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Malory is trying to get Cyril killed.
  • She hates him for leading the strike, for breaking Lana's Heart, because he's the father of the child Archer is paying for, and because she's just a mean bitch who hates him as a person. Malory promoted him to field agent, and has been sending out on the most dangerous missions imaginable, hoping he'd get killed.
    • That doesn't seem likely. Sure she treats him like dirt (like most of the main cast) but she doesn't seem to treat him any worse than she does everyone else, including her own son. She also did have sex with him in "Movie Star" after he helped her write a screenplay and sell it to a studio.
    • Since when does Mallory Archer sleeping with someone preclude her trying to kill them?
      • When it doesn't involve revenge (as with the prime minister of Italy)?
  • It's Mallory Archer. She murdered the cleaning staff for trying to unionize and murdered the prime minister of Italy and had the ISIS staff hide the body. If she wanted someone dead, they'd be dead, simple as that.

Archer was conceived as a result of rape.
  • it maybe Malory's cover got blown on one of her countless covert ops. she ended up in prison camp or some other horrific place where she was raped as the means of torture. it would explain why she's being this secretive about Sterling's father and why she gave him her lastname.
    • I mean she hasn't been secretive in my opinion, she just genuinely doesn't really know who it is. That'd be a little heavy for the show, and she's already told him it's one of a few men. If his hallucination during "Once Bitten" holds any real ground, I doubt someone from said prison camp would track her down to give her son a birthday present.
    • Plus, she kills the Prime Minister of Italy in revenge, because he had a man murdered who may have possibly been Archer's father, and she fondly remembers said man. Why would she fondly remember, and avenge the murder of, a man who raped her?

At least some of Mengele's experiments were successful.
Specifically, his attempts to change eye colors. This is why Krieger has green eyes, despite being a Boy from Brazil.
  • He does point out he looks nothing like Hitler in the season six finale.

The Cold War did end with the USSR's defeat, but Gorbachev/Yeltsin was still deposed by Communist hardliners
While the hardliners were ultimately unable to prevent the secession of the other republics, they kept the Soviet political system intact in Russia itself, hence why the KGB remains in place and they still refer to their country as the Soviet Union.

Sterling really loves Woodhouse.
From what we see of Sterling's childhood his interaction with his mother is either neglect or abuse, however throughout the show they have moments of love pass between them. then think about how he treats people around him, he is an abusive prick but for the most part would be lost without them, but Woodhouse the only character Sterling has power over is either neglected or abused for a wrongdoing, this is how Sterling was taught to show affection. and if any resolve is gonna come about Sterling's daddy issues it's probably gonna be from his relationship with Woodhouse and not from his relationship with his Mother.`
  • woodhouse has also been shown to care for Sterling as well ranging from raising him as a single parent for years (with little money), staying by his side when in need of sugary, or even just offering a nice word (really early on Sterling shows up to a dinner party without a date the one time everyone else has one. He makes some line about cheese and Woodhouse, not missing a beat smiles and says "a very handsome cheese, sir!" Trying to make him feel better.) It's possible Woodhouse understands this, and this is why he stayed with Sterling for so long despite his own issues such as on going addiction. Hell, even being a drug addict he's a better parent than Mallory.

Sterling actually wants a Maverick/Goose-type of friendship with Cyril, but doesn't know how to go about it
Tying in with the above and based on the season five promo (and a random YouTube comment on the video), Archer really wants Cyril to be his friend.
I think it says a lot that in Archer's Top Gun fantasy, Cyrill is Goose. Think about it: Goose gives and takes shit from Maverick, but has complete faith in him and supports him unconditionally. We know that Archer has never had a healthy male influence in his life, and that he had a psychologically horrifying childhood. Maybe Archer simply doesn't understand how friendships work, so he looks to movies as an example and picks on Cyrill because that's how he's seen friendships work in films like Top Gun. Cyrill responds to it as bullying, which frustrates Archer and causes his bullying to escalate.
Maybe... Archer has really only wanted Cyrill to be the loving, supportive friend that he's never had before and he doesn't know how to make that happen.
  • Possibly supported by season 11, where part of Alistair's plan hinges on the idea that Cyril is Archer's best friend.

Pam and Cheryl will become/are lovers.
Pam is bi, and Cheryl is something, probably pansexual, and I could see the show making those two close yet dysfunctional friends in to lovers.

Lana is a griffe.
Which is why she freaked out when Archer called her a quadroon, because it's literally the opposite of what she is (for those unfamiliar with racial mathematics, a quadroon is half mulatto, half white, whereas a griffe is half mulatto, half black).
  • Quadroon is an offensive term. That is why she is offended.
  • Griffe refers to anyone that isn't pure white (although it is a relatively old term, so it is ambiguous whether it would be applied to Hispanics or Asians, since it was irrelevant in the time and place it was most common). It isn't the opposite of quadroon.
  • We see Lana's parents in "The Kanes". Neither appears to be mulatto. So let's go with Jossed.

The cast of Frisky Dingo are the offspring of the cast of Archer.
Frisky Dingo seems to take place after Archer, since Archer has airships and the KGB, and Frisky Dingo has robot pants. Someone (most likely Kreiger) combined various cast members' DNA to make the ultimate super-spies; Val was an attempt at combining Pam's general kickassness with Archer's physical fitness, and Xander Crews was an attempt at combining Archer's super-spy skillz with Ray's level-headedness and maturity. It didn't completely work, but it did OK. Ronnie is the same guy, who joined the Xtacles to keep an eye on Xander, and Stan is an older version of Krieger.

Lana has the power to make anyone who has sex with her irresistibly attractive.
Pam was desperate for someone, anyone, to have sex with her, but they all found her hideous. Since Lana threw her a bone out of pity, she's had some sort of sexual contact with pretty much the entire cast, apart from Ray and Krieger: she had drunken sex with Cyril, a threesome with Malory and that German guy, and of course her (still ongoing as of the end of Season 3) friends-with-benefits arrangement with Archer. She hasn't had sex with Cheryl yet, but it's probably only a matter of time.
  • Also, during and after his relationship with Lana, Cyril managed to get Cheryl, Scatterbrain Jane and Malory into bed. Plus Trinette seemed to have a soft spot for him right up until the candy bar incident.

Archer has a superhuman Healing Factor.
He's constantly suffering horrific injuries that he's fully recovered from in no time, while everyone else suffers for at least a while from any serious injuries — many of which are caused by Archer either taking absurd risks with, or at least having no concern at all for, anyone's health (including his own), because he doesn't realise how unusual his powers are. Still, we know what his Achilles' Heel is — cancer.
  • Or Krieger has been gradually adding cybernetics to Archer without telling him (possibly during the couple of times a year when Woodhouse knocks him out for some peace and quiet)- in Season 1, crashing through the car windshield causes his limbs to get horrifically twisted, but in Season 4, being so close to an exploding car that his clothes get blown off, and then getting thrown across the plaza just results in some shards of glass stuck in his skin. And it is exactly the sort of thing Krieger would do.

Archer coined the phrase "Danger Zone"
  • Jossed. He mentions it's from the Kenny Loggins song in Top Gun.

Archer happens in the same world as The Venture Brothers.
The two shows share the same strangely anachronistic setting, both take place in worlds where strangely named agencies tackle wildly unusual conspiracies, and both have said agencies staffed by people who by all rights should have difficulty even getting a weapons permit.
  • To expand the theory, there could well be connections between ISIS and SPHYNX, both Non-Government (probably?) spy agencies with Egyptian themed naming.
  • Rip Riley may not be Archer's father, but depending on when the shows are set relative to one another, it might not be inconceivable that he's Brock Sampson's...
    • If this is the case, of course, then Archer may in fact just be an Earthly manifestation of Byron Orpheus' Master, dispensing advice in strange and unusual ways... or possibly just being a dick.

George Spelvin is Cyril's estranged father.
Think about it. He knows all of Cyril's past and his relationship with his father, and his dialogue seems to hint it.
  • Jossed. He looks nothing like Cyril's father — who is seen standing off stage in a flashback — and looks to be as old or only slightly older than Cyril. Plus Cyril seems to be on relatively decent terms with his father, given he visits him for holidays.
    • Unless that man is actually Cyril's step-father (unbeknownst to Cyril) and George is Cyril's biological father.
      • Doubtful. This still doesn't explain the lack of similarity or age difference between the two, or the the fact the man offstage looks just like Cyril as an adult. So let's go with still Jossed.

All ISIS agents are skimming potentially millions from their operations accounts.
Lana and Cyril mention that Archer could have been doing it all along in "Heart of Archness Part I", only to find he's tending bar in French Polynesia, but Ray hints he, at least, is skimming from his account.
  • Unlikely for all of them to be doing it. Ray has done all sorts of immoral things over the course of the series, so skimming money really isn't a stretch for him. On the other hand, it would be completely out of character for Cyril and Lana to do so.
    • Cyril wouldn't be above it. In Heart of Archness, he puts ISIS' funds into Swiss accounts so that Malory can't find them and doesn't seem all that upset when he thinks he embezzled them.
      • He was, to quote Cyril, "black-out, knee-walking, shit-faced drunk" at the time, so he wasn't exactly thinking clearly until the morning after. Also, he wasn't worried so much about how he embezzled the money as he was about getting it unembezzled before Malory found out and kills him in some horrific fashion.

The Russians built a fully robotic "Other Barry" in case they ever needed to replace the cyborg one.
Alternately, Barry had Krieger built one in exchange for that sweet drum set (we never do find out how he paid for it).
  • The drum set could be why he lives in such squalor. He sank all his available income into the kit and doesn't currently have the funds to afford a better apartment.
    • And the customisations to his van(s) can't be cheap.

Barry kills Trexler in season 4
Barry has repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to kill Archer, whereas Trexler is an easy target and was a complete jackass to Barry during their time at ODIN. With Trexler dead, there's almost no chance that Archer could find out who his father was, cementing the uncertainty and doubt Barry hoped to create when he killed Jakov-two birds with one stone.
  • Although according to Dial M for Mother, there's still at least one (possibly two) more candidate(s) for Archer's father. Whether or not Barry knows that...
    • Though Malory admits that one is unlikely at best, and the fourth mentioned in "Lo Scandolo" was executed by fascist Italy for speaking against the government, while she was pregnant with Archer.
    • Jossed: Trexler does not appear in Season 4.

The reason Archer's terrified of Alligators is because his real father, who he met on his sixth birthday, died in front of him in a violent manner.
  • Aside from Woodhouse, who was decent to him,(though he was passed out from Heroin at the time) Archer's real father was the only person who showed him kindness, and was in fact the only person to give him a present on his birthday. Said present was a stuffed Alligator, and the real ones are now Archer's greatest fear. Seeing the only person who really cared about him die a gruesome death at such a young age left Archer traumatized, and while not remembering what happened, his greatest fear was formed from the thing that stood out most: the doll he got for his birthday.

Jakov's debriefing videotape reappears in Season 4.
"Videotape... revealed huge..." are some of the only intelligible words in the Season 4 promo.
  • Jossed. It does not appear.

Trudy Beakman will appear this season.
And she will be based on and voiced by Liza Minelli.
  • Both confirmed and jossed, respectively. Trudy made a minor appearance in The Honeymooners, but was not voiced by Liza Minelli. However, Adam Reed has expressed interest in having Liza Minelli voice her in a possible future appearance.

Rudy and Charles will reappear this season.
Since they disappeared after a Claymore is detonated right in front of them, "however implausible that may be", and knowing this series, they're probably still alive.
  • Jossed. They do not appear in Season 4. They do in Season 5.

Carol's insanity is PTSD from her relations with Conway Stern
While most of the characters have development that can be linked right from the beginning of the series, Carol seems to jump from reserved and mild-mannered to one of the craziest characters on the show, and it seems to start when Conway enters the fray. Thing is, she goes from "just the tip" to being a nymphomaniac, which is a pretty huge leap out of nowhere—but keep in mind that after Conway she has a vicious choke mark on her throat, and develops the kinky character soon after. Is it a stretch to imagine that she was still a "just the tip" girl in that episode, but Conway decided not to listen, with Carol actually liking the violent domination? such a sudden revelation could be harmful to the psyche...
  • Also entirely possible that she's brain-damaged from all of the asphyxiation into unconsciousness, which as stated above, started with Conway.
    • PTSD does not cause brain damage, so choke-sex is the most likely explanation for any brain damage she has.
  • She mentions being in a mental ward at least once, for ten months. And this is implied to be because she committed a crime and had an insane outburst. Not to disprove the theory or anything, it just means that there was some mental instability in the past.
  • Her brother Cecil seems concerned about her behavior, and mentions the only thing not unusual for Cheryl is arson (though it turns out he's trying to have her declared insane to gain her inheritance, but given Cheryl's instability, he does seem rather genuine about it). Malory also heavily implies this WMG is the case. Pam and Archer also mention that Cheryl thought she was a werewolf for six months.
    • She specifically mentions the choke-sex with Barry, not Conway, as evidence of Cheryl's insanity.
      • We actually see choke marks on her neck right after having sex with Conway, long before Barry ever appeared.
    • We don't know if Cecil knows that: Malory never tells Cecil that Conway had choke-sex with Cheryl, at least not on-screen, and it's not like Cheryl and Cecil were close before (or after) the Season 4 finale. Seasons 2-4 somewhat retcon Cheryl's history and establish she was nuts since at least college ("Movie Star"), so Conway can't be the entire explanation. And Malory cites the choke-sex as proof, not cause, of insanity.
  • The asphixyation fetish didn't start with stern, she expected archer to strangle her in the first episode.
    • No, she doesn't. She has exactly two scenes in the pilot, and in neither does she mention choking, not even in the flashback. She's a timid and clingy receptionist, and is only slightly less so in the next episode, yet still doesn't mention or even hint at an asphyxiation fetish. It wasn't until the third episode that she started to become the Cheryl we know now, where she was clearly choked during sex by Conway.
    • She breathed in deeply, shut her eyes and said "I'm ready" and was disappointed when archer ignored that and asked to be buzzed in.
  • Might be jossed. A brief flashback to her during "Sea Tunt" shows she's pretty much always been a little unhinged, having pyromania at least that far back when she set a gazebo on fire for no clear reason.

There will eventually be a crossover with Frisky Dingo.

Mulatto Butts is foreshadowing
Archer's ringtone. One would suspect that it's just a catchy song about butts he liked. You could also assume that it's a sign that he still loves Lana. ('Black-ass mama...White-ass daddy.') OR it's foreshadowing that a white man will get Lana pregnant later in the show. I really doubt the latter, but it would be a weird twist.
  • Confirmed. Archer is the father of Lana's daughter. Lana used frozen sperm Archer deposited years ago, which he told her about in "Stage Two". Apparently.

Barry and Archer are related.
We have a diverse-looking cast. Isn't it odd that Barry is a Palette Swap of Archer? They could be brothers, sharing the same dad.

Pam will replace Lana in the field in Season 5.
Pam aced the field agent exam, and Lana will probably take some time off now that she's pregnant.
  • Jossed. There is no field in season 5, since the FBI shut down ISIS at the beginning of the season and Lana returns to the field in season 6.

Cyril is a Russian spy.
The alphabet used in Russia is called Cyrillic. It's a Meaningful Name.
  • Maybe not, but Cyril is a very Russian name and not all that common in the US. Plus he "accidentally" shot a cooperating KGB defector who was about to reveal Barry's plan and all his intel on the KGB.

There will be a feature length Archer remake of Top Gun
Based on the season five promo. Because it would be awesome.

Katya, Conway Stern, and Krieger are agents of a Nebulous Evil Organization in the vein of SPECTRE or QUANTUM.

Krieger's "secret project" during the end of Season 2 really was one of this organization's secret projects, while the wedding was a cover.

  • Jossed. Conway turns out to be CIA-affiliated and was trying to sell fake Whisper Drive plans to the Chinese.

Why else would Krieger give Conway a new hand? Katya's takeover of the KGB is just one step in this organization's plans.

Cheryl is secretly a financial genius
While her responsible, philanthropic and seemingly much more sane brother Cecil managed to deplete his enormous inheritance within a couple of years of their parent's death, Cheryl still owns (half) of the railroad, some truly spectacular hotels and God alone knows what else. Although she claims that she has to get any spending money approved by Cecil, his plot to steal her half of the inheritance suggests that he is not actually in control of it. This is further backed up by the fact that Cheryl's fortune seems to be flourishing while he lost his. Either someone else (who is extremely competent) is managing Cheryl's money, or she is actually brilliant when it comes to financial matters and only pretends otherwise so as to avoid having people come to her for money. Note that this does not preclude her from being insane in other ways, such as her pyromania and sexual deviance.
  • Another possibility is that Cecil WAS in charge of her inheritance...while she was institutionalized. When she got out and saw what had happened to her money (and the implications that her parents don't trust her enough to leave their fortune with her), Cheryl took the job at ISIS to gain their confidence and money back. It would explain her change in character from the first few episodes until now (she was trying to cover up her insanity to keep her job). Why she continues to work there after hep parents died and she got the inheritance is a mystery, though.
  • This would also explain why she seems to have no idea how an insurance deductible works, thinking it is for tax purposes in the second episode, but in season four mentions that Archer gave her chlamydia before the series began, which put her over her deductible so the rest of her doctor visits were covered by her insurance that year.
  • She immediately recognized Cecil's plot to gain receivership over her holdings by proving her mentally incompetent, even while hearing imaginary John Williams score in the background.
  • It's also possible that Cecil only had power of state, which means he must approve all of Cheryl's spending, but cannot spend any of her money herself.
  • In "Baby Shower", Archer questions the wisdom of having a glass-sided endless pool high atop a skyscraper hotel. Cut to a flashback of Cheryl in a black business suit making the same observation to the workers who built it, but then lets them continue because "you're the mens". While still seemingly a little nuts, she apparently supervised the construction of the Tuntmore Towers Hotel herself. Which is a pretty stark contrast to Cecil, who didn't even read the budgets for his philanthropic projects (such as the sealab).

Archer will die in the series finale.
Somehow, the bus will come back with Barry and the KGB and will result in both of them dead, along with Lana and/or Katya. Archer's final word? Bang.
  • Well, The Bus Came Back for Barry, Katya and the KGB in Season 4 ("Viscous Coupling", specifically) and again in Season 6 ("Edie's Wedding", "Reignition Sequence").

Archer was always attracted to Pam.
  • Exhibit A: Season one, episode five, "Honeypot." Archer's words: "What, is [the person I have to seduce] Pam? Whatever, it's all the same in the dark..."
  • Exhibit B: Season two, episode six, "Tragical History." Archer's words: "C'mon, Pam, get me drunk and I might have sex with you...but I do wanna see how many pool balls you can fit in your mouth."
  • Exhibit C: Season three. episode ten. All of it.

Tiffy is responsible for Cecil's different appearance.

Cecil Tunt has a beard and is much thinner in the family painting seen in "El Secustro", but in "Sea Tunt Part 1/2" he has no beard and has gained weight. He mentions Tiffy made him go vegan, which could explain the weight gain, and it is conceivable she made him shave and get a haircut.

Chet Manley was the intern at ISIS.

In "Blood Test", Krieger is testing new body armour on an intern, named Chet, who dies. Archer assumed his identity and identification to use as an alias.

Carol, like Other Barry, is an alternate/split personality of Cheryl.

Cheryl has said some strange things, like the name of the president of Turkmenistan's dog and the devestating "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Lana, without even knowing she was talking, and in "White Elephant" she signs the confession as "Cheryl and/or Carol".

However, Carol is not yet at the same level as Other Barry, as Cheryl does not yet converse with her (until Other Barry's apparent emergence as a separate entity in "Viscous Coupling", Barry and Other Barry did converse; Barry talked to, not with, his Desert Eagle). Carol is the psychopathic personality and has been the one doing all the crazy stuff like setting things on fire, saying and doing things without her knowing (possibly even the one constantly saying "Duh" and "You're not my supervisor"), and her sudden, strange changes in personality. Carol did not have a name until Archer kept addressing Cheryl by the wrong name.


Additionally:

Carol, not Cheryl, stabbed Dick Sledge.
In "Movie Star", Cheryl mentions that in college, she was snooping on a football player, and when he came back to his dorm room without her realizing it, she stabbed him in the hand with a pair of scissors, severing a tendon. She also claims not to recall actually stabbing him or where the scissors came from.

Stabbing Dick Sledge is how Cheryl ended up in an asylum.

While this may be axiomatic, later in "Movie Star", Cheryl mentions that she said the right words at a trial and spent ten months in an institution. Cheryl plead not guilty by reason of insanity and was institutionalized, and, like the WMG about her being a financial genius, she had to prove she was of sound mind to be released and gain back her parents' trust and her spot on their will, so she took the job at ISIS as Malory's secretary. This may or may not be the same as when she was in an asylum with amnesia under someone else's name.

Archer cast as the Seven Deadly Sins

  • Archer: Pride
  • Lana: Wrath
  • Mallory: Greed
  • Cyril: Lust
  • Pam: Gluttony
  • Cheryl: Sloth
  • Ray: Envy

Whatever was glowing in that briefcase, be it plutonium or a human soul, K-Log bought it from Krieger
  • We know he had some sort of "evil plan" involving selling radioactive material to North Korea, and that he often sells wildly dangerous and irresponsible things to make side money, and if anybody could build a machine to isolate a human soul in a box, it would be Krieger.
    • Or, he has somehow been able to isolate and encapsulate the Danger Zone.

Conway Stern's real name is significant
  • His "which is not my real name!" Wasn't just a taunt. It was a setup for a future plot twist, possibly that his real name is Jakov, making him Sterling's possible half-brother.
    • Jossed: His name really is just Conway Stern.

Sterling is actually in a coma, and the whole of "Archer Vice" was just a dream.
  • The season 5 teasers, after all, featured Archer daydreaming. And the season 5 finale had him asking Lana if everything that's happened is just a dream. This theory would also explain how the hell Pam's still alive after gobbling so much cocaine and being shot.
    • Jossed: He brings up the idea in the finale after being hit with a hell of a Wham Line but it isn't at all true. Season 6 continues the overarching plot of the show from where Season 5 ended.

Barry's "master plan" for getting revenge on Archer involves Abbijean.
  • It's been implied that Barry has some kind of insane plan to get revenge on Archer, and that this plan has yet to be revealed. Could it be that Barry somehow masterminded Lana's pregnancy, and will now attempt to kidnap or even kill Abigene in a planned effort to get revenge on Archer?
    • Jossed, or at least, implausible: Lana voluntarily used sperm that Archer donated years ago, so Barry had no way of knowing it, and furthermore he isn't even Head of the KGB anymore so he will no longer be implementing the master plan in all likelihood.

Krieger has become a Dr. Manhattan-type mutant.
  • At the start of Season 4, Krieger experimented on both himself and some ants, using a radiation chamber. He comments on how Mallory got the overweight IT guy killed, then said overweight IT guy dies a few episodes later. He also manages to create exact duplicates of himself, overcoming the defective clones originally seen in his lab. Dr. Manhattan was created through similar means and had the ability to see into the future as easily as normal people see the present and in one memorable scene, was able to clone himself.
    • Jossed. The production code and creators confirm that "Coyote Lovely" (the one where Bilbo dies) was meant to be the second episode in season four, but was aired out of order, and Krieger is himself a clone. He did not clone himself; the clones in San Marco were his brother clones as part of The Boys from Brazil parody.

Krieger is dead, and one of his fellow clones is now impersonating him.
  • After the fight against his clones in "Filibuster," the surviving Krieger has a bruise to the head. But the original Krieger was never shown getting a bruise of this nature during the fight. That distinction goes to the first clone to fall off the missile gantry, who A: was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher in just the manner to cause such a bruise, and B: had his fall slightly broken by railings, thus possibly giving him a chance at survival. The season finale casts doubt on this. A clone wouldn't have known about Cheryl's brain implant, unless the real Krieger happened to tell the clones about it.
    • This is very much a possibility and the creators know it, and have been teasing the answer throughout Season 6. Only Adam Reed and Lucky Yates (Krieger's VA) know the truth, and it is unlikely we will find out this season. The most overt reference to this so far has been Cheryl trying to read Krieger's mind telling him that he's scared everyone will realise he's just a Krieger clone, to which he tries to feign ignorance.
  • Also the clones were trying to launch the missiles and Krieger was trying to stop them. If Krieger were replaced by a clone, he wouldn't have done anything to stop the missile launch, like redirecting the missile and removing the nerve gas tip.

Archer was originally going to go deaf at the end of Season 5.
At the end of "Archer Vice: Arrival/Departure" when Lana is telling Archer that she used his sperm for her pregnancy, the ringing in Archer's ears slowly gets louder and louder, until he is unable to hear Lana anymore. Although it turns it Archer just zoned out for a moment, due to the fact that Archer has tinnitus, it seems plausible that originally the episode was going to end with Archer finally losing his hearing and becoming permanently deaf. It actually makes sense given the theme of the show, the fact that anytime Archer finds anything he can genuinely love, it somehow is ruined for him, therefore the moment he learns that Lana really does love him and her daughter is actually their child together, Archer finally loses his hearing. However, at the last moment someone from the show decided the ending was just too dark, or it would be too hard to work into any upcoming seasons, they quickly changed it.
  • Unlikely, since the season was viewed as a "vacation" from the start by the production crew, and making Archer deaf would severely limit their options in season six.

Archer is a cyborg, and has been for a while.
With all the damage he's taken, and with Krieger's wanton experimentation, it seems likely that Archer has received at least some bionic enhancement over the years. Given how little scar tissue he seems to have, he may also have some kind of genetically-enhanced healing ability.
  • See "Krieger has secretly been implanting cybernetics in the ISIS staff", above.

Anka will reappear at some point.
By now she should be eighteen, and Archer did tell her to call him when that happened.

Krieger's holographic girlfriend will be able to tell if this is the real Krieger or a clone.

Katya became a Psychopath as a result of her resurrection.
Barry certainly lost his sanity as a result, maybe Katya being dead and being brought back caused her to loose all ability to feel empathy or love.
  • Barry was hardly sane to begin with. Katya isn't psychopathic, just more evil, as we are led to believe in "Viscous Coupling", with her using Barry and Archer to become Head of the KGB.
    • Scheming and ambitious maybe, but she is hardly evil.

At some point, the characters will need emergency services and the only available phone will be Ray's.
In "Vision Quest", a 911 operator blocked Ray's cell phone number after misinterpreting his calls as pranks. The writers will totally do a Call-Back to that at some point.

Much or all of "Nellis" was All Just a Dream.
Pam and Krieger were obviously drinking on the plane (and Krieger is a known LSD user), so one or the other imagined the entire event during the uneventful flight to Branson that happened to include a fly-by of Nellis AFB.

Supporting this is the lack of reference by subsequent episodes in a very continuity-driven show, particularly Archer claiming to be on the No-Fly List for drunkenly assaulting flight crew while attempting to break into the cockpit, yet is on a commercial flight in the very next episode, "The Kanes". Further supporting this is Slater not mentioning Archer impersonating him and stealing a C-130.

The current version of Krieger's Virtual Girlfriend is not only the Reincarnation of her mother but everytime Krieger kills her she reincarnates everytime.
  • This isn't Star Trek. Files can be copied and backed up. So Krieger probably has her set to backup regularly, and if he (or anyone else) "kills" her then he simply restores her from the backup, perhaps making modifications each time. It's what makes the relationship so appealing, because with her Death is Cheap.
    • Confirmed in "Reignition Sequence", where Krieger admits to "killing" her on a daily basis. In "Helping Hands". Krieger tells Pam that he has lots of backups of Mitsuko's files. Which is why having her blown up along with his van is less upsetting to him than losing the van itself.

He's already named and modeled after his voice actor. Why else would he insist everyone call him by a mononym?

Slater (and possibly Hawley) is a Double Agent/Traitor
He has been running a lot of ops against members of natons that are supposed to be America's Allies. So what if he is working for America's enemies and has been tasked with getting information. And maybe Hawley is in on it as well. Isn't it odd that we never see any OTHER CIA agents.
  • We see several agents working with Slater in "The Kanes". So let's go with Jossed.
  • Definitely Jossed. "Drastic Voyage" takes place at a CIA black site and an assortment of high-ranking military officers are present during the operation. Note that this could be considered Truth in Television, as there actually have been recent scandals over the U.S. conducting espionage against allied governments, including Germany. Plus, the CIA has a very lengthy history of black ops involving the manipulation of foreign governments, some of which were at least nominally U.S. allies.

Ray will eventually become a full-blown cyborg.
Poor Ray, he lost his legs and now a hand and it's gotten to the point where him getting crippled and getting robotic prosthetics is a running gag. It won't be long until he becomes a full-on cyborg like Barry and Katya.
  • Technically, he's been a cyborg since he got the bionic legs. But it is entirely possible that Ray will eventually end up like Barry or Katya.

"Fugue and Riffs" was a delayed reaction to Jackov's death.
When Katya died, Archer disappeared into the South Pacific in grief. In "Crossing Over", he bonds with Jackov, the most likely candidate to be his biological father, who is then murdered because Archer was having sex with Pam when he was supposed to be watching Jackov. Three episodes later, Archer thinks he's Bob, claimed to be because Malory married Ron Cadillac. It would seem more likely that the trauma of both caused his fugue state, rather than just Malory's marriage.

Pretending to be paralyzed in "The Rules of Extraction" was a Batman Gambit on Ray's part to get Archer to not half ass getting them out of the jungle.
Archer is a huge asshole, with majorly skewed priorities, but there does seem to be a part of him that genuinely cares about his fellow agents (helping Ray with his brother, drowning for Lana, telling Pam he didn't want her to die of a coke overdose, saving Pam from Barry, expressing concerns that Ray may kill himself after Ray is once again paralyzed). Knowing this, and also knowing that Archer tends to half ass everything he can, Ray faked being paralyzed to put more pressure on Archer, because if Archer messed up there was no way (in Archer's mind) Ray could get himself out. Plus messing with Archer and forcing him to carry Ray through the jungle was a bonus.

Krieger was not replaced by a clone.
The clones wanted to launch the missile, if the surviving Krieger was a clone, he could have remained shut for the rest of the countdown.
  • Plus a clone wouldn't know about the "microchip" Krieger injected into Cheryl's brain.

The entire show is about autism.
There've been plenty of hints that Archer is literally autistic, but I realized that it also works on a metaphorical level: Archer is intelligent and capable in his own way, but he's fundamentally held back by the fact that he's part of a social system that wasn't designed for him, and was raised by people who didn't know what his needs were. This leads to people both wildly overestimating him (when they assume he can adapt easily to a situation neurotypicals could easily navigate), and underestimating him (when they outright assume he's stupid). He constantly does whatever he thinks will get people to like him, but always gets it wrong because he doesn't understand the subtleties: He learned from his mother to treat others as inferiors, and takes this to an absurd extreme with Woodhouse. He also learned honesty was a good thing, and drinking is good for social bonding, so he constantly gives too much information, and has become an alcoholic. His constant sex is probably fueled not by an actual desire for it, but by a belief that the social status that comes with multiple sex partners will eventually lead to social acceptance.
  • This is genius.

Ray's robotic hand was originally made for Conway.
Both of them lost their right hands in Season 6. Krieger made robotic hands for both of them but due to being Krieger, the prosthetics got mixed up during surgery. Next time we see Conway Stern, he'll have a caucasian right hand.

Counter to the above: Ray's robotic hand was originally made for Lana.
As this gif shows, Krieger already had hands made for Lana and as we know she has man hands.

Ray will die, but Krieger will bring him back... as a zombie!
They've done the cyborg thing several times already, so this would be a way to put a new spin on it. Plus, gay cyborg zombie. Doesn't that sound like something Krieger would want to make?

Krieger has prosopagnosia.
The main argument for post-season five finale Krieger being a clone is that he often forgets the names of his coworkers. However, watching the season six episode "Edie's Wedding", it shown that Krieger also does not recognize AJ. She was born after all four Krieger's fell off the rocket gantry and he had seen her extensively since then, at one point even "borrowing" her for research. Lana herself is perplexed that Krieger doesn't seem to know who AJ is. Since this cannot be attributed to him being a clone, it has to be something else. He did suffer a very long fall, including a head injury. It's entirely possible that he developed prosopagnosia (face blindness) as a result. Thus he can remember most things and his intellect is unimpaired. But he cannot remember faces. This may account for his rant at Mallory that he can't be a clone of Adolf Hitler because he doesn't look like him. Krieger could be forgetting his own face, and thus examined it more closely while looking in a mirror and checking a picture of Hitler for comparison — something he may have never bothered to do before.

We were led to believe that Bob's Burgers was just Sterling Archer's delusion but actually both shows were imagined by Louise Belcher A.K.A Mabel Pines.
At some point Bill Cipher decided that in order to stop her interfering with his Evil Plan he would freeze her in suspended animation with the delusion that she never lived in Gravity Falls and was just an ordinary little girl with a normal, loving (albeit dysfunctional family). However her subconscious thought back, deep down she knew that this was not real so she subconsciously started destroying the illusion by introducing hints that things weren't right like a change in animation styles or it becoming increasingly difficult to tell what time period it is. When none of this worked she resorted to having her imaginary dad spontaneously change appearance and personality then have him abandon her so he wouldn't be a distraction. Now that that she has figured all this out all of that Spy Drama stuff is just to keep her entertained while she thaws out.

Archer's father is the Cuban officer whose place he takes in Miami.
The guy looks exactly like Archer with a moustache and grey hairs on his temples. Basically, an older Archer.
  • And Malory said nothing at the time because she was still trying to maintain the lie about Sterling's father.
  • Alternatively, he's not Archer's father, but his uncle, Nikolai Jackov's younger brother, who is part of the Cuban regime or otherwise is a Soviet official in Communist Cuba, hence Mallory's reaction.

TV Tropes exists in the Archer verse.
Not only does Archer use the phrase "Trope alert", but he also lampshades lampshade hanging.

Lana and Archer's relationship in Season 6 is the result of some sort of mental conditioning.
  • The degree to which they become obsessed with one another is wildly out of character, to the point that Lana forgets about her newborn daughter when talking about how happy she is.
  • They also seem to swing drastically between head-over-heels love and their usual rivalry, sometimes at breakneck speed — such as when Lana is furious at Archer when she suspects he is cheating on her in 'Reignition Sequence', only to immediately forget about it when they walk into the bedroom, even though she sees and points out even more evidence of an affair in there.
  • Finally, both Archer and Lana repeatedly hum the exact same song (the 'Morning' section of the William Tell Overture) when they are together. The song may be part of the conditioning or some sort of trigger.
It's anyone's bet who is responsible; it could be an experiment by Kriger or the CIA, or Mallory could be responsible somehow.

The fake Veronica Dean is actually Katya Kazanova in disguise
  • While it's still very early in the season and her body was mostly concealed, they do both have very fat lips, same general body type, same voice actress and a mole wouldn't be too hard to fake.

Krieger isn't a clone of Adolf Hitler. He's a clone of Mengele
.Krieger looks nothing like Hitler. Wrong hair colour, wrong eye colour. However, Mengele had brown hair, and was a member of the SA (Consider Krieger's normal outfit), and was, above all else, a very, very intelligent and hard-woking man. When you also consider his extremely dubious surgical and genetic experiments it fits very very well...

Krieger's next revived-from-the-dead cyborg: Archer himself.
  • Considering the delicious irony of it being the thing he hates/fears the most and with the precedent of it having been done to Katya in the past, it's not entirely out of the question.

Predictions for AJ's first word(s)
  • Phrasing!
  • Nooope.
  • Lanaaaaaa!
  • Danger zone!
  • Wake up.

Everyone (except Krieger) at the Figgis Agency is a robot doppelganger is a robot.
We suddenly find them at the agency, while every other time they have shifted directions we've seen it happen. Kruger suddenly is doing robotics, when previously even when working with cybernetics they have been in relation to supplanting organic matter. It also explains how Sterling survives.

When Archer finally goes to sleep in Archer Dreamland, he'll wake up from his coma.
Since he's currently trapped in a coma in the real world and his Dreamland counterpart hasn't been able to sleep the whole season, for one reason or another, so when he finally goes to sleep he will wake up. The problem is, he won't get the opportunity to go to sleep until he resolves the situation with Mother and solves Woodhouse's murder.
  • Archer finds out the truth: Dutch murdered Woodhouse for absolutely no reason. The season ends with Archer visiting Woodhouse's grave.

Everyone but Lana and Mallory are on a manhunt for Veronica Dean

Zirk is Archer's father
Or rather, Zirk's physical appearance is based on Archer's repressed memory of the one time he met his father. In that scene, his father was The Faceless, but it goes further than that. The flashback had the man speak in a suave English accent, something that clashes with Zirk's physical appearance and, the man's body in the flashback was made less distinctive (i.e. less bulky and muscular) by Archer's mind. In his coma, Archer's repressed image of the man becomes Zirk, who is Mother's main muscle. In Danger Island, Zirk's design could possibly return in some fashion, hinting at a deeper meaning. Or he's just a minor character and I'm full of it and overthinking things too much. We'll just have to wait and see if Archer's father is revealed by the end of the series.

Danger Island is a Bait-and-Switch and the next season will be back to the real universe outside of Archer's coma.
No promotional material aside from a logo for the season has been released. Could it be that they want to keep the plans for next season a surprise to the viewers, and have decided the best way to keep it secret is a trick reveal for a season that won't exist?

Archer is Latino
Simply put, Conway said he passes and we don't know who Archer's father is.
  • One possibility is an Italian man, for what that's worth.
  • Conway didn't say it, he showed a photo of a Cuban official who looked exactly like Archer.

Barry had Archer's blood sample tested before storing it in the vault and after Archer switched it.
Because short of prescience, how would he have known how to trap Archer?

Archer loaded the gun with blanks and the pillow with firecrackers in "Training Day"
He's shown himself capable of very elaborate things, and while he's very demeaning of Woodhouse, he would hardly want his servant killed by accident. This also explains how Cyril hit the target despite his poor marksmanship in later episodes, since he didn't hit it at all. Plus he had Krieger prepare the gun earlier.

Obviously he wouldn't tell Woodhouse, both to keep it a secret from Cyril and to torment Woodhouse.

Archer doesn't have a father. He's a genetically engineered Super-Soldier.
This explains both why Mallory doesn't know who his father is, and his Made of Iron -ness.

Archer's descendant is Jonathan Archer
Both really bad at the jobs they were supposedly trained for, the Captain's fixation on water polo seems to evoke Sterling's love of lacrosse... yeah. I could see it.

At the end of Archer: 1999, Sterling will wake up from his coma for real.
Confirmed. Archer's been in a coma for 3 years.

Lana is the main cause of her relationship troubles with Cyril and Archer.
Given that we have seen her to be almost constantly angry, obsessively controlling, chronically dismissive of differing opinions and even contemptuous of both men. it is not too far a stretch to assume that she is emotionally distant and lacking intimacy while in a relationship.We know that Archer has not had very many healthy or stable relationships in his life (Katya possibly being the only one that remotely comes close) so he is most likely love-starved and Cyril clearly has father-issues and possibly other needs for intimacy.Lana's cold and almost antagonistic personality could very well have pushed Cyril/Archer to try and find some form of intimacy outside the relationship.

Dreamland to 1999 has been based on what Archer is hearing.
Specifically, the comatose Archer is using elements from what he's been hearing in his coma to create the scenarios of each world. During Dreamland everyone goes their separate ways in the wake of tragedy, but Archer hears about Woodhouse's passing and focuses on that. Lana's tried to go straight to keep AJ safe, Malory has fallen deeper into her vices, Cyril continues running business and gets increasingly crooked about it, and so on. By the time of 1999 the old group is mostly back together, but the last episode shows everyone leaving Archer behind, except Malory who wanted to stay with him. Potentially the last thing he hears about/from Cyril is him doing something Archer wanted to, like marrying Lana, mirrored by Cyril in the coma pulling off the unlikely stunt of gunning down all the space pirates to Archer's great annoyance. Given there wouldn't need to be a direct time correlation between Archer in the dream hearing about it and the actions being played out in dream, this could have happened a long time ago.

Malory meant Lana is in prison.
In season seven, Lana was facing some serious legal trouble. She's arrested for stalking and carrying a gun illegally, then is the suspect in a murder case because her alibi is committing a felony assault while on parole. She's cleared of the murder, but not of the assault or the other charges. Malory doesn't want to break it to Archer right away that Lana has been in prison the last few years.

Mallory is the cause of Cheryl's mental deterioration.
Cheryl's change from an insecure push-over to a barely functioning maniac seems, at first, to be nothing but a case of Flanderization/Early-Installment Weirdness ... at first. However, in The Man from Jupiter, Mallory threatens to send her and Pam to a mental institution with Laser-Guided Amnesia under someone else's name, to which Cheryl offhandedly mentions that it "wouldn't be the first time." And in Sea Tunt, her brother, Cecil, says while she had mental problems in her youth, he's shocked at her current mental deterioration. And in Movie Star it's revealed that she's spent time in mental institutions multiple times (becoming proficient in macrame). Lastly, in Diversity Hire, she has sex with Conway Stern with the hopes she'll become pregnant with his child (even bragging such to Mallory), despite later developing a hatred of babies. Adding all this together, it would seem that Mallory disapproved of Archer's affair with her secretary (and the possibility that she'd be having Stern's child), so she wiped her memory and institutionalized her (possibly also giving her an abortion if needed and programming in an extreme phobia of infants to ensure it wouldn't happen again). Clearly, the amnesia didn't take and Cheryl was given back her job, but it's more than likely that the procedure coupled with the experience wrecked havoc on her fragile mental state and exacerbated any underlying issues she had, leaving her sanity hanging on by a thread as it currently is.
  • Err, one flaw with this, the whole scenario relies HEAVILY on Cheryl BEING pregnant, and the only test she took was fake. Plus from what we heard of the other stunts, insanity runs DEEPLY in their family so it more than likely that it more genetic, which is more realistic than that speculative scenario.

Archer has severe brain damage, and it's the main reason for his personality.
While Archer has his fair share of neurological abnormalities and childhood traumas to explain his behavior, it's explicitly pointed out in the show that being knocked out is not something you just walk off and can cause serious medical problems for the recipient. Archer has been been knocked unconscious more times than anyone can count, primarily by Woodhouse who admitted once that he's been pushed to assaulting Sterling "three or four times a year." While Archer wasn't exactly a paragon of mental health, but all the head traumas have done a number on him and the damage is just getting worse, to the point where he's so delusional that he literally thinks it's impossible for him to die.

Archer is not actually Malory's child.
  • Be it a misremembrance on the part of Woodhouse, or perhaps some sort of mix-up, Archer is not Malory's progeny.

The main characters are all reincarnations of Futurama characters
They all have similar traits to Futurama characters. In some aspects, they're Darker and Edgier versions of them.

Archer doesn't have a father, he's a male clone of Malory.
Two versions of this, both starting around WWII. At least one big difference in the series timeline is that Nazis developed cloning/genetic engineering technology. Another difference is people like Malory and Len Trexler setting up semi-autonomous, for-profit intelligence agencies.

In this first version, Malory wants a clone. Maybe after the war Malory negotiates the escape/extradition of a Nazi scientist to Brazil, since America was snatching up Nazi scientists for themselves anyway. This would be the scientist/officer who created and raised Krieger, and who Malory eventually murdered. A male clone was Malory's original price, and maybe there were other copies (explaining Barry.) Either way, in later life Malory uses the question of Archer's paternity to justify certain actions or push whatever scheme she's hatching forward.

The second version is perhaps simpler. Maybe Malory was captured and experimented on by Krieger's dad. They cloned her against her will and put the embryo into her womb. It's possible that Malory doesn't fully remember what happened to her and genuinely doesn't know the origins of Archer, but she definitely remembered enough to track down the former Nazi in Brazil and have him eaten by dogs.

Malory Sexually Abused Sterling as a Child
Sterling has been exposed to more of his mother's sex life than a decent parent would allow. One flashback to his childhood showed Malory letting pre-teen Sterling get drunk, possibly so he'd be less resistant. The very first episode opened up with Malory putting Sterling through a simulation that looks like torture porn, which she personally oversees (not to mention giving him the codename of her dog which she had a perverted fixation on). Then when Sterling wakes up from his coma Malory says their relationship is like a love story.

The only reason the writers won't say it outright is because it would push Malory from being entertainingly bitchy into a full-on monster.

Archer’s father is Rick Sanchez
  • Rick stopped by this universe and bonded with Mallory over their similarities resulting in a fling that also ended because their similar personalities eventually ended up clashing, causing Rick to leave.

Stinky died and Woodhouse won the tontine
  • It would explain why he dropped completely off the radar during season 5. He's a severe heron addict, so it's not hard to imagine how he'd react to suddenly coming into a large sum of money. In fact, after he goes missing, Archer makes a few comments alluding to his belief that Woodhouse is probably holed up somewhere shooting heroin. However, Woodhouse couldn't possibly afford to go on an epic, years-long bender on the meager salary he gets working for Archer. But what if he had the million dollars in the Double Deuce's tontine?

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