Netflix's 'Altered Carbon' Introduces A Mysterious Corporation Unlike Any Other

In Netflix's newest sci-fi series, Altered Carbon, the main character, Takeshi Kovacs, awakes in a new body and is told he is the property of Bancroft Industries. So that begs the question: is Bancroft Industries from Altered Carbon a real company? My response to that is: well, kind of.

Altered Carbon is set more than 300 years into the future and is actually based on a classic cyberpunk noir novel by Richard K. Morgan of the same name. Thus it seems almost virtually impossibly that Bancroft Industries is a real company. However, there is actually a Bancroft Group that exists in the present day. The company works in private equity and invest in a number of things like media, trucking, postal services, ceramic tiles, and so much more.

That being said, there's pretty much a 100 percent chance that this Bancroft Group has nothing to do with the fictional Bancroft Industries. It's just a coincidence. Still, the real Bancroft Group will probably end up getting some unexpected traffic to their site once Altered Carbon develops a fanbase who'll probably begin looking for answers about the show.

While the real Bancroft Group is about investments, it's hard to say what exactly Bancroft Industries does in Altered Carbon. It seems a little sketchy, to be honest. Laurens Bancroft appears to be the head of the company and he's the one who has Takeshi's consciousness put into a new body after he's been "dead" for 250 years. Apparently, Laurens was murdered in his past body and now he wants Takeshi to discover who killed him (probably so he can make sure it doesn't happen again). However, if Takeshi can't do so in a timely fashion, his new body will be forfeit, which I guess would mean he'd "die" again.

Thus, Takeshi is working against the clock, but in a world where people can change their faces by having their consciousness uploaded into different bodies, it'll be difficult for Takeshi to know who to trust. That being said there will surely be some initial suspects in his investigation. For one, although it's sad to say, Laurens family could've been behind the murder. In the book series it was actually Isaac Bancroft who brought Takeshi back to life, however, in the TV series it appears that Isaac is now Laurens' son. Additionally, Laurens' also has a wife, Miriam. These two could certainly stand to gain from Laurens' death because he is incredibly wealthy and it's most likely they who would be the ones to receive his wealth if he actually died.

Besides those two potential suspects, it's hard to guess who else could've wanted Laurens dead. Based on the trailer, he does seem like the type of person to make a lot of enemies, but whoever killed him had to know him pretty well. The way the human consciousness works in this world is similar to a hard drive, meaning that for Laurens, he's constantly "saving" his memories to what's called his "stack" so that it can be re-uploaded to another body whenever that's necessary. Similar to how people save things to their iCloud or OneDrive.

However, since Laurens doesn't know who killed him he must've been killed during a gap in his memory uploads, meaning someone knew the perfect time to kill him so that he wouldn't know who it was when he woke up in his new body. His family members are probably still the prime suspects, but that seems a little too simple so surely the truth will be more complicated than that.

You can learn more about this futuristic world, discover the truth about Laurens' murder, and why Takeshi, specifically, was chosen for this task by watching Altered Carbon, which is now streaming on Netflix.

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