd be the most efficient solution: one life destroyed so that millions can live. Well, it's been tried. The project did send agents back to do just that, but it never works. Call it the elasticity of time, or the underlying structure of timelines, or just fate. That something protects individuals from that kind of intervention. A traveler cannot simply remove a life from a timeline because it destroys every future birth or death that individual is related to. Any attempt to kill Marie Baker ends in failure. We are somehow protected by the time around us. I wish people knew that. Put simply, Marie Baker is immune to murder.
- Important Haircut: When Dr Knight dives into the world of time-travel, completely upending her life, she marks the event by shaving her head. This haircut turns her into a Bald Mystic.Eliza: There can be no radical change without radical action, so we'll start with the hair.
- Ink-Suit Actor: In the Chilean and Brazilian versions, episode 1.01 begins with a brief physical description of the patient in the name of a doctor's physical examination. The Chilean Pedro is said to have dark hair (like Néstor Cantillana). The Brazilian Pedro is said to be black (like Seu Jorge).[Chilean] Dra. Aldunate: Examen físico: hombre, aproximadamente de 42 años, moreno, contextura mesomorfa.
[Brazilian] Dra. Amaral: Exame físico: homem, aproximadamente 42 anos, negro, biotipo corporal atlético. - Longing Look: In episode 1.02 there's a brief moment where Dr Knight laughs and Peter looks at her in a certain way. In the Chilean and Brazilian versions, this moment is left to linger. In the American version, Peter appears embarrassed to have been caught staring and tries to change the subject.Peter: —It just makes me a time traveling movie buff.
Dr Knight: [laughs]
Peter: I made you laugh.
Dr Knight: Well, what did you expect? [Beat] [softer voice] What?
Peter: [clears his throat, then speaks in a softer voice] Nothing, I was just looking at you. [moving on, switching back to a rougher voice] Anyway— - The Lost Lenore: Sort of, in an odd Zigzagging way. Because of the alternate universe stuff, the audience doesn't experience her as a Posthumous Character. But Peter's wife did die, and that is what set his story in motion. After she died—and apparently she was the only important thing in his life—he then volunteered to travel back in time to stop Pegasus for her sake. Or rather, some Alternate Self of her, because the one from his universe will still be dead no matter what.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Peter says that in the future, there's a virtual game called Wanchia that's basically a Lighter and Softer version of life. When the entire internet goes down during the Great Deletion and Wanchia is gone, those addicted to it have a rough time.Peter: A game, it's a virtual reality game called Wanchia where people spend a great deal of their life. They work, they have partners. It's a peaceful, addictive world where there's no poverty or injustice. Lot of my friends, stressed by reality, made the decision to "go down to Wanchia." Thing is, after the Great Deletion of data, they were brought back to reality abruptly, and they never got used to it.
- Memory-Restoring Melody: Season 2 includes multiple iterations of a song (called in the credits "Elisa's Song") being played for people who lost their memories, or for Alternative-Self Name-Change to catch them up on the memories of their alternate-universe selves.Peter: I need you to memorize this song. What you're about to go through [time travel] will radically change the part of your brain that perceives time. The radiation left over from the trip will eliminate memories because the time in your memories will clash with your biological time.
Eliza: Well, that means—
Peter: —that you're going to forget everything. That's where the music comes in. It's been observed that music helps Alzheimer's patients. The brain stores memories of music and memories of events in totally separate areas. It— I don't need to explain it, you know what I'm talking about, so just listen. - Middle Name Basis: The female lead is known as Dr Knight in a professional capacity, and as Eliza by her friends and colleagues. Peter alone calls her Beatrix because he's her husband.
- A Million Is a Statistic: Saving the World hangs in the balance, but the protagonists prioritize their personal loyalties ahead of that.
- Peter says it point-blank:Peter: Beatrix, you must know that I did not do this for humanity. I don't care about 7 billion people. I don't care about the future. I only care about you.
- Dr Knight is given the chance to save the world, at the cost of messing up a treatment that might save her sister Dani's life. She chooses her sister.Eliza: I just... I just.. I murdered thousands of people. Millions.
Peter: You sacrifice strangers in exchange for someone you love. I did the same. No one is prepared to make decisions like this.
- Peter says it point-blank:
- Misplaced Accent: Peter says he's from Essex (or Mexico City in the Chilean version; or Porto Alegre in the Brazilian one), and yet he doesn't have the English/Mexican/Gaúcho accent that backstory would suggest. This discrepancy makes it look like he's lying and Not Even Bothering with the Accent. He explains that in the future, "downloading accents" is a thing and he downloaded the local accent for the time and place he was going to.
- One Degree of Separation: Marie Baker knows Eliza's sister Dani. They meet in the airport and realize they're both flying to visit her.
- The One That Got Away: Implied. Dani is Marie's friend, and "was more than a friend." Marie is willing to fly across the world to donate blood for plasma immunological therapy for Dani's leukemia. Perhaps they could be really Amicable Exes, but Marie says:Marie: [speaking of the theory that some people knew each other in another life] I felt it with only one person, really. I think we all have that one person, y'know? It's just different, it's chemical, I dunno.
Eliza: Unconditional.
Marie: Yeah, exactly. - One True Love: Peter recounts something taught to him in time travel prep class: entanglement, when two people knew each other in another universe and that echoes into this universe. Peter frames this as romantic predestination. It's not clear whether he was taught that part, or if he's romanticizing and extrapolating there.Peter: Whichever the universe, two beings can migrate and find each other. We call it "entanglement." […] Sometimes we see someone and we know we met them before. In this universe, he's a stranger at a table in a cafe. In another universe, he'll be the person you share your life with. Maybe you feel it—that gut feeling that somehow we are predestined to be together?
- Peter fiercely holds this is true for him and Beatrix.
- When Marie hears this idea, she brings up one relationship that felt uniquely singular in a hard-to-articulate way. Given The Law of Conservation of Detail, this is surely Dani, the one and only ex of hers that we know of.
- Precursors: Peter says in 2042, people find the remains of a 50,000 year old civilization on Mars, whose inhabitants where human ancestors.Peter: The Martian colony made a discovery on August 6th, 2042. Joanna Flores and Andrew Blake make history. [...] They found the mother structure. A progenitor civilization, a city buried underneath the sands of Mars.
Eliza: Aliens.
Peter: It's a bit more complex than that. Our ancestors. - Psycho Psychologist: When Dr Knight accuses Peter of being an Unreliable Expositor, he shoots back by asking how come she is assumed to be reliable, considering psychiatry's very dubious track record. It's just a Discussed Trope, a talking point. Peter does, in fact, trust Dr Knight, but because she's his wife not because of her profession.Peter: Someone who — out of all the medical sciences — chose the one that is responsible for the highest number of egregious lies and errors. Would you like me to list them? Water cures; lobotomies; electroshock therapy; forced confinement — shall I continue? Antidepressants that cause suicide; benzos or opioids that cause addiction; stimulants to calm kids down; and oh yes, let's not forget, literally burning witches at the stake. The fraud you mentioned is coming from the other side: from the side that thinks it knows everything about the mind, but in reality knows nothing.
- Role Swap AU: Season 2 is the role-swapped version of season 1. One of them is the time-traveler, who was found naked in an airport bathroom and is institutionalized under the name Case 63. The other serves as their physiatrist.
- Shout-Out:
- Peter has a tattoo of the Joker on his forearm.
- In episode 1.02, Dr Knight questions Peter his pop culture reference of the DeLorean from Back to the Future (or in the Indian one, Taarzan The Wonder Car). He proceeds lists a few movies he's seen. There's some variance between the versions. The Indian list in particular is completely different.[Chilean] Pedro: A ver, que me gusta el cine. Que haya visto Volver al futuro, El padrino, Taxi Driver, o El hombre que caminaba tras Buda no invalida que sea un viajero en el tiempo. Sólo me hace un viajero en el tiempo cinéfilo.
[Brazilian] Pedro: Eu gostava de cinema. Ter assistido De Volta para o Futuro, O Poderoso Chefão, o Taxi Driver, O Homem da Terra não invalida que eu seja um viagens do tempo. Só me faz um viagens no tempo cinéfilo.
[Indian] Peter: Just because I like movies or because I've seen Ajooba or Sooryavansham or Jaani Dushman doesn't mean I'm not from the future.
[American] Peter: Just because I like going to the movies, just because I saw The Godfather and The Man from Earth, that doesn't change the fact that I'm a time traveler. It just makes me a time traveling movie buff.- The Chilean version's The Man Who Walked After Buddha is not a real movie. This is presumably a future film that Pedro mistakenly thought was made earlier than it was.
- When Peter claims he's an imposter, a science fiction writer making it all up, he says he's part of the SCP Foundation.
- In episode 2.02, they lay out a whole theory that Eliza's story about the future is pieced together from various sci-fi movies.Eliza: I built my story by taking bits and pieces from movies. In my life, the one I've forgotten, I think I'm a fan of science fiction books and movies. [...] Here's a list of movies and the notes I took. A lone traveler, and a virus, with animals wandering deserted city streets. That's a version of 12 Monkeys, isn't it? Cities under lockdown; a virus born in China transmitted to humans from animals; everyone cut off from the ones they love. I got all of that from one called Contagion, apparently. And oh, oh look: there's a movie called Code 46 where people have to live confined to cities and a researcher who works with bats gets infected by a virus.
- They talk about The Eyes Of Darkness by Dean Koontz. In their world, it's foreshadowing seeded by time travlers.Eliza: 2020 AD. A lab in Wuhan, China. A deadly virus. First contained, then escaped, then unstoppable.
- Stable Time Loop: At Peter's prompting, Dr Knight calls up his parents and tells them about their future son. Because of this phone call, they meet up, begin to date, and have said son.Peter: This story of an American psychiatrist who called my parents talking about their time traveling son who hasn't been born will seem so funny that my dad will go looking for my mom. They'll go out for some beers and they'll start to date. They'll become boyfriend and girlfriend, and I'll be born. All thanks to you, Doctor. I'll grow up listening to this story—the story of the American psychiatrist who brought my parents together.
- Visions of Another Self: What they call a "Garnier Malet event", named after Jean-Pierre Garnier Malet.Peter: They said it wasn't a dream. It was an echo from another timeline. Contact with a double through dream space. A past or parallel timeline.
