Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Murderbot season 1, episode 2 and The Murderbot Diaries: Artificial Condition.Apple TV+'s Murderbot.

Though we got to see the moment when Murderbot hacked its governor module and became completely independent, there are still several parts of its backstory that are shrouded in mystery. Murderbot claimed it had watched over 7,000 hours of content since it hacked its governor module, and we don't know what else it did in that nearly year-long span of time. Perhaps the most confusing part of Murderbot's backstory is a mystery that even it doesn't know the truth behind. Murderbot has memories of partaking in a massacre, but it's not clear if it was actually responsible for slaughtering innocent civilians.

Murderbot's Forgotten Memory Of A Massacre Explained

Murderbot Has Fractured Memories Of A Massacre From Before It Was Refurbished

Throughout Murderbot season 1 episodes 1 and 2, Murderbot experienced some brief flashbacks to a fractured memory. The memory we saw was corrupted and hard to parse, but it looked like a SecUnit like Murderbot firing an energy weapon into a crowd of fleeing people. As the Company and Murderbot itself both noted, Murderbot had been refurbished before PreservationAux contracted it, and this memory came from before the refurbishment. Murderbot also told Gurathin (David Dastmalchian) that the Company tried to wipe its memory during the refurbishment, but they obviously didn't scrub everything.

It seems that the Murderbot show is setting up this memory as a mystery to be explored throughout the first season. Gurathin seems intent on finding the truth about Murderbot's memory, and he'll likely use it as evidence to decommission it. Additionally, it's not clear right now if it actually was Murderbot or a different SecUnit in the memory, as the footage seemed to be from a security camera. While Murderbot has left plenty of questions unanswered, the Murderbot Diaries books have all the answers already.

What Really Happened During Muderbot's Massacre Memory In The Books

Murderbot Was Hacked & The Malware Forced It To Slaughter ComfortUnits

Murderbot actually got to the bottom of the mystery surrounding his past massacre early on, in Artificial Condition. In that book, Murderbot and a ship bot named ART investigated the site of the massacre, a mining installation called Ganaka Pit on the world of RaviHyral. During its investigation, Murderbot discovered that the miners were the victims of a cyberattack by a rival outfit. That rival company hacked Ganaka Pit's system in an attempt to slow down production and get a competitive edge, but the malware they created accidentally made all the SecUnits, including Murderbot, "lose their minds" and indiscriminately kill everyone they could find.

In total, Murderbot and the other SecUnits at Ganaka Pit ended up killing 57 people due to the malware attack. Most of them were ComfortUnits - or "sex bots" - who were trying to protect the miners. Afterward, the Company that Murderbot worked for covered up the entire incident, refurbished Murderbot, (incompletely) wiped its memory, and returned it to duty. Murderbot once remarked that SecUnits, even ones that were involved in mass murders, were too expensive to simply decommission. At some point after Ganaka Pit, Murderbot hacked its governor module and became the lovable bot we know today.

Importantly, the massacre at Ganaka Pit was not Murderbot's fault, though it does carry quite a bit of guilt for the slaughter. In the books, Murderbot chose its name partially because of that massacre, even though it didn't completely it at the time. The memory of Ganaka Pit and its efforts to overcome that trauma is also a huge part of Murderbot's character arc and its journey to find its place in the universe. Luckily, it looks like Apple TV+'s Murderbot is going to give Ganaka Pit and Artificial Condition ample attention in future episodes.