Next up: More clones? Woodhouse's location? Still more Rush references?
March 19, 2015 10:36 AM   Subscribe

Season 6 of Archer has been sprinkled with clues, and an imgur user has been following the trail — the highlights of which so far have been a Flickr account and Algersoft.net (Login: Krieger Password: guest).
posted by rewil (65 comments total) 45 users marked this as a favorite
 
The password is "guest", all lowercase.
posted by hopeless romantique at 10:42 AM on March 19, 2015


"Okay but the last time we searched Kreiger's files all we found was a bunch of damp cyborg erotica."
posted by The Whelk at 10:45 AM on March 19, 2015 [8 favorites]


Boo, I'll drop a note to the mods to fix Guest to guest.
posted by rewil at 10:47 AM on March 19, 2015


Mod note: All set.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 10:49 AM on March 19, 2015




That is freaking amazing.
posted by bleep at 10:49 AM on March 19, 2015


As if I didn't love the show enough already.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 10:52 AM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Anyone got the password for the zip file on the Algersoft site, or is that still to be discovered?
posted by dortmunder at 10:53 AM on March 19, 2015


Archer makes the world so much a better place to live in... so much.
posted by ghostiger at 10:56 AM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am very not good at YOU'RE NOT MY SUPERVISOR.
posted by rewil at 10:56 AM on March 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


"Don't judge me on the how. . .until you see the why." *Starts up the Caress of Krieger*

And oh. . . .*wheezing*. . . the chicken . . . between . . . Pam's toes. . . . oh god
posted by barchan at 10:56 AM on March 19, 2015


Holy crap, NSFW on the Flickr site, guys.
posted by psoas at 10:58 AM on March 19, 2015


Amazing work decoding all of this!
posted by Chrysostom at 11:11 AM on March 19, 2015


Is this the Cicada invitation or something?
posted by GreyboxHero at 11:12 AM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Holy crap, NSFW on the Flickr site, guys.

It would be perfectly safe for work, or at least nothing out of the ordinary, if you were employed at the offices of the International Secret Intelligence Service (or whatever we're calling it these days).
posted by Doktor Zed at 11:17 AM on March 19, 2015


I am very not good at YOU'RE NOT MY SUPERVISOR.

Then you should try firebug. By Silas Warner - author of Castle Wolfenstein.

(ASD and W keys to move around - no idea on how to actually leave or drop gas cans like its 1982)
posted by rough ashlar at 11:18 AM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Holy shitsnacks. Somebody loves their fans.
posted by middleclasstool at 11:19 AM on March 19, 2015 [4 favorites]


sploosh
posted by NoRelationToLea at 11:20 AM on March 19, 2015 [10 favorites]


To keep up to date and participate, this reddit thread seems to be the place: http://www.reddit.com/r/ArcherFX/comments/2yqaip/archer_super_easter_egg_hunt_arg_writeup_and/
posted by sciurine at 11:21 AM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


YOU MADE AN ASH OF YOURSELF.
posted by Smart Dalek at 11:27 AM on March 19, 2015


Torch all the furniture in the room to get the door to open.
posted by peeedro at 11:29 AM on March 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


Kreiger's holographic anime girlfriend's flickr account is filled with images that are a comic referencing both the Thriller video and Voltron.

(deadpan)What are the odds that Archer fans love both Thriller and Voltron?(/deadpan)
posted by NoRelationToLea at 11:54 AM on March 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Damn, Adam Reed is my hero. I'd love to know the story of how he and Adult Swim parted ways. This article from Ad Week doesn't really get into it. Although it's got plenty of great stories in it.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:02 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Next season, they should just change the theme song to Tom Sawyer and be done with it.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 12:11 PM on March 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Damn, Adam Reed is my hero. I'd love to know the story of how he and Adult Swim parted ways. This article from Ad Week doesn't really get into it. Although it's got plenty of great stories in it.

Holy shit. I didn't know Adam Reed was from Asheville. I wonder what high school he went to?
posted by dortmunder at 12:16 PM on March 19, 2015


This is really cool. (cooler than the show itself has become, as it's now way too self-indulgent, focusing on the "wacky hijinks" of the core cast to the point of eliminating almost every other recurring character, versus the actual spy stuff that kept the show interesting at first)
posted by evilangela at 12:20 PM on March 19, 2015


the actual spy stuff that kept the show interesting at first

Are you sure you weren't watching some other show initially?
posted by yoink at 12:37 PM on March 19, 2015 [11 favorites]


cooler than the show itself has become, as it's now way too self-indulgent, focusing on the "wacky hijinks" of the core cast to the point of eliminating almost every other recurring character

Eh? There haven't actually been that many recurring non-[name of spy agency / former spy agency acting as an organized crime family] characters on the show to begin with, and two of the most prominent ones (Barry and Katya) have appeared this season. Honestly, I'm glad they're not more prominent because their gags were getting a bit stale with them appearing so much in previous seasons. Unless you're like a Brett Bunsen superfan or something, I'm not sure where this idea that something major has changed about how they use recurring characters is coming from.
posted by tonycpsu at 12:58 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


WHY IS THERE AN ONSEN BEHIND MY MOP CLOSET?! AND WHY WASN'T I INVITED?

At least I know why my gas bill's been through the roof lately. God, these people. If it wasn't for the CIA contracts and Mr. Slater's work I don't know what I'd do... But you bet it would involve a whole lot of bbq-eating idiots, 55 gallon drums, and enough acid to make prosecution impossible.
posted by Malory Archer at 12:58 PM on March 19, 2015 [28 favorites]


Yeah, I'm surprised there wasn't a Woodhouse appearance in Pocket Listing.
posted by boo_radley at 1:00 PM on March 19, 2015


Maybe George Coe is not well? He's 85, after all.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:03 PM on March 19, 2015


Mr. Slater's

IT'S JUST "SLATER"!!!1!
posted by kenko at 1:05 PM on March 19, 2015 [6 favorites]


Chrysostom: "Maybe George Coe is not well? He's 85, after all."

You've lost me: How would that prevent them from showing a skeleton in the pool?
posted by boo_radley at 1:05 PM on March 19, 2015


I haven't seen any of Season 6 yet, but I keep waiting for Conway Stern to reappear. I know they haven't discarded him entirely because he pops up every now and then, but doesn't speak and doesn't interact with the plot.
posted by indubitable at 1:07 PM on March 19, 2015


The College of Winterhold doesn't run itself, Chrysotom.
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:08 PM on March 19, 2015


Conway Stern is in episode 2 of season 6, indubitable.
posted by Chrysostom at 1:11 PM on March 19, 2015


I'd love to know the story of how he and Adult Swim parted ways.

I've often wondered if the utter grossness of season 2 of Frisky Dingo was a cause or an effect there.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 1:13 PM on March 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Well, then! Off to my favorite torrent site A LEGITIMATE MEDIA CONCERN.
posted by indubitable at 1:15 PM on March 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


the actual spy stuff that kept the show interesting at first

Are you sure you weren't watching some other show initially?


OK, let me clarify. For a while, at least, we actually had Archer and Lana on missions, and he managed to do a great job of being both really good at his work, while being really bad at just about everything else. And there were plenty of other faces around that made it feel like a real agency.

Now they've pretty much dropped all of that. When there is a mission, which is rare anymore, there's always a reason for the entire crew to come along. More often, it's just some random situation, with everyone doing what they do, except even more excessively. It's pretty much dropped the setting completely.
posted by evilangela at 1:22 PM on March 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


OK, let me clarify. For a while, at least, we actually had Archer and Lana on missions, and he managed to do a great job of being both really good at his work, while being really bad at just about everything else. And there were plenty of other faces around that made it feel like a real agency.

Now they've pretty much dropped all of that. When there is a mission, which is rare anymore, there's always a reason for the entire crew to come along. More often, it's just some random situation, with everyone doing what they do, except even more excessively. It's pretty much dropped the setting completely.



My previous lament on the Archer that was
posted by bitteroldman at 1:29 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


My previous lament on the Archer that was

Oddly, you see the trajectory of Archer's character as almost the reverse of what evilangela describes:

evilangela: "he managed to do a great job of being both really good at his work, while being really bad at just about everything else"

bitteroldman: "Went from a bumbling Americanized Jacques Clouseau to an arrogant Americanized James Bond. The first few seasons he'd regularly get in trouble and need to be bailed out by Lana or sheer luck, but he managed to be likeable. In later episodes he's basically indestructible and a jerk 100% of the time."
posted by yoink at 1:36 PM on March 19, 2015


A LEGITIMATE MEDIA CONCERN

Amazon Instant Video offers new episodes for $1.99 the day after airing, or a season pass thereof for $21.99; it (and Orphan Black) is the only not-available-on-Hulu show I do this for.
posted by psoas at 1:37 PM on March 19, 2015


Is Archer not on available FX's on-demand streaming service thingie?

(I don't know because FX's on-demand streaming servie thingie isn't available on FIOS.)
posted by tonycpsu at 1:40 PM on March 19, 2015


My previous lament on the Archer that was

There's a couple points I agree with, but the chronology or sense of direction you seem to present as being absolute or pointing in one specific direction for some of them seems a little off, or overly massaged to fit the idea of an inevitable downward arc.
posted by anazgnos at 2:25 PM on March 19, 2015


I do wonder if going to the Kriegersoft page will infect my computer with the Pirate virus.

WHAT WHAT
THE GOLD
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 3:22 PM on March 19, 2015 [5 favorites]


Oh, goddamn it! This can’t be a thing!

It is absolutely a thing, and do you just not have the Internet, or…?
posted by 99_ at 4:21 PM on March 19, 2015


Amazon Instant Video offers new episodes for $1.99 the day after airing, or a season pass thereof for $21.99; it (and Orphan Black) is the only not-available-on-Hulu show I do this for.

Huh, no kidding? I avoided doing this for previous seasons because I could only find it on iTunes, where they apparently include commercials despite you, the viewer, having just paid for it. I guess I'll have to check it out again.
posted by indubitable at 6:05 PM on March 19, 2015


HUNCH HUNCH
WHAT WHAT

My unemployed 4 year younger self would have been all over this and on reddit...
posted by fizzix at 6:58 PM on March 19, 2015


Is Archer not on available FX's on-demand streaming service thingie?


Current season IS available for streaming on the FX on-demand streaming thingie.
posted by vitabellosi at 7:02 PM on March 19, 2015


Here's the sequence, to check it and for posterity:

1. A scene in episode two shows a monitor that included two separate strings of hexadecimal numbers separated by a slash:

    74 69 6E 79 2E 63 63  /  70 69 67 6C 79

Assuming that each of those two digit numbers are the hex assignments for ASCII characters, a conversion (excluding that slash) produces:

    tiny.cc  /  pigly

...which is obviously a web address, tiny.cc/pigly.

2. That address resolves over to a YouTube video posted by "Webdriver Pelvis" (this is the only video posted to that account). The video is mysterious with some very annoying audio. Someone thought to analyze the audio with a spectrogram, produced this spectrogram of the audio.

Because I was curious, I went ahead and did this myself, and here is a short screenshot video of me playing it in Adobe Audition, with the spectrogram.

Anyway, that spectrogram reveals this alphanumeric sequence hidden within it:

    RPH8GBIMBU1WF0RVHXIUDWYQHIDR

3. That sequence wasn't meaningful yet, but in episode six there's a scene showing a computer monitor with something that looks suspiciously like a web address at the top, with the colon and the double slashes, but encrypted somehow:

    YIAV://UQZZ.WY/EHHHGHABGVFDQEY

Someone figured out that this was using a Vigenère Cipher and that the previously discovered sequence was the passkey used to decode it. This produces the decoded web address:

    http://tiny.cc/zqmajzgykxpwibh

...which, unfortunately, is now an expired Craigslist post. But here's an archive of it.

4. That Craigslist post (to new york >manhattan >community >volunteers) reads:
Human volunteers wanted for research and experimentation. Unpaid.
Time for the next step in human exploration!

Inside every person is a well of untapped potential. Will you allow me to explore these depths? I seek males and females aged 18-45, in excellent physical and mental health.

Note that a three week MINIMUM commitment is required. Relocation is mandatory. Must not object to being unconscious for periods of several hours. More info available after your full legal consent in writing.

Your future awaits!

CC
Hmm. Turns out that there's a crude code in this message, too. The first letter of every paragraph in the body spells "tiny" + "cc" (well, we'll take both those letters because we recognize it) and then the last letter of every paragraph in the body spells "nhgs". Putting those together, we get another web address:

    tiny.cc/nhgs

5. That web address resolves to a particular reddit comment by user TT0077269:
Intriguing. However, the only legitimate solution to full quadriplegic limb paralysis is a bionic replacement procedure with intelligent CPU control. I speak from experience as a leading researcher in this field, and hold numerous patents on the subject. Namely 200914, 250303 & 252526.
Those three numbers at the end can be seen as a sequence of nine two-digit numbers:

    20 09 14 25 03 03 25 25 26

If we just assume that it's the simplest code possible -- each number represents a letter's position in the English alphabet -- we get:

    TINYCCYYZ

...which is yet another familiar tinyified web address: tiny.cc/yyz. One very interesting thing about this is that this is a custom tiny url -- they normally assign some random string out of your control when you convert some long web address into a tiny one. But as we know, Krieger loves Rush and YYZ is a famous Rush song, so there you go.

6. Finally, that web address resolves to Dr. Algernop Krieger's flickr account.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:03 PM on March 19, 2015 [18 favorites]


For those playing catch-up, and having Netflix, the first five seasons are available there.

This is pretty much hitting all of my nerd buttons.
posted by calamari kid at 7:52 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Dunno. Is this content as full of galloping transmisogyny as the show itself has been this season?
posted by Toby Dammit X at 7:58 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I'm surprised there wasn't a Woodhouse appearance in Pocket Listing.

I suspect his mysterious absence will be a topic soon.
posted by kafziel at 8:36 PM on March 19, 2015


Huh -- is there a way to beat "You're Not My Supervisor"? Whenever I get Cheryl/Carol in the elevator, she just sits there and burns to death.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 9:23 PM on March 19, 2015


Try this.
posted by peeedro at 9:29 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


When Conan O'Brien talked about wrting for the Simpsons, he said his favorite to write for was Mr. Burns, cause was "infinitely old and infinitely rich" so you could have him say and do the most insane things and they would make sense for his character. Krieger is the same way, so long as you keep him to his wheelhouse of drug-induced math-rock perv-science, he can do *anything*.

and I think I got some of that Archer Spec Script I wrote on a dare because of Metafilter (possibly anticipating the reddit account?) :

LANA
Krieger, what do we know about Averton's Purity Project?
KRIEGER
Just that the company's been developing it for a decade. Super hush-hush robotics stuff. None of the other 'Noidheads can figure out what they're doing but they are buying fabrication material by the shipload.
LANA
Are there any rumors about-wait, 'Noidheads?
KRIEGER
Gynoidheads. It's a ...message board I frequent for admirers of the robotic female form.
LANA
I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that.
KRIEGER
That's probably for the best

posted by The Whelk at 9:41 PM on March 19, 2015 [1 favorite]


I am just not smart enough to get any of this.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:41 PM on March 19, 2015


Which is all very fascinating, but here's some news you can use: the "Mulatto Butts" ringtone is located in the Tones folder.
posted by univac at 1:18 AM on March 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


Dunno. Is this content as full of galloping transmisogyny as the show itself has been this season?

Could you elaborate on this ?
posted by Pendragon at 5:44 AM on March 20, 2015


Huh -- is there a way to beat "You're Not My Supervisor"?

Burn everything in the office before escaping out the elevator.

"This stupid building is a tinderbox, and I'm going to burn it to the ground!"
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:57 AM on March 20, 2015 [3 favorites]


Pendragon: "Could you elaborate on this ?"

Have you not heard what people say about Lana?
posted by boo_radley at 10:07 AM on March 20, 2015


Honestly, even aside of the "man hands" runner on Lana, there're quite a few other transphobic/transmisogynistic jokes. Wasn't it the season premiere where Archer was with some Thai prostitutes, and there was a whole thing about whether or not they were men or women?

I love Archer, but I would love it even more if they knocked shit like that off.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 10:20 AM on March 20, 2015 [2 favorites]


And there is Ray's 'girl, or boy, or genderfluid, or however you self-identify' joke from this season in 'Pocket Listing'
posted by 99_ at 9:47 AM on March 21, 2015


On beating You're Not My Supervisor:
You have to burn all the furniture in the room. That will open the door. It helps to make wide loops through the room, but the copier/toaster's randomness gets in the way. It might not be winnable on every play because of that. Also, it's really easy to get caught up on barriers.
posted by JHarris at 1:43 PM on March 21, 2015


99_: "And there is Ray's 'girl, or boy, or genderfluid, or however you self-identify' joke from this season in 'Pocket Listing'"

Huh, I just thought that was Ray being Ray. Didn't even register as a joke.
posted by boo_radley at 8:16 AM on March 23, 2015


« Older That's why it's tail is so poofy, it's full of...   |   Get your pies for the great pie fight! Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments