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  • How come, in "Darkness Falls", none of the bug-besieged characters - not think-outside-the-box Mulder, not explore-our-options-rationally Scully, not the wilderness-loving eco-activist, not the forest-savvy loggers or park ranger - ever even consider, y'know, starting up a bonfire to keep themselves in the light? There they are, surrounded by a million trees and enough logging equipment to turn whole mature pines into kindling, yet they act like electric lights from flashlights, headlights or generator-powered bulbs are the only conceivable sources of illumination that exist.
    • Anyone who's been camping will tell you that the light from a fire doesn't keep bugs away entirely; they tend to just flock around the outskirts of the fire. It also lights an area relatively unevenly, with plenty of shadows around the place, whereas electric lighting tends to cast a much wider, brighter light. Plus, even if the insects were sufficiently scared away from the fire, starting a bonfire indoors is a non-starter for perhaps obvious reasons while starting the fire outdoors means they basically have to stay outside with all the human-cocooning prehistoric bugs basically swarming around them inches away all night, meaning they have to stay awake keeping the fire going and staying uncomfortably or even dangerously close to the flames in order to ensure that they're protected from the bugs which are just inches away from them. Presumably the characters are aware of the existence of fire, but consider it a less practical or effective solution than simply staying inside with solid walls between them and the bugs and as many bright artificial lights on as they can find. (Of course, the real answer is "Shhh! We're trying to tell a horror story here!")
  • What the hell was up with the mother in Sein Und Zeit? We see her writing a ransom note (you know, "No One Shoots Santa Claus") but she seems completely distraught upon finding out her daughter has been kidnapped. Was she under some kind of mind control?
    • It was suggested that the "walk-ins" possessed her (like it did other mothers) to write the ransom note, almost like a fugue state. While the child was never properly kidnapped—having been taken by the walk-ins before the actual child predator got to her—the ransom note helped get the perp arrested and the children's graves discovered.
  • One thing that always was a concern was the endgame of Mulder's exposure of ETs, colonization, and the Syndicate's plans. The Syndicate played along with the Colonists' plans because the Colonists were perfectly content to sneak their way into human society and not just carpet bomb the place from orbit (there was also the whole thing with the slave race of hybrids). By keeping this colonization plan secret and assisting them, they helped forestall the eventual invasion. Now, the Syndicate was acting towards their own ends in any case—their vaccine most likely was not going to be shared with the rest of the world—but so long as the Colonists' cover was not blown, they would have kept to their plans and not just gone the blunt and bloody route. So if Mulder and Scully (and everyone else involved) did reveal the existence of ETs and revealed the Colonists' plans, wouldn't they have just abandoned the whole thing with hybrids/shape-shifting/Super Soldiers and just started wiping humanity off the planet?
    • According to the 2016 miniseries it wouldn't matter anyway because there aren't and never were aliens, at least not since the Roswell crash in the 40's. The whole alien colonization conspiracy was apparently cooked up by The Syndicate as a way to smokescreen their real plans from anyone investigating them and make any accusations against them seem like crackpot theories. The whole thing was just genetically engineered humans and reverse engineered alien craft the entire time.
    • The question of whether or not it's right to expose the truth gets brought up plenty in the series, starting with Deep Throat who tries to keep some thing secret even when helping Mulder (to Mulder's objection.) But generally just in the context of "will people panic and turn on each other if this comes out?" The reason Mulder never seems to grapple with this issue is probably a combination of him believing Humans Are Good and believing that, as a whistleblower, it's not his place to care what the info he exposes leads to. The most optimistic outcome if Mulder exposed everything would be; 1. corrupt political heads roll, 2. humanity puts aside their petty differences and unites in the face of this existential threat. 3. All humans working together are strong enough to fend off the aliens or sue for peace with them. Optimistic, but so is Mulder, and he probably never thought about it any further than step 2.
  • In the Sixth Season episode "The Unnatural", there's a scene where the whole team and Arthur Dales (the cop assigned to protect Exley) are sleeping on the bus. Arthur wakes up, and notices that in the window Exley is sleeping next to, his reflection is that of a Gray, not a black man. Now, it was necessary for the plot, as this is the point that Arthur starts to suspect that there is more to Exley than meets the eye, but why would his reflection be that of a Gray, if he shifted his form to that of a black man? It's not that he uses telepathy to just cast an illusion that he's a black man (in which case his reflection being a Gray would sorta make sense, because you can't cast an illusion on a mirror), as it's made clear they change their form completely to blend in (although their blood stays green and fatal to humans). If it was an illusion, it would likely be dropped completely when he was asleep or knocked unconscious, like when he was hit with the fastball during a game. Also, it couldn't have been an illusion because he became fully human when he refused to shift for the Alien Bounty Hunter and chose to die as Exley. Great episode, but can't help but wonder about the reflection thing.
    Mulder: Let me get this straight: a free-spirited alien fell in love with baseball and ran away from the other non-fun-having aliens and made himself black, because that would prevent him from getting to the majors where his unspeakable secret might be discovered by an intrusive press and public and you're also implying that...
    Arthur: You certainly have a knack for turning chicken salad into chicken spit.
    Mulder: You're also implying that this baseball-playing alien has something to do with the famous Roswell UFO crash of July '47, aren't you?
    Arthur: You're just dying to connect the dots, aren't you, son? Look, I give you some wood and I ask you for a cabinet. You build me a cathedral. I don't want a cathedral. I like where I live. I just want a place to put my TV. Understand my drift?
  • At the joint U.S. military/FBI sham trial in series finale "The Truth", telepathic mind reader Gibson Praise is called in to offer defense for Mulder, affirming that he indeed can read people's thoughts. The judges panel is shown blinking confusingly while the prosecutor looks incredulous and then it just moves on. Alright... But then later, Agent Reyes testifies that Scully's Baby William demonstrated telekinetic powers and the prosecutor baits her to produce the child to prove these powers, something she cannot do as the baby was given up for adoption by this point of course. So why didn't the prosecutor ask for a demonstration of Gibson's telepathy then? It shouldn't have taken too much convincing. And why didn't Mulder's defense give that demonstration, which would have been a clear example of the paranormal and provided at least some incontrovertible evidence for their claims? Even if they were trying to protect Gibson, he had already voluntarily exposed himself to protect Mulder, so proving his powers was the next logical step in defending his testimony. Yet this isn't even considered? Unbelievable. Seems like just another arbitrary way the writers could prevent Mulder and Scully from actually presenting the proof they worked so hard to uncover, but in this case the failure to even mention it drives it into clear Wall Banger territory.
    • Well, it was a show trial. The prosecutor asking for William knew full well that he had been given up for adoption, making it a major weak point in Mulder's case. Asking for proof of Gibson's abilities would actually give Mulder's case some credence, so it wasn't asked for. And actually, Gibson did demonstrate his ability by accusing/identifying one of the judges as an alien replacement/Super Soldier, which got him ejected from the courtroom, among other things.

  • Not really a complaint, having watched only five episodes, but how do the rest of the FBI (or other government agencies) handle the information on aliens, monsters, and A.I. and blahblahblah...
    • It's probably handled the same way as all odd claims. Forgotten, covered up, and thrown away.
    • Or just toss it in the basement and let that weird guy down there take care of it.
    • Many episodes close with more immediate legal concerns: just for one, "Schizogeny" ends with a local weirdo beheading the episode's villain, who to all outward appearances is an upstanding therapist. I wonder how the inquest went.
      • IIRC, there were two witnesses, one an FBI agent (who — though he may be the FBI's resident weird kid — nevertheless holds a certain amount of persuasive clout in law enforcement circles) who would no doubt be willing to testify that the upstanding therapist was acting in threat with clearly murderous intent, even if the exact details (that she was controlling murderous plants with her mind) got a bit fudged in the process. Alternatively, the last we see of her body is it sinking into the ground to be (presumably) consumed by the plants — given the supernatural nature of the event, there's probably no evidence outside of their word that she hasn't just upped and disappeared anyway. Either way, it's going to be an interesting inquest but there's probably not enough evidence to charge him with anything.

  • Why does Mulder always drop his gun? It seems like every single time he confronts the alien/monster/mutant of the week he always drops his gun. It always made me wonder why he even bothered to carry the stupid thing.
    • Rule of Drama, probably.
    • This is actually lampshaded in the episode Nisei, where Mulder is kicked to the ground, disarming him in the process. He then proceeds to whip out his throw-down (a back-up pistol in an ankle holster). Mulder even states he got this because he "got tired of losing his gun". (He also used the back-up gun in "Paper Hearts".)
    • He has to carry it; he's an FBI agent. They carry guns even off duty.
    • This could be construed as Fridge Brilliance when its seen as a small part of Mulder's overall personality. Mulder and Scully were deliberately written to invert traditional gender roles, and that extends even to their weaponry and combat style. Mulder is an intuitive introvert, immersed in his work and profiling the perpetrators of supernatural crime. Physicality is never shown as being his strong suit, despite being the larger of the two partners. Not only does he constantly lose his gun, but he is not that great a shot, and isn't too good in hand-to-hand combat, either. Scully, on the other hand, has Improbable Aiming Skills and holds her own in fights (unless she's holding the Distress Ball, of course). Though she is a scientist and certainly intelligent, she's not well-read in the paranormal and as a result, Mulder comes off as the brain to Scully's brawn. He is, however, a brilliant profiler and able to think ahead of the antagonist, and is more likely to use both to bring down suspects. On top of that, since he does spend so much time buried in his files, he's never shown an interest in enhancing the physical skills he lacks. It makes sense that Mulder would constantly be losing his gun, though it doesn't make it any less frustrating.
    • The above is not that accurate. Mulder can handle himself in a fight and he arrested several people who tried to resist (as the Japanese spy in "Nisei".) Plus he's seen jogging and training a lot, especially in the early seasons.
      • He was also able to easily shoot out two overhead lights in a dark train yard in Soft Light, and in Pusher is shown to do very well at target practice on a gun range. I'd say he's a decent shot.
      • Going by what we were shown, he's more than a decent shot. There are instances of him displaying Improbable Aiming Skills too, such as "Young at Heart", where he faced a monster of the week across the room who was using a hostage as a human shield and moving; and Mulder got him with a single shot without harming the hostage. As for his physicality, in "Anasazi", he managed to take down an armed Krycek by overpowering him (as he (Mulder) didn't have his gun with him), despite being physically ill at the time.

  • There is a mention on Artistic License – Gun Safety page that Mulder and Scully are shown following the appropriate rules for law enforcement most of the time. But several times somebody manages to take their gun or as noted above, Mulder loses the gun somehow. Sometimes they take the appropriate measures, but at times they aren't really worried that somebody might use it and make them responsible for possible murders. One of the worst examples happens in "Demons", where Mulder's gun was used in a murder/suicide. Mulder couldn't remember anything so he was arrested and interrogated. Obviously, he didn't do it and wasn't charged, and he was also drugged because of some psycho treatment. But how come he wasn't charged for losing his gun and negligence in this case? Aren't law enforcement people responsible for their lethal weapons or something? Mulder doesn't even get a What the Hell, Hero? speech from Skinner.
    • I suppose we might have to chalk this one up to Acceptable Breaks from Reality that allow the show to function without Mulder getting suspended, charged and thrown out of the FBI for losing his firearm.
    • Also, Mulder apparently has connections that work to get him off the hook after, at one point, violating a military quarantine and (according to the official story) risking a major contamination / nuclear event. Presumably if these same connections can get him off the hook from that, then they should be able to make sure he gets off a charge of losing his weapon with a wagged finger and a "don't do it again".

  • There's a 5th season episode, "Travelers", that's always bugged me. A man in the 1950's had been surgically grafted with a spider-like creature that lived inside him and crawled out of his mouth and into other people's mouths to eat their internal organs, making him a Body Horror vampire thingy who angsts over his condition. But the spider's not physically attached to him. And when they did an autopsy of another man who killed himself after the procedure was done to him, his spider-thingy was still alive. So... why doesn't he just walk away when his pet spider's crawled out of his mouth and is doing its digesting thing? The episode always cut away as the spider was emerging and crawling back in, so we never really saw how that works. He doesn't need it to stay alive, and it apparently doesn't need him either (it survived for days inside the other guy's body). Does the host go catatonic or something? Is his brain somehow linked with it so that he needs it to be conscious? But this was the 1950's, and the episode described the experiment as gruesome, fairly primitive grafting surgery done by former Nazi doctors. It's a minor plot point in a Monster of the Week episode, but I still can't figure it out.
    • Okay, now that I think about it, maybe he could be a little more heroic and grab, capture or just squash the spider thing rather than just running off, but still... for that matter, what would've happened if one of his victims had managed to throw the thing away, or trap it under a box or something?
    • Where is it said that he can live without the spider? It's presumably been grafted into the inside of his body for a reason;most likely they have a symbiotic relationship by that point. The spider might not be able to live long outside his body except when it's feeding, and by that point he might not be able to live long without the spider being inside of him. Plus, when it's feeding, he clearly freezes up and experiences a great deal of pain and discomfort, which doesn't exactly make it easy for him to just stroll off or kill it.

  • The episode "Calusari" really is starting to bug me. Why is the grandmother so secretive about all this? Why don't the Calusari explain? Why doesn't Charlie's mother simply overrule her son and actually talk to the doctors? The whole thing is almost like an episode of Rescue Me when it comes to bad decisions!
    • Who would have believed the grandmother, or the Calusari? That would just sound like crackpot superstition to most people. As for why the mother doesn't talk to the doctors before she takes her son home... yeah, I got nothing. That was just dumb on her part.

  • Scully's skepticism about aliens is established in the pilot when Mulder asks her "Do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?" Scully answers "Logically, I would have to say no. Given the distances need to travel from the of reaches of space the energy requirements would exceed a spacecraft's capabilities." Which is a valid point, but it doesn't answer his question. He's asking her if she believes in life on other planets, not if aliens are interfering with this one.
    • She does clarify this later, in "War of the Coprophages", when she says she finds the idea of life on other planets in general too far-fetched, as life on this one came about because of a very unique sense of circumstances unlikely to occur anywhere else.
      • Also a valid point, but the question remains — why does she answer one question with the answer to the question he didn't ask?
      • Actually, these "points" are narrow-minded arrogance on Scully's part. She's a medical doctor, not an engineer, physicist, or an evolutionary expert. Claiming a spacecraft couldn't possess the energy capacity for interstellar travel is the equivalent of someone with no working knowledge of the mechanics of aviation saying an airplane could never possibly fly because all that metal would be too heavy to get off the ground. Likewise, saying life couldn't have developed on any other worlds because of the conditions leading to life on Earth ignores the fact that there are BILLIONS of planets with the potential to develop life, as well as the fact that that potential life wouldn't necessarily develop as it did here.
      • Before entering medical school Scully earned a Bachelor of Science in theoretical physics; her undergraduate thesis was on the Special Theory of Relativity. While she's no expert, she can hardly be called a novice either, and her background in the field is more thorough. (Contrast Mulder, who can be astonishingly erudite in specialised areas but still has a very fuzzy grasp of many simpler concepts.) Her argument is poorly phrased but is in agreement with contemporary scientific discourse, so it's likely she's just repeating what she heard from her college lecturers. science! 
      • To be far, even in 2016, in the era where we find habitable exoplanets left and right, there are well-respected scientists who advocate the theory that we are, in fact, alone in the galaxy. Explanation 
      • There is 3 points here: 1). 2016 year is not the year where humans evolved from still animals to truly intelligent species.
Humans are very primitive-minded and miopic. 2). Well-respected scientists by who? The same scientists and other people who simply think the same way as them. Scientists in our world are not smart people! Thy are not any smarter than your average joe.That being said, scientists are usual people and people are extremely subjective beings. Which leads everyone to the fact that their advocation and opinion of their nothing-but-theories means nothing in the long run! 3). And any reasonable person would know that we are not alone at all. Thinking otherwise is indeed very dumb at the very least. And again, no, we are not "in fact, alone in the galaxy.".

  • I just assumed that she just assumed that, given his reputation, his interest in the paranormal and the basic raison d'être of the X-Files office to begin with (investigating weird things happening on Earth, not other planets), she rationalised that he was either building up to outright asking "do you believe that we've been visited by extraterrestrials?" or assumed that he was just asking her that in a coded fashion anyway (particular given the slightly dramatic way he frames the question) and decided to cut that line of conversation off before it started. Which is still dodging his actual question, I guess, but she's letting him know from the start that she's skeptical about him and his work.
  • She does answer his question: "Logically, I would have to say no."

  • The fact that Mulder and Scully aren't very good at actually doing anything to close their cases. They usually figure out what's going on, or at least advance a theory that's basically correct, but half the time the monster has already either killed a bunch of people or survives the end of the episode, which makes one wonder what happened after they've left the area. Did the fluke man in "The Host" just...stop killing people, or leave? At the end of "Ghost in the Machine," the AI is clearly still alive, looking right at the jerk FBI agent who tempts fate by saying "I'm gonna figure this thing out if it kills me!" Did the AI just change its mind? Two of the inbred hicks in "Home" got away, and it's pretty much stated outright that they're going to start again somewhere else. You'd think Mulder and Scully would pay more attention, unless the monsters of the week who aren't quite dead just stop killing people and mysteriously vanish.
    • Yes, these The End... Or Is It? endings bear some serious Fridge Horror if you think about it.
      • This is the X-Files we're talking about; this is probably less Fridge Horror and more Overt, Entirely Intended Horror. It's not like the show is exactly supposed to make us feel safe, secure and that all the loose ends are tied up, after all.
    • But, wouldn't you say that being unable to completely close cases is a theme—not in those exact words, but think about? When there are only two people trying to solve the mysteries of the world and dozens of other people trying to keep them quiet, what do you do? Despite, the open-ended cases, they realize that if it weren't for them, those people have no one. Even if it isn't absolute closure, there are still answers. It is scary that some of these monsters are still alive and kicking, but Mulder and Scully can only do so much—they aren't superheros and they don't have all the answers.
      • Exactly. Plus, watch each Monster of the Week episode. I like to try and figure out what would have happened if Mulder and Scully hadn't been there. Quite often, even in the times the Monster gets away, the pair do save lives! There would often be many more deaths if they hadn't shown up. You reference Home - that still means that only two of them got away. Mulder and Scully do make a difference, just...as much as two people with all odds stacked against them can.
      • The more intelligent of them also probably decide to go (even further) underground having attracted the attention of the FBI.
    • This is actually brought up by Kersh in season 8. When he refuses to reinstate Mulder on the X-Files, he cites the fact that since Doggett has been on the X-Files, the division has had a much better case closure percentage.
    • This was even covered earlier in the show; Scully defends the X-Files work to Skinner (before he became more openly allied with them) by saying that her and Mulder either bring about convictions or case resolutions in 75% of cases—way above FBI averages. (Makes one wonder how Doggett could top those odds, even as badass as he was.) The complication with the X-Files always was that due to nature of the cases, you either can't "solve" them in any conventional sense, or the source of all the trouble can't be conventionally prosecuted, like the Flukeman or the Jersey Devil. But they put Tooms and the British pyro-man in custody, along with quite a few others.
    • I think the real question is why Mulder and Scully never seem to follow up on these investigations where the creature or whatever gets away. If the case is still open, they should still be looking for signs of this monster (or another like it) popping up again, and now they know more about it and what to look for, but outside of the Myth Arc, we don't see that happen.
      • In a lot of cases, Mulder and Scully believe or assume the creature in question is dead and don't know it survived; and if they have no reason to think it's alive, why would they spend time, energy and resources trying to follow up on it? Furthermore, in plenty of cases even if the creature has survived usually it's somewhat the worse for wear and presumably needs to spend a bit of time licking its wounds and regrouping, which takes time; Mulder and Scully don't have any leads to chase up on because the creature is keeping a low profile and actively trying to avoid being noticed, for a little while at least.
  • I'm really confused about "Ice". How did the lady who ends up infected with the parasite get infected? Mulder was attacked by the infected dog (though it didn't break the skin), Scully and the one doctor were exposed to infected blood, and the geologist was handling the ice cores. How was she exposed? When?
    • It's based on The Thing (1982). In that movie, the audience doesn't get to know who is infected and how they got infected, either (at least for some characters). That's the whole point, and greatly amplifies the horror. At the end, you really don't know if the last two survivors are infected or not.
    • Remember she was the one who checked the other bodies and found the "only other living worm." She could have been infected then.

  • My major mystery of the last two seasons: did nobody working on the show realize that the alliterative words "super soldiers" sounds really silly when said over and over and over again? "So-called super soldiers" is even worse!

  • In "Fallen Angel", where does Mulder get the sudden knowledge to criticize the cover-up team's tactics? For all he knows this alien is the extraterrestrial equivalent of a serial killer and hunting it down is the reasonable reaction.
    • Such logical leaps are in no way out of character for Mulder.
    • Plus, when you get down to it these guys are still planning to hunt down an alien, kill it, dispose of all the evidence it ever existed and cover up the fact that anything ever happened. Mulder's whole thing is being "anti-covering up and disposing of the evidence of alien life and contact". Of course he's not going to cheer them on, regardless of whether or not this is the extraterrestrial equivalent of John Wayne Gacy.
      • It's also not like the cover-up team actually have any kind of knowledge that this is an alien serial killer either; they're only hunting it down because it's different and to prop up an existing power structure by removing evidence of anything that might threaten it.

  • So, in "The Post-Modern Prometheus", it's revealed that the tragic monster and his adoptive father were basically raping and impregnating women with mutated children to get the titme figure a "mate", which is THE EXACT SAME THING the conspiracy does, but while the father and son are seen as tragically misplaced and get forgiven, the conspiracy is seen as complete monsters. Uh... WTF?
    • Yes, it's really weird that the women don't feel violated. The lady who called Mulder did at least a little bit. But the evil scientist's wife was shown to be very excited about the possibility of being pregnant. Sure, we were told she really, really wanted to have a baby, but like this? With a monster or animal sperm/embryo? Seriously. But the end is only a piece of post-modernistic story-telling, which means it didn't actually happen, and therefore the monster was probably arrested and prosecuted.
    • Fairly good explanation for this head-scratcher appeared in one review on the imdb. The Mutato reveals the truth behind the mysterious impregnations, explaining that it was his father Old Man Pollidori who had been inseminating the women of the town with mutated DNA that was fused by his own farm animals. There are several hints that Mrs. Berkowitz's son Izzy is close to a pig and the reporter to a chicken. But then it's a weird thing to say that the old man was not successful because he was, only too much! Mutato did act as an accomplice to the crimes the Old Man commit, but any charges against him would be dropped in American court by reason of mental disease or defect, being that he had spent his life in isolation and was psychologically impaired from making informed decisions. Mutato did not believe he was doing anything wrong. He was dancing along to Cher and eating the peanut butter of the houses that the Old Man broke into. He has the mind of a child and even made a statement of being incapable of wrongdoing. The Old Man received justice for unlawfully fertilizing these women against their knowledge with the capital punishment - death. Dr. Pollidori was arrested for killing his father. Mutato's dream of meeting Cher came true. Everyone got exactly what they deserved.

  • Who is really the biological father of the Mulder siblings? Sometimes it's subtly or not so subtly implied that it's the Cigarette Smoking Man. He's Mulder's father, then he isn't, then he's in fact Samantha's father. Or did he father them both? Why didn't somebody do the freaking DNA tests? Doesn't Mulder want to know? Oh, and he's also Agent Spender's father. How many women did the Cancer Man make pregnant?
    • The ambiguity is, to be fair, kind of the point. As for why Mulder doesn't find out conclusively one way or another, well, the Cigarette Smoking Man doesn't exactly make himself available for DNA tests and Mulder isn't exactly fond of him — chances are, he'd rather not know if he could help it.
    • CSM pretty clearly believes that he is both their fathers, and one guesses that he would have the means to know for sure.
    • It is also hardly out of the ordinary or impossible for one man to father children with two different women.
      • If this is the case, both of his children — half brothers — wound up in the same branch of law enforcement in the same office by chance, unless CSM somehow pulled some strings on Agent Spender's behalf. What reasons would CSM have to do that, exactly, though?
      • The implication seems to be that in Spender's case CSM is gradually trying to groom Spender to be a successor or heir to whatever position or role he's got going on. The last couple of seasons have a bit of a character arc for CSM revolving around him being confronted with his mortality, his loneliness and his legacy. He helps Spender rise through the ranks and gets him into the X-Files both as a plant and to get him acquainted with aliens / supernatural phenomena as a way of helping him get into the family business. It's also implied that he'd much rather that it was Mulder, but that ship's clearly sailed by the time Spender enters the scene so he makes do with the son (assuming Mulder is CSM's son) who hasn't come to completely detest him and everything he stands for.

  • How could Scully give up her son? How could she think it could help him to have a better life? It doesn't make any good sense. It can't be so very hard for the omnipotent conspirators and colonists to track the baby down. If anything, William's life is more endangered because at least his biological mother and The X-Files gang knew about the threat. Now what happens if they find him and he has only the ignorant adoptive parents to protect him? note 
    • What makes this decision even more confusing is that Scully was shown just three seasons before to fight tooth-and-nail for Emily, with the idea that she was the best person to protect the little girl since she actually knew the minutia of the conspiracy Emily was involved in. And she'd known Emily all of three days.
      • Rule of Drama, I always figured. Maybe they were really, really careful with the adoption part, but then again, I've never been a parent nor have I researched the details of giving a child up for adoption.

  • From the first movie: How the hell did they get from Antarctica to Washington D.C.?
    • This is lampshaded in the season 8 episode "Alone." Leyla Harrison (a huge fan of Mulder and Scully) asks them straight out how they got back. We never heard the answer because Mulder and Scully end up bickering about how things actually went down.
    • It is, but I suspect the OP was wondering if anyone had a possible explanation they'd like to put forward in lieu of this. To which I'd suggest the following: even in the frozen wilds of Antarctica, someone would have to notice a the effects of a massive alien spaceship rising into the sky, leaving a massive gaping crater in its wake, even if they didn't see what caused it (seismic effects, lights in the sky, general weirdness and the like). Presumably there was a research base close enough to the location of the spaceship to be able to notice at least part of the shenanigans going on and came out to see what all the fuss was about. They found the crater, found Mulder and Scully unconscious beside it, took them back to base, nursed them back to health and sent them on their way.

  • In one of the multiple times that Alex Krycek reappeared after a long absence or being presumed dead, there was a scene with him dipping a tea bag while having a plastic/prosthetic hand. It was never mentioned in the scene or ever again on the show. He had two normal hands in all appearances after that episode. And that scene was used as a clip in "The Truth". So, what was the deal with that hand? I initially thought it was just weird for the sake of weird, but then I figured it was just another aborted idea. But it's really weird and has been bothering me.
    • Krycek's left arm was amputated in the 4th season episode "Terma" and his prosthesis was actually shown a few times in later episodes (such as in "The Red and the Black" while "reassuring the survivor of the fires" and when he was killed by Skinner). Ultimately it seemed significant only to his characterization (Red Right Hand; Physical Scars, Psychological Scars; Good Scars, Evil Scars; etc.) and not the plot.

  • In the penultimate episode of the series, "Sunshine Days", Oliver Martin has the ability to change his surroundings (and that of others around him) with his imagination. It mostly manifests in him reimagining his house as the Brady Bunch house, complete with Alice and the family. Once the agents find out about this, they over look the fact that he was directly responsible for the deaths of two young men who entered the house. Granted, they were intruders, but he shot them through his roof and hundreds of feet away. But they look over that because Scully wants to study his brain, feeling it is the proof and vindication she and Mulder have been looking for on the X-Files. How much more proof did Scully need to believe in that kind of stuff? Even if you disregard all the monsters, aliens, freaks, and the over all insane things that happened to both Mulder and Scully, in the very next (and last episode), A.D. Skinner states that the abilities of Gibson Praise have been scientifically and unequivocally proven to be true. So, was Gibson's scientifically proven abilities that she scientifically proved herself not enough for her to believe in the X-Files? That whole thing stuck me as bizarre that after all she had been through over 9 years, this case was the one that would justify her beliefs.
    • Hmm, 'tis true that she acquired some proofs over the course of the series, apart from Gibson Praise the guy turned invisible from "Je Souhaite" comes to mind. Scully was really excited for that one, and she even called some scientists from Harvard, and embarrassed herself over it. The thing is, the proofs were often stolen or they disappeared, or the conspiracy made them disappear, no? They seriously threatened or ridiculed people who tried to expose some of the stuff, too. In "Empedocles", Scully owns that she was always afraid to believe, which sounds like one of the points in the series which shifted Scully from a skeptic to a believer. And finally, Oliver Martin was possibly only indirectly responsible for the killings. It seemed it was not his intention to do kill those guys, and he almost injured Doggett and said he didn't mean to, because he wasn't always able to control his powers.

  • Where are the serious journalists and media people in the X-Files universe? Mulder and Scully sometimes do get their proof of the paranormal. For instance, the proof of a fifth and sixth DNA nucleotide from "Erlenmeyer Flask" or the freaking Flukeman from "The Host", or the parasites from "Ice" or "Firewalker", or the extreme and possibly destroying science from "Ghost in the Machine", "Young at Heart", "Soft Light" or "Post-Modern Prometheus". Why isn't there anybody who would write about the cases? How come only the Lone Gunmen or tabloids (one magazine cover in "Pusher" did feature the Flukeman) were interested in publishing them? Yes, in some cases the evidence was destroyed and the people involved threatened by the government or the conspiracy, but not always. A spunky and intelligent reporter might be Mulder and Scully's useful ally in revealing the truth to the general public. The only problem was probably that trust no one thing.
    • You kind of answered your own question there, a bit — most of the time, the evidence gets destroyed, the witnesses are unreliable, and in cases where they aren't there's a fairly prominent and active ongoing conspiracy to ensure that these things are covered up or discredited to the point where most respectable news agencies wouldn't have anything to do with them.
    • Who says the X-Files aren't common in pop culture? The woman in "Post-Modern Prometheus" learned about Mulder from "The Jerry Springer Show", they were featured on a Halloween episode of "Cops" (X-Cops), conspiracy theorists and counter-culturists treat Mulder like a celebrity, every law enforcement agent across America knows to call Mulder when they get a strange case, most FBI agents hate the infamous "Spooky Fox Mulder" and all of the attention he gets for chasing fairy-tale monsters on the taxpayer's dime, etc. Mulder is likely a very reclusive celebrity who ignores the press because he believes their editorial-spins ruin the credibility of his cases, so he doesn't bring it up.
      • To be fair, neither The Jerry Springer Show nor COPS were / are exactly considered the height of impeccably credible media at the time; they're exaggerated tabloid media that many people tend to regard with a certain degree of skepticism at best. Conspiracy theorists and counter-culturalists by definition generally don't reflect the cultural mainstream, law enforcement agencies would presumably have more information on what particular department would be the best one to contact depending on the needs of the particular case they're dealing with at the time than members of the general public, and internal FBI rivalries and gossip doesn't exactly translate to wider cultural celebrity. It's more likely that outside of a handful of obscure, niche and specialised circles, Fox Mulder is as unknown as any other FBI agent would be to the wider population.
      • Mulder has obviously made a name for himself but the show has shown time and time again that he is lucky to get the little proof he gets because there is a constant effort for cleaning up and cover up. Look at how many people got killed just to keep the proof from going public. So Mulder might had gotten away with a lot of stuff but that is the exception not the rule. Any serious reporter would had gotten fired soon after some cover up discredit him and a tabloid reporter would had probably exaggerated everything and/or fabricated facts in order to gain more views. Neither of this things help X-Files or Mulder so no reason to involve anyone else.
    • Let's be entirely honest here; it's not like in the real world many serious journalists and news organisations are willing to devote large amounts of column space and broadcast time to conspiracy theories about the paranormal, supernatural and extraterrestrial to begin with, even if those researching them claim to have proof of their existence. They'd by-and-large be laughed out of the room if they did, because those sorts of things aren't really taken very seriously by the world at large. And that's in a world where (presumably) there isn't a ruthless under-government with near-limitless resources actively working to ensure these things remain hidden and anyone trying to prove their existence is discredited. The show, if anything, is quite realistic in showing that if a real-life Mulder and Scully were to have allies in the press, they'd be oddball weirdoes writing for obscure and low-key self-published fringe sources that aren't really taken seriously to the extent that they're even noticed by the world at large, not the Washington Post or New York Times.

  • In "Monday", Pam says she tried everything to prevent the explosion. From her lines: "I have tried everything to stop him. I've hid his keys, I've drugged his coffee... I even called the police on him myself." How come calling the police didn't help? How could she have phrased it that they didn't arrest Bernard?
    • Presumably even on those occasions that Pam called the police on Bernard, by the time they actually acted on her tip and located him he was already tooled up with explosives and inside the bank, meaning that he just blew it up anyway.

  • In "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" Mulder tricks Scully into staking out a haunted house with him on Christmas Eve. Except from the beginning, we can tell that Mulder doesn't really believe the story and is just as surprised as Scully is to find that the ghosts are real. Has anyone else wondered what the heck Mulder's original plan was?
    • I just assumed the ghost story was just a pretext / excuse to hang out with Scully at Christmas.

  • Why do Mulder and Scully speak freely about their secrets in his house/other hangouts, when they know they've been wiretapped before? Nevermind how important the secrets actually are, the point is is that they want no one to hear them. There is a huge fuss made over a tap or recording device many times on the show. Each time it is like some revelation for them and they go to great lengths to speak in secret until the end of the episode, when they arbitrarily deem it safe to talk privately in their own homes or office again. Do they only remember they've been wiretapped before when it's convenient for the plot to have them remember it?
    • My guess is after they discover and dispose of the discovered surveillance, they just slip up and get complacent. No one can be hyper-vigilante and on guard for surveillance every second of every day and still remain a more-or-less functional human being. Realistically if they were that paranoid Mulder and Scully would have moved to a little shack in the middle of the desert miles from anyone and anything long before the end of the series or would have been committed because they constantly destroyed their furniture looking for bugs and refused to speak to anyone in anything other than a multi-encrypted secret language of their own devising, but then there wouldn't really be much of a series any more.
    • Also, the Syndicate tried self-contained bugs in "E.B.E", but Mulder managed to find them in his apartment (and the one Scully accidentally discovered in the pen). Since then, the show antagonists have generally resorted to more high-tech methods of surveilling his apartment—directional mics in "The Erlenmeyer Flask", laser mics on his window in "The Pine Bluff Variant," and so on. Though there was the guy manually listening in from the apartment above Mulder's in "Redux".
    • Also, this one arguably also falls under Rule of Drama, to a degree at least. They're not real people, they're fictional characters in a scripted drama series, and their need to communicate with each other is affected by such considerations as the need to provide exposition for the watching audience in a clear and coherent manner, the availability and cost-effectiveness of standing sets and locations and, yes, the demands of the plot of a given episode.

  • In the reboot, why did Mulder roll his eyes at 9-11 Trutherism, especially when his pals The Lone Gunmen stopped an attempt at something creepily similar six months earlier than the actual event? Did the trio not mention it to him?
    • He was actually rolling his eyes at the "government stealing our guns" part, as evidenced by him quoting it back to O'Malley verbatim in the limo later. Mulder is a distinctly '70s conspiracy theorist. He's a relic from a time when the left-leaning public were terrified and angry about Watergate, COINTELPRO, the Church Committee, the Imperial Presidency, etc., and believed the US government could and would do anything with impunity, but one honest man with a top secret dossier could blow the lid off the whole thing. Here, O'Malley is initially presented as a right-wing Tea Party-esque foil for Mulder; while they share a belief in government misdeeds, Mulder criticizes O'Malley for getting rich off of public paranoia and liberal-bashing without presenting any proof. It's clear Mulder seems himself as more Edward Snowden than Alex Jones.
  • While I appreciate the revival attempting to wipe the slate clean and retcon all of the show's oft-messy mytharc, how the hell are we supposed to square that revelation with earlier episodes? Especially since this was already the plot of the fifth season, which was resolved when Mulder saw a giant alien spaceship/biolab buried under the Arctic rise up and float into the sky? Followed by season six, which had a ton of scenes of the Syndicate talking amongst themselves like the alien invasion was real? Is it Broad Strokes? The Man Behind the Man? Gambit Pileup?
    • It's also possible that there's yet another misdirection at play; it's not as if The X-Files shies away from leading the viewer in one direction only to pull a twist into another direction. But yeah, ultimately it's probably Broad Strokes. The show hasn't been on air for over a decade, that's a long time to expect people to be familiar with the precise details of a myth-arc that, let's be fair here, was never exactly straightforward or entirely coherent to begin with. People know there's a Government Conspiracy, it involved aliens somehow, but as far as most of the watching audience is concerned the rest of the details can be streamlined as necessary and no harm, no foul. Particularly since the original conspiracy hinged on bad things happening in 2012 and, well, that apparently kind of fizzled out.
      • Also, the CSM is such a mystery wrapped inside an enigma covered in misdirection that it would be in-character for him to leave everybody, even those on his "side", guessing as to his true plans. It could be he even intentionally misdirected most of his own people with the aliens.
      • Mulder is in a middle age crisis, depressed, his life work a waste of course he will be willing to believe that he has been wrong all allong especially since his new informant is kind of leading him that way. I bet that once things clear up he will find out proof of real aliens on Earth. This is just a roadblock to bring the new audience in the journey all over again.
  • In the light hearted season 5 episode 'Bad Blood' how does the small town's community of vampires reconcile keeping a low profile with the family suing the FBI for a kerjillion dollars?
    • Note that no one ever actually says that the family are suing the FBI for a kerjillion dollars; Mulder and Scully are just worried that they will (not entirely unreasonably under normal circumstances). Events in the episode — up to and including the vampire community upping sticks and disappearing for pastures new — clearly indicate that the family probably had no intention of launching a lawsuit, especially since Ronnie wasn't actually dead, but Mulder and Scully were just freaked out by the possibility that they might.

  • Overall in the series, WTH is with the US and other Governments and their own prideful agenda of using their own people as lab rats for malevolent to outright cosmic-breaking tests that should have had had almost all of humanity seeing themselves and the US most overall as more scarier than the Judaeo-Christian Devil. The various tests they do are so horrible they almost lie on a sub-console level about the tests, create a sound wave to pop peoples brains, a pimple virus that was engineered to combat inter-US terrorists that fails horrendously, turning 30-something year old men into hybrid monsters that plead for death, this is purely disgusting of the things mankind can make. Being enslaved or killed by the aliens is probably the least horrifying thing humans can get; X-Files has something like the SCP Foundation but the SCP Foundation is The Factory x 11!
    • Without wishing to be rude, this particular question is rather unclear and hard to follow (it's a little poorly worded and edited, to be honest), but it seems to be asking "why does the government conduct weird experiments on its own populace?" To which, the only real answers are "why wouldn't they?" and "who else are they gonna experiment on?" Honestly, a lot of these examples are just sci-fi'ed up versions of real life unpleasant things that various governments, including the United States, have gotten up to in secret (as just one example, read up on the Tuskegee experiment. A key theme of the series is that those in power cannot be trusted unquestioningly because they will often, if not closely watched, exploit and misuse the power they have been trusted with if they feel they'll benefit and can get away with it.

  • So Red Museum. It's one of my favorite episodes, and I understand that a lot of what was happening was basically a red herring buffet, but I'm still unclear about what was happening. Were the Red Museum really a control group on purpose or did they really believe their teachings, or were they even real walk-ins? Was the government covering up the cattle experiment or was it just timing that they were going to burn it at the same time as the kids were abducted? Basically, what was and wasn't happening in the town?
    • The conspiracy uses them as a control group with their knowledge, taking advantage of their different lifestyle.

  • Why doesn't Scully have a desk? When she asks Mulder gives some BS about there not being enough space in the office but that's obviously not true, especially since Dogget manages to fit his in there without any major rearrangement.
    • Mulder's just kind of thoughtless, single-minded and scatter-brained, fixated on chasing aliens and paranormal beings rather than office furnishings. It probably just never occurred to him that she wanted a desk, something which would be further reinforced if she never really made much fuss about the matter. It's not like they spend a lot of time there during the series anyway, they're usually rushing about in the field.
    • The some BS in question is from Season 4's "Never Again" and I think, on rewatching the episode, it's not really about the desk. Scully doesn't actually want a desk, she wants acknowledgement and reassurance about her place in The X-Files and Mulder's life and life in general—"Never Again" takes place between "Leonard Betts" and "Memento Mori," where we learn Scully has cancer. Only Mulder, being Mulder, takes the desk thing at face value. At the end:
    Mulder: (honestly confused) All this because I didn’t get you a desk?
    Scully: Not everything is about you, Mulder. This is my life.
    Mulder: Yes, but it's m... (trails off)

  • Why did it take twenty-five years for Mulder to start carrying a camera with him? During regular police work you'd find a ton of stuff you'd want to document, let alone investigating freaky shit that nobody else would believe.
    • To be completely fair to Mulder, he probably would have liked to if the option had been available to him. However, the option was probably not available to him. Most of his investigations during the show took place during the 1990s, during which photographic technology had not quite progressed to the ease of use and availability we're used to today (and that I suspect the OP is perhaps taking for granted). There were no smartphone cameras or real pocket digital cameras to speak of back then. Had Mulder wanted to carry around a decent camera with him on a semi-permanent basis that would have been useful in the places most of his investigations take place in, he'd had had to bring along a film SLR with special flashes and lenses that would have enabled nighttime photography, which would likely have been (a) expensive, (b) bulky, heavy and inconvenient, (c) easily lost or broken, (d) would have taken time to capture and develop the image and (e) probably wouldn't have captured images that were that great to begin with (SLR photography usually requires skill, delicacy, precision, plenty of light and stability to capture the best imagery, none of which can be guaranteed when you're running after what you think is an alien in a dark forest in the middle of nowhere). The first cameraphone wasn't available until 2000, the first high-quality digital SLR camera at a price affordable for most non-professionals didn't hit the market until 2005, and while digital cameras were becoming available from around 1994 onwards they were mostly low-resolution, required cumbersome and inefficient cables and software to download images, and generally weren't very useful for what Mulder would have needed them for. In short, it took him around twenty-five years not so much because he didn't think of it before then, but because that's around how long it took camera technology to develop to a point where it was cheap, reliable, practical and useful enough for Mulder's purposes.
    • Mulder does actually carry a camera in some of the earliest episodes.

  • So in Jump the Shark (an accurate name if ever I've seen one), the Lone Gunmen make their heroic sacrifice by sealing themselves behind airtight bulkheads with the villain and his bioweapon. Except, they're in a hotel. What sort of hotel uses airtight steel bulkhead doors as part of it's fire suppression system? And while I'm at it, what bright spark locked the emergency exit (it was a good thing is this case, since the bad guy couldn't escape, but what about when there's an actual fire)?
    • The, uh, best damn hotel in town!
    • Dunno about the steel bulkheads (though if we want to go the Wild Mass Guess route given that it was being used as the staging point for some kind of bioweapon attack it could have been some evil conspiracy-related shenanigans), but regarding the locked fire escape; some less-than-ethical establishments have been known to get into the habit of locking their fire exits in order to prevent undesirables (vagrants, people who want to skip out on the bill, etc) from using them as an easy ingress-egress point. It's illegal, unsafe and can get the hotel in deep trouble if they're caught out on it, but it happens.

  • In episode "Bad Blood" why Mulder acts like he hasn't encounter vampires before? Scully wasn't around but he interacted with actual vampires in episode "3", why doesn't he mentions it when Scully says vampires doesn't exist? Similarly when Scully mentions the Chupacabra they both act like they havn't encounter one before (they did in episode "El Mundo Gira".

  • In the episode Dod Kalm, they were trapped on a derelict ship with a contaminated water supply that had chemicals that made them (sort of) age rapiddly. Why didn't they try the basic survival technique of building a fire (on deck, and with flammable materials from the ship) to boil and purify either water from the ocean or from the contaminated on-board supply? Perhaps if they doubted that it would work and figured their odds were better not drinking and waiting for rescue than risking accelerating their deaths with possibly-still-contaminated water, but the chemical in the water was described in purely scientific terms, so why wouldn't boiling work?

  • Okay, "Home" is a great and chilling episode, but does anyone else think the writers didn't put much thought into that ending? The surviving Peacock family hit the road with plans to start over their grotesque family elsewhere, but how in blazes do they hope to pull that off? The only way they had managed to hide from society for so long was because of their ancestral farmhouse, which they no longer have by the end, and in the course of the episode they had murdered two law-enforcement officers and one's innocent wife, so there's no doubt whatsoever that police will be actively looking for them. Since they aren't supernatural villains with any reality-bending powers, it's a pretty safe bet that the minute their car runs low on gas or they need to find food, Peacock Jr. and his incestuous potato-sack of a momma are fucked.
    • They're also going to have some problems raising another family. Sure, Momma just had another baby, but it most likely would have died naturally anyway, and she's getting pretty old to be having more....
    • On the other hand, it's fair to say that these people aren't exactly completely rational or psychologically healthy, and the whole point of the episode is that they've become locked in a very unhealthy and awful cycle. They're starting again and doing the exact same thing because, horrible it may be, it's the only way of life they know, not because it's a foolproof idea that's guaranteed to work out. We only see that they're trying again, there's nothing to suggest that they absolutely definitely succeed.
      • The "police are actively searching for them" forest seems a tad more pertinent than the few "can they still make babies" trees. The ending presents them as Karma Houdinis free to continue their horrific lifestyle, but they absolutely don't have the smarts or resources to outwit authorities that are definitely pissed off and hunting them down.
  • Easy Logistics played for the Rule of Cool: Mulder never ever has any qualms about commandeering any resource from the FBI, regardless the cost, which strikes as unrealistic when everyone knows he is acting on suspicions, insignificant clues and in most cases outside the rule of law, full stop. Airplane (possibly military) transport, all-terrain tracked vehicle, supplies by ton for the Antarctic trip. No higher FBI official batted an eyelash on such extravagances ever.
    • The girl handling the agents' finances was later revealed to be a huge fan of the agents, so she probably didn't treat any of Mulder's actions as unnecessary.
    • Mulder is also implied to have come from a wealthy family; he grew up on Martha's Vineyard, his parents owned a summer house in Connecticut, he went to Oxford for college, and he "rents" a Congressman for his own uses. In season 8, he's unconcerned about his own unemployment and doesn't try to get another job. After that, he's able to easily slip into hiding and support himself while doing so. It could be that he's not using FBI channels or money at all, but his own money to fund some of his more ambitious expeditions and his friends in high places (see the rented Congressman) to grease the wheels.
  • "Darkness Falls" episode (1994) does it at least twice. The Monsters of the Week, basically vicious blood-sucking bugs, are "afraid" of light in Mulder's words, in practice they are inactivated by light. Our heroes and a few others are caught at night in stranded cars, but with fully operational engines and electrical systems. Why didn't they turn on the headlights and interior dome lights? And how could the bugs after killing a 70-90 kg (155-200 lbs) man raise his body onto a tree? (Although the last one can be explained by the fact the victim could have been killed while he was already up in the tree, since he was a logger).
    • There was supposed to be critically short fuel supplies, making escape (or even cabin lighting) via the vehicles impossible. What struck me as odd is why they didn't maintain a small to medium reserve to use as an extreme form of lighter-fluid, and use it to start campfires that, once going, would have the unlimited fuel of the forest.
      • Speaking as someone who's grown up in The Other Rainforest, at that location and time of year, any wood they didn't have chopped and stacked under cover was probably too damp to burn. Even lighter fluid sometimes isn't enough to keep a fire going, if it's too soggy.
  • Scully giving William up for adoption in season 9 is a source of Fridge Logic for a lot of fans. In the first place, it goes directly against Scully's character, who only four seasons before had fought tooth-and-nail to adopt a three-year-old daughter she'd never met and had only known three days. All this despite knowing that the child was conceived to be experimented on and that both mother and daughter would likely be hunted by the conspiracy. In the second place, it doesn't make sense from a common sense standpoint. Scully gives William away to an anonymous couple in order to keep him safe. Never mind that she is taking the baby away from at least five trained FBI agents who know the details of the situation and have the weapons, knowledge, and training to at least try to keep him safe and giving him to a couple who know nothing about the baby's paranormal background, the conspiracy, or the fact that they now have a huge bulls-eye painted on their backs. To make it worse, this is a closed adoption—there is nothing Scully can do to check on her baby after she gives him up. Doesn't this just make it easier for the conspiracy to kill of William and his adoptive parents?
    • With The revival is heavily implied that this was Chris plan all along. William was conceived right after Mulder discovered the truth about Samantha taking away any personal stake he had on the X-files. So losing him gives him and Scully a new crusade besides fighting the invasion. Specially if you take in account that Cancer Man "dies" in the same episode Scully announces her pregnancy and reappears right after she gave him up for adoption, showing he has been manipulating Mulder behind scenes for God only knows how long. In fact he might had sent the note that made Mulder get away so a vulnerable Scully could be convinced that adoption was the only way to keep their baby safe now that Mulder was M.I.A. Did Spender ever explained how he got away from his torturers? Those tears might not had been about being happy to met his nephew but about tricking Scully to save his neck.
  • The season five episode "Folie à Deux" has a nice little whammy. A guy in an office building can see a bug monster disguised as his boss (which no one else can see) turning his co-workers into zombies (which no one else can see either). He sends a tape to a radio station containing a warning telling everyone to band together and hunt down the monster that 'hides in the light.' Eventually, he gets desperate enough that he pulls out an assault rifle and takes everyone hostage, separating out the 'zombies' from the real people and even getting his bug boss singled out on the floor right in front of him. He then... threatens to start shooting real people unless he gets on TV. He has both the bug and the zombies RIGHT THERE, why doesn't he just shoot them now?
    • Because he wanted to prove that he wasn't mad rather than being remembered as the psycho who killed his colleagues for no apparent reason. Sure, one might argue that the true nature of Pincus would be revealed once he died. On the other hand, he is able to trick cameras into depicting him as human, so who knows whether these effects would not persist after death?
  • So, the premise for "Firewalker" is that a) a team of geologists was infected with a silicoid fungus living inside an active volcano, and b) the only one who wasn't tries to kill the others to prevent its spread. Yet, we later see the man burn the body of his most recent victim. It's like, I know that fluid he used might burn hotter than the volcanic surroundings they're in, but still, he should figure the fungus could be able to handle some heat.
  • The Retcon in the reboot that CSM is really Jackson/William's father makes zero sense. For one, the timeline about when this could happen and when Scully gave birth do not line up. While solid dates are hard to come by, if Chris Carter meant to exploit the missing time in "En Ami," that episode takes place before "Chimera," which is investigated just after Easter 2000. Mulder's e-mail in "TrustNo1" is dated January 2002. William is simply too young in season 9 to have been conceived in "En Ami." For another, are we to believe that Scully, a medical doctor who was canonically neurotic about her pregnancy and paranoid her baby might not be human, wouldn't have run a DNA test? Or, for that matter, that she wouldn't have had genetic testing as par for the course, given her age?
    • Even within the reboot, it relies on Scully holding the Idiot Ball for it to actually work. CSM tells Scully he's Jackson/William's father in "My Struggle III," several episodes before a body is found that might be Jackson/William. Scully runs a DNA test to confirm she's his mother (and therefore his identity), but doesn't run one to check if CSM, the manipulative Big Bad of the series, might be lying through his teeth about paternity?

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