Tyrell Corporation

Film	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	Jeter books

Tyrell's headquarters

"More human than human."

―Company slogan

The Tyrell Corporation was a high-tech firm primarily focused on the production of androids known as replicants. It was based in Los Angeles and named after its founder Eldon Tyrell.

History

As of 2019, the corporation was headquartered in two large, pyramid-like structures on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Inclinators ran along the outside of the massive structures. In November, Blade Runner Rick Deckard visited the Tyrell Corporation to administer a Voight-Kampff test to Rachael, an experimental replicant and Tyrell's assistant. Tyrell's massive office, where Deckard administered the test had a large automatic shade which lowered with the push of a button. This room also housed an animoid pet owl.

Roy Batty, the leader of a group of escaped replicants, later convinced J.F. Sebastian, a genetic engineer with the company, to bring him to Tyrell's quarters at the top of the building, on the pretense of a chess move in an ongoing game between him and Tyrell. It was there that Batty killed Tyrell after he said he had no way to extend his life.

Following Eldon Tyrell's death, the company was inherited by Sarah Tyrell, Eldon's niece. Motivated by revenge against her uncle for replacing her with Rachael, she plotted to destroy the company in August 2020. In doing so, she assassinated Harry Bryant and found the fugitive Rick Deckard. Upon bringing Deckard to the Tyrell headquarters, she gave him a task to retire a supposed sixth replicant from the group he dealt with the previous year.

Sarah later ordered co-conspirator Andersson to kill Isidore before killing Andersson herself. She created a persynth of herself – pretending to be Rachael, Deckard's lover – which revealed the plans to destroy the corporation. The plans culminated in the United Nations detonating explosives in the Tyrell building in response to reports of a replicant's failure to be retired.

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Behind the scenes

The Tyrell Corporation is based upon the Rosen Association in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

In a draft for Blade Runner, dated December 22, 1980, the corporation was instead named the Nekko Corporation.

On the building's structure, special effects photographic supervisor Douglas Trumbull, in the 1982 Official souvenir magazine, stated,

"I can't remember exactly, but I think the pyramid was a composite of my own ideas and Director Ridley Scott's. Originally the Tyrell building was going to be right in town, it was going to be a massive building right inside the city. We decided it would be much more visual and stark to place it way outside the town, so that it really rose above the horizon

"The pyramid was the first miniature we built. Across its base it was probably eight feet by eight feet. The top was probably two feet square. It was built prior to principal photography, because the first scene shot was the interior of Tyrell's office, and we had to have process plates of the other pyramid outside the window. So we had to build the pyramid, photograph it, prepare the plates and do front projection on that set." (Souvenir magazine, pg. 7.)

Production Designer Lawrence G. Paull said of the room: "We dressed Tyrell's room to look like the Pope's bedroom, very elaborate, very eclectic decor. The headboard was a $25,000 Chinese screen and the bed was two kingsize beds put together. There were big concrete columns which were 4-foot square and rose 25 feet in the air. Instead of just using raw concrete, we took material and actually draped the column so it had a very religious kind of overtone to it." (Souvenir magazine, p. 50.)

The comic book adaptation identifies Dr. Herman Schlect as the vice president of the Tyrell Corporation, while the novelization simply refers to him as in charge of Tyrell's security.

It is notable that in the film, the only time the sun is shown is in the Tyrell Corporation's building, when Deckard is interrogating Rachael.