The name of the organization that Cordo and his colleague start up, the Black Orchestra, was inspired by the name of a spy network set up by Stalin during World War II in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, in anticipation of a German invasion of Russia. Stalin’s network was called the Red Orchestra (source: David Owen, Hidden Secrets, Firefly Books, 2002, p. 45).

In the script’s earliest versions, the group started by Cordo was called “the Organization.” The simplicity of the name was meant to evoke the project’s low profile. However, when we came across a reference to the Red Orchestra, it was too tempting to give Cordo’s group a more colourful name. And speaking of colour, we chose black for two reasons: it’s used to designate secret operations or black ops, and black is very rarely associated with the good guys.