(CNN) — The show “Archer” has decided to use some levity to deal with a name that is far from funny these days.
The adult animated FX series focuses on operative Sterling Malory Archer (voiced by actor H. Jon Benjamin), who works for the New York-based International Secret Intelligence Service, or ISIS. Given the negative connotation now attached to the name, the Daily Beast reports that it will be phased out when the show returns in January.
Creator Adam Reed said he and the executive producers Casey Willis and Matt Thompson decided that the name will go away in the first show of season 6. Reed said he suspected it might become an issue as the terrorist group the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria began to make headlines.
“Back in season 5, 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,’ ” he told the Daily Beast. “We got sort of lucky and could organically make a merger with the CIA, so we went back and retroactively painted out the ISIS logos in parts of the show, and we just don’t talk about it in dialogue.”
Fans will see two movers pushing out the large circular blue ISIS sign while spy Malory Archer (voiced by veteran actress Jessica Walter) explains to her son that they now work for the CIA.
“It’s just the most awful thing, and we didn’t want to have anything to do with it,” Thompson said. “There were people online saying that we should address it and say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe these guys have co-opted our name.’ That’s the way ‘South Park’ would do it, coming after them and saying, ‘These a**holes stole our name,’ but that’s not the way the Archer universe works, where it’s all our own creations. In our universe, they don’t exist.”
