Doctor Krieger’s Konami launch code took the internet by storm last week thanks to a magical blend of geekiness, nostalgia, and Archer. That got us to thinking about the other geeky easter eggs the Archer team has almost certainly buried over the years. And of course our friends at Floyd County were cool enough to give us an inside look.

Lead Motion Designer Mark Paterson — the man responsible for the Konami code — has provided us with a brief history of buried nerd goodness from several different seasons, along with commentary so it all kinda/sorta makes sense to the noobs out there. The Krieger GIF above captures how I think all of these came to be.

Mark’s Intro:

The script will often call for some kind of computer display that the character is interacting with. It’s my job to come up with a design for that. I’m not a fan of the nonsensical and often patronizing tech-babble you see on a lot of shows. In a show as fast paced as Archer, I prefer to use bold, simple graphics and text that get the point across and help advance the story. Often they’ll be a bunch of auxiliary screens that also need filling with *something*. This is where we like to have a little mischievous fun. I don’t go for anything too obvious – the more obscure and subversive the better. And the more you can make the audience work for it, the better. I’ll work something up and throw it over to our animation director and producer Bryan Fordney. He’s so busy spinning figurative plates, but if I can make him laugh and maybe even get an “awesome” then I know I’m on the right track.

Season 2

On making the ISIS coordinates the actual coordinates of Floyd County’s old Atlanta studio:

I made the ISIS HQ coordinates to be the exact coordinates of our (previous) studio. Something I later regretted, fearing an influx of visitors. Luckily that never happened because nobody really figured it out. People on Reddit were like “Hey, what’s up with the coordinates being some place in Georgia?”

Full size here.

Season 3

On slipping in a classic Reed/Thompson easter egg all over Space Station Horizon.