[2] The series is named after the 1990 film Total Recall,[3] loosely based on Philip K. Dick's short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale", but it has been noted as sharing no major plot points or characters with it, other than the Rekall company and the concept of virtual vacations.

[4][5] Instead, a much larger influence in its plot elements and especially visual style has been recognized to be the 1982 film Blade Runner, itself a loose adaptation of Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

[6][7][8][9][10] Series creator Art Monterastelli has admitted the stronger influence of Blade Runner over Total Recall, and explained, he thought doing a paranoid psychological thriller with a strong visual background reminiscent of Blade Runner, would be a better use of their limited budget, provide more creative opportunities to the writers, and even be more in line with the spirit of Dick's antihero storylines as found in his body of work, compared to the Total Recall action film.

The government bureaucracy is heavily influenced by a small number of extremely powerful companies called "the Consortium" (including computer memory and virtual-reality vacation provider Rekall and android manufacturer Uber Braun).

David Hume is a senior detective for the Citizens Protection Bureau (CPB), a police agency focused on general public safety.

Significant plot elements remain unresolved by the end of the series run, due to cancellation; a crucial story arc from the series was the suggestion that the memory expansion used on self-aware androids was part non-human DNA and that a material found by a remote base on Mars could create a hybrid of human and android DNA.