Season 1
- Even in the far future where Body Surf tech is ubiquitous, crappy M.O.s are still the bane of many people's existence. As Kovacs leaves Alcatraz, we see a pair of parents that were promised their seven-year-old daughter would get her Stack re-spun and placed in another body because she died in a hit-and-run... and the only body the state could afford to give them was that of a sixty-year-old prisoner. They get angry and the guard tells them that, if they can afford to, they can get a body of their own and they will just take this one back. What really sells it is the old woman's desperate scream:
- "Mommy, daddy, don't put me back in the dark!"
- Following up on this, one later episode has Ortega nearly being left to die by the hospital after the Ghostwalker attacks her because her insurance doesn't cover such an extensive treatment. Kovacs gets flat-out furious at this and signs the authorization (which uses DNA authentication but usually only needs the user put the palm to the scanner for a second) by spitting a wad of blood on the scanner.
- Takeshi visiting the museum depicting the destruction of the Envoy rebellion and discovering the cortical stacks of his dead friends, which is the equivalent of a shelf full of skulls. The fact they're all depicted as terrorists who were heroically put down by the U.N. doesn't make it any better.
- Takeshi's discovery of the Envoys being slaughtered to the man by a Brainwashed and Crazy-inducing bomb before witnessing both his sister and his lover getting killed. Only to find out later his sister was the person behind it.
- Ortega's entire family is slaughtered by the Ghostwalker — mother, uncle, both brothers (or cousins). And because they are coded Neo-Catholics, they are effectively Deader than Dead even without having to destroy their Stacks. Captain Tanaka is horrified and vomits when he walks into the house, and the Ghostwalker using his own mental recordings of the massacre to assist him in Ortega's virtual torturing is just adding more pain to it. Takeshi also doesn't takes it well, because his sister was the one who ordered their deaths for no damn good reason other than a sociopathic eye-for-an-eye mentality, and he couldn't stop her.
- The young woman in Head in the Clouds telling Vernon that he has to kill her or she'll be fired. She fully believe's she'll come back in another sleeve, but she still sounds absolutely terrified. The fact that is is standard also turns it into pure Nightmare Fuel.
- This is layers upon layers of both Nightmare Fuel and Nausea Fuel. The young woman at one point offers Vernon a wicked looking combat knife, stating that if "none of her holes was pleasing, to cut a new one (and then have sex with the wound)". If this concept wasn't disgusting enough, the audience knows that the promise of the woman being resleeved by Reileen is a complete lie. Reileen never resleeves workers used this way, as she has guaranteed confidentiality with her 'clients'. So, this woman is offering to be carved up and screwed, fo no other reason than another person's kinks. The look on Vernon's face just sums up the correct reaction. He is horrified that this is going on.
- Poe's character and his ultimate end. He truly loved humanity and saw it as something special, going well out of his way to help Takeshi and Elliot. This is important as Poe is treated like dirt by every human and non-human alike; yet he is polite, genuinely kind, helpful, and positive to everyone that isn't straight up evil. This makes the final scene of Poe huddled in fetal position as the darkness takes him truly heartbreaking.
- The Ending of the last episode is Bittersweet Ending at it's finest. Reileen is dead, her snuff ring has been dismantled, and Laurens and Miriam Bancroft will both face justice for the murders they committed. Elias Ryker has also been exonerated of the murder for which he was falsely convicted. At the same time Tak was forced to kill his own sister because she had become a monster, he had to give up his chance to find Reileen and because Kristin is still in love with Elias he has to relinquish the sleeve so she can be with him. To add to this, Rei claimed that Takeshi would never be able to get Quellcrist's stack without her. With Rei dead, the chances of him being reunited with his lover (assuming Rei wasn't lying about Quellcrist being backed up) become one in a billion.
Season 2
- Season 2 has Poe's increasing distress at his corrupted data and memory loss, and his terror of being left alone again due to being too damaged to be of use.Poe: I know what it's like to be without a purpose. The crushing madness of idle hours. The decades upon decades of shuffling about aimlessly! I have lived it!
- Takeshi finding Quellcrist huddled and traumatized in the shower after being mind-controlled into committing another murder. For a character we spent a whole season getting to know as an indomitable force of will, seeing her so lost and confused is heartbreaking
- Dig 301's interrogation. She is powerless to stop the wedge getting the information out of her through correct commands, all she can do is cry as it happens.
- In season 2 Kovacs Prime had to learn not only that his beloved sister was dead but he himself had killed her. The way Jaeger twisted the facts doesn't help.
- Quell and Takeshi's fight over her proposed suicide mission. Quell is convinced this is the only way to atone for creating the stacks, but as Takeshi desperately points out, martyring herself once again is pointless as her initial intention for the stacks was born out of her dreams of exploring, not from any desire for immortality. Its clear he just wants her to forgive herself, but Quell is never going to be able to do thatQuellcrist: Tak, I do love you.Takeshi:I wish you loved me enough to live
- Particular note goes to the delivery of the line "You just wanted to see the stars", as Takeshi tries to reason that for all the evil stacks have bought to the universe, Quellcrist created them with the purest of intentions. Mackie's voice cracking as he pleads with her to stop vilifying herself
- Quells reaction to Takeshi's death. After a whole season of them struggling to reconnect, they finally find each other again only for Takeshi to burn to death. All that's left in a charcoal body in the shape of a man, leaving Quell desperately scrabling through his ashes in the hopes of finding his stack, even though its clear there's no way the stack could have survived.
Altered Carbon Resleeved
- Altered Carbon Resleeved, Reileen's characterization hits hard within the context of what viewers know she's going to grow into. We get to see Reileen relatively soon after the battle of Stronghold and it quickly becomes clear that she's nowhere near the moral bankruptcy of her season 1 incarnation yet, she empathizes with young used by the Yakuza tattoo artist Holly (though this is atleast party her projecting her own issues onto the girl), is disgusted when C-Tac reveals they aren't planning to shut down a particularly brutal crime boss while also ordering her to kill child simply to leave no witnesses (being willing to defy orders and lie to her superiors to ensure Holly survives) and is willing to all but partner with Takeshi even before she learned who he was.
- Seeing Reileen and Takeshi be on the same side, fighting together, visibly/vocally caring about each other (though Takeshi never learns the truth about the CTAC officer he is working with) and acting as vaguely paternal figures to a kid hits hard when one bears in mind the next time they will be together Reileen will have gone through enough helpings of Motive Decay and Time Abyss to be an vicious and hateful shadow of herself. It puts Takeshi's horror at what Season 1 Reileen has become, his desperate attempts to rehabilitate her and his utter despair at when she suffers real death in a even more tragic light because through the movie viewers can see that she actually was a much better person once upon a time.
