The best worst spy agency on television will no longer be known as Isis, due to the acronym’s association with the jihadi group Islamic State.

At Comic-Con in New York, the creators of the FX show Archer (and, by extension, the tactical turtleneck) explained that the matter of phrasing came up for reasons of both story and reality, the main characters will no longer work for International Secret Intelligence Service, a freelance spy agency, as they have for five seasons.

Executive producer Casey Willis said Islamic State (known variously as IS, Isis and Isil) “doesn’t exist in our universe … but now [the characters are] working with the CIA, so that’s the banner that we’re under now.”



Creator Adam Reed, who also voices Ray Gillette on the show, told the Daily Beast the coincidence was “just the most awful thing and we didn’t want to have anything to do with it”.

He continued: “We were waiting for it to go away, at least I was … FX said, ‘This might be a thing,’ and I thought, ‘Maybe it won’t be? Maybe it’ll be the mole that I’m gonna ignore and nothing will happen.’

“We got sort of lucky and could organically make a merger with the CIA … and we just don’t talk about it in dialogue.”

The show will acknowledge the change in the season premiere – in the background of one shot an Isis sign will be discarded by movers.

FX has removed all Isis merchandise from its store; Reed said the coincidence had put the crew and their families in awkward situations. “I gave my Dad one of the Isis hats and he said, ‘You know son, I’m not going to be able to wear the hat anymore. I’m getting looks at the hardware store.’”

The cartoon comedy, which is littered with deadpan literary allusions, jokes, profligate sexuality and appearances by an ocelot named Babu, features a mismanaged agency of elite spies who struggle to keep ants out of their offices and spent the fifth season as drug dealers in Miami. It will return in 2015.