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He really, REALLY wants to believe.

"Mulder, is there anything you don't believe in?"

The character who believes in almost anything, no matter how bizarre, and pursues it with abandon. Very mystic, seen as crazy, gullible and strangely usually right. The antithesis of the Agent Scully, with whom they always are paired.

Somewhat Truth in Television. According to some psychologists, a person who believes in one conspiracy theory tends to believe in others; a person who does not believe in one conspiracy theory tends not to believe another.

The name, of course comes from Fox Mulder in The X-Files. Depending on show preference, you might also call this an "Agent Cooper" (from Twin Peaks — this was the previous Trope Namer).

Compare Break the Believer when their beliefs are unarguably proven wrong.


Examples:

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    Anime and Manga 
  • Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan: Kiyotsugu goes haywire at any possible sighting of youkai. Somehow, his obsession makes him more popular.
  • Maniwa from Paranoia Agent is the "Mulder" to his partner Ikari's "Scully", an open-minded, experimental detective who readily believes and accepts the true nature of the mysterious Shonen Bat while others deny it. Of course, this eventually turns him into an insane homeless person who thinks he's a superhero. The real Mulder never had to put up with that.
  • Karin Sasamori from To Heart 2, the Mystery Club's President and only member until she forces Takaaki to join the club via blackmail when he trips over a sign and ends up landing on top of her, his hands on top of her chest.
  • Zombie Land Saga: Arata Okoba, a local reporter in Saga, begins to research Franchouchou after noticing that one of their members resembles the deceased celebrity, Junko Konno. The more he digs into Franchouchou, the more convinced he is that something strange is afoot. And then he watches Tae's head pop off.

    Comic Books 
  • MonsterVerse graphic novel Godzilla Awakening: Eiji Serizawa, somewhat. He wholeheartedly believed that references to the same sea monster across multiple cultures around the world indicated they were all inspired by the same saurian Titan, at a time when the rest of Monarch believed Gojira was just a myth and thought Eiji's beliefs to be a wild goose chase. And to be fair on the skeptics, the fledgling Monarch which did not yet fully understand the power discrepancy between humanity and the Titans did attempt to locate Godzilla and had as much luck as tracking the Loch Ness Monster would bring.
  • Power Pack: in the "Thor and the Warriors Four" story of the all-ages series, Julie Power plays this role. She is very open minded about things like magic and mythology, and the first to believe that Thor and the other Asgardians from Norse Myth are real. Alex serves as her Agent Scully.
  • Pumpkin from Dollicious who is passionate about everything that makes her life "more spooky". Not only she belives in every urban legeden she hears, but she has ten extra conspiracy theories for each one to make them even more mysterious (or as she put it "spoooooky") She has entire internet show dedicated to exploring them and has her own conspiracy wall where she just look for even wirder conections between them. Even Bay Leaf who is very protective of all ancient belives and can be fanatical about them looks sane and rational by comparing.

    Fan Works 
  • While debating with Hobbes over the existence of ghosts in Calvin & Hobbes: The Series, Calvin takes on this role. After finally seeing the ghost, so does Hobbes.
  • The Star Trek (2009) fanfic Written in the Stars has Fem!Kirk believe in pretty much anything which gets thrown at her and her crew. This is thanks to her Prime counterpart warning her about all the weird stuff coming their way.
  • Forum of Thrones:
    • Archmaester Wulvren is a firm believer in magic, dedicating his entire life to explore this topic, even if he has no proof of its existence. He is the first person to outright believe in Noelle's magic, even more than Marak and unlike the latter, he is portrayed to be a very smart man.
    • Simon Stokeworth has always been fascinated by House Targaryen and their dragons, which makes him one of the first people to fully understand that Aegon Targaryen intends to invade Westeros. He knows how dangerous dragons can be and fully believes that they give Aegon all he needs to succeed.
  • Dib and the Swollen Eyeball men are this in Invader Zim: The Series. This is further expanded upon when Dib's future self shows up as a super-agent of the Men in Black.
  • Kyle from Sporadic Phantoms is the most likely to believe some of the more outlandish explanations for what The Sharing is up to, ranging from being a front of a weapons developer trying to kill off endangered animals to using hawks with chips in their brains to run surveillance.

    Film — Animated 
  • Brave: Queen Elinor is one to her husband Fergus' Scully. She at least believes in the truth of the legends that she passes down to Merida.
  • In Epic (2013), Professor Bomba's very dedicated in researching on the Leafmen. Of course, this destroys his career and marriage.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • Dog Soldiers: Spoon accepts the existence of werewolves pretty fast.
  • Peter Jackson gave us an example of this trope in The Frighteners. Special Agent Milton Dammers offers a view of what Mulder might be like if the next fifteen years were particularly unforgiving. Having spent almost two decades undercover in various cults without any therapy or deprogramming, Dammers is neurotic, paranoid, and absolutely insane. Perhaps not the best possible example since, though he knows something supernatural is going on, he jumps to more than a few wrong conclusions before catching on.
  • Godzilla:
  • Conspiracy Brother in the movie Undercover Brother is one of these, though of the Dale Gribble variety: throughout the movie, he believes that he has uncovered numerous conspiracies by "The MAN," to eliminate/subjugate/neutralize/etc black people throughout the world, conspiracies that are dismissed by his coworkers and are indeed false. This is especially surprising considering the fact that there really is a shadowy white-supremacist world leader known only as "The MAN" dedicated to using a world conspiracy of powerful white people to keep down black people. The Dale Gribble part comes in regarding the crux of the movie: Not only does Conspiracy Brother miss the most legitimate conspiracy in the entire movie, putting brainwashing chemicals in fried chicken, but he actively furthers the scheme more than any of his coworkers who arrived at the truth long before he did.
  • Interpol Agent Alma Dray in Now You See Me is a downplayed example. When investigating a magician band, as she has a much more open mind about magic than her partner Dylan Rhodes but still wants to find out the real explanations to the tricks.
  • In X-Men: First Class, the Man in Black always believed in the existence of mutants and feels vindicated when Xavier reveals himself.
  • In Batman (1989), Alexander Knox is one of the few people who believe in Batman's existence from the start, the Dark Knight being thought of as just an Urban Legend to public at large, and his existence outright denied by the local government.
  • Now You See It...: Hunter is the only person, besides Max, to initially suspect Danny is capable of genuine magic, insisting that it's possible because not everything can be explained. When he brings this suspicion up however, he's shot down as a lunatic, but Danny himself backs up Hunter's claim.
  • Early on in Horse Girl, Sarah googles reasons for her missing memories. Two options come up: it could be carbon monoxide poisoning, or alien abduction. Sarah immediately dismisses the first option for no real reason, and seizes upon the more fantastic second option, and over the course of the movie becomes more and more wild-eyed in her acceptance of any fantastical theory.
  • Paranormal Prison: On "The Skeptic and the Scientist", Sara plays the role of the latter, which makes her the one who believes in paranormal stuff, such as ghosts.
  • Red Lights: Dr. Shackleton is one of the rare examples shown completely in the wrong (although not unsympathetic): he is too driven to believe that Phony Psychic Simon Silver is the real deal, and thus does not figures out that Silver is faking psychic powers even after extensive testing (for what is worth, Silver is doing it incredibly well - pretending to be blind helps a lot - and the Agent Scully protagonist almost drives himself crazy, and needs his girlfriend giving him an "Eureka!" Moment, to figure out how Silver did it).

    Literature 
  • The Chaos Cycle: Miya is very accepting of the supernatural that is in her town, and even accepts immediately that she helped save someone from the entity known as The Dreamwalker and is proud of it.
  • Danny Bennett, from Tom Holt's early works, a BBC journalist with a wide range of conspiracy theories, all tying to the ultimate power behind world history: The British Milk Marketing Board. Although he is slightly vindicated when he gets caught up with Montalban and the Lombard Bank in Flying Dutch
  • The eponymous character of The Longing of Shiina Ryo is perfectly okay with the protagonist's unusual backstory, even though it strongly establishes the world is filled with ancient conspiracies and bizarre supernatural entities.
  • Luna Lovegood of Harry Potter baffles her peers with her wacky theories and beliefs, on everything from mythical creatures with unlikely names (example: Crumple-Horned Snorkack) to conspiracy theories involving combinations of dark magic and gum disease. Her quirky faith in people and creatures stood her in good stead through the series and she was shown to have uncanny insight. Her father, the editor of the wizarding tabloid, "The Quibbler", is a strong influence on her and he is much, much stranger. It's also sometimes hard to tell why the other characters react with such disbelief towards her beliefs considering the magical fantasy setting they live in. While some come across as obviously far-fetched, others, like the belief in unknown magical creatures or abilities, are perfectly in line with a reality where the characters are regularly exposed to various magical things they've never heard of before.
    • Interestingly, this does serve her well during her adult life, when her open-minded nature leads her to a career as a magizoologist and she discovers several previously unknown magical beings. She does finally admit that the Crumple-Horned Snorkack isn't real, though.
  • Epiny Burvelle, Nevare Burvelle's cousin in Robin Hobb's The Soldier Son trilogy, will believe in just about anything supernatural and is often ridiculed for it. Since these are fantasy books, it should come as no surprise that she's often right, though.
  • Bailey School Kids: Liza is almost always the one to suggest that someone is a supernatural creature.
  • Heroes Save the World: LN/Palatinate had this reputation among the rest of the CIA. The truth is a little more complicated: LN/Palatinate was put together from the remains of operations whose members were genuinely seeking after the paranormal, but afterwards it became a dumping ground for agents in disgrace (or at least this was the case for Mary Rucker).
  • In Johnny and the Bomb, Kirsty has become this, talking about The Men in Black, rains of fish, and crop circles, before reluctantly admitting that maybe the rain of fish had something to do with the explosion at the pet shop, and that there is some evidence the crop circles were created by Bigmac (such as a full admission). Interestingly, this doesn't make Johnny an Agent Scully; as ever, he just accepts things that have happened. If there's a rational explanation, it was probably that, and if not, it must have been something weirder. Denying either of these things just makes things unnecessarily complicated.
  • The titular Haruhi Suzumiya manages a mix of Agent Mulder and Agent Scully. While on the outside she wildly pursues all manner of fantasies, her inner common sense prevents her from realizing the fantastic elements right beside her. When Kyon tries to spell everything out to her, he gets shut down, because this would be "too easy". Itsuki later theorizes that deep down inside she just wants to have fun with friends.
  • Durarara!!'s Celty tends to buy into numerous paranormal and pseudo-scientific conspiracies (including The Greys. Especially The Greys), probably because her own existence suggests that they're entirely possible. There's even a chapter of the light novels devoted to her boyfriend assuring her that the world won't end in 2012, the dinosaurs weren't killed by The Greys, the photon belt will not destroy the world (nor is it sentient), and evil tesseracts will not come from the 4th dimension to conquer us all.

    Live-Action TV 
  • 666 Park Avenue: Detective Cooper seems to believe Jane when she says she was attacked by a ghost.
  • Kate Lockley from Angel has an Agent Mulder attitude towards the paranormal world that Angel lives in, due to several personal experiences with the supernatural. Such as being attacked by a vampire. At one point, one of her fellow police officers compares her to Agent Scully, prompting Kate to try to explain why Mulder would be a better comparison. (This other officer knew little about The X-Files; he mentioned Scully because all he knew was that "Scully's the chick.")
  • Beyond Paradise (2023): Humphrey is willing to at least humour the thought that paranormal and supernatural forces are at play in his cases while still looking into more mundane solutions.
  • Richard Castle of Castle, believing in psychics, ghosts, and in one episode where his status as Agent Mulder was explicitly stated, aliens. Beckett, of course, is his Agent Scully. Though, surprisingly Castle doesn't believe in curses while the rest of the squad is trying to convince him that they do. It turns out they were really screwing with him throughout the episode until he really does seem to be suffering from extremely bad luck after being attacked by a dog. Once this occurs the positions are reversed to normal. In "Undead Again", he admits to Ryan that the reason he does this is merely to drive Beckett crazy, not that he actually believes it. Also as a writer he is mostly interested in what makes the best story as opposed to what is really occurring.
  • Crime Scene: The Vanishing at The Cecil Hotel: The docu-series delves into the tragic death of Canadian tourist Elisa Lam in 2013 and seeks to debunk the many conspiracy theories spread by self-appointed web sleuths. Many of the web sleuths insist that Lam's death involved supernatural forces of some kind despite there being rational explanations for the case's bizarre elements. The series makes it clear that in real life, unlike fiction, Agent Mulders are often the opposite of helpful.
  • Special Agent Paul Ballard from Dollhouse is very determined to expose the Dollhouse organization, and everyone else in the L.A. FBI office knows it and thinks he's a wacko.
  • Eerie, Indiana: Marshall Teller believes in just about every conspiracy theory, urban legend and supposed cryptozoological sighting he reads about. He even swears he saw Santa Claus. He doesn't have a Scully, but considering he lives in an entire town of oblivious skeptics, he doesn't really need one.
  • Game of Thrones:
    • Old Nan earns her keep at Winterfell looking after the Stark children and entertaining them, especially Bran, with her stories and legends, which she seems to believe (and the audience has good reason to believe too, given the return of the White Walkers).
    • Osha tells Bran similar mystical things about the old gods, which Maester Luwin plays the Agent Scully to as a man of science.
  • On Haven, Audrey plays Agent Mulder to Nathan's Agent Scully in season one, despite her being the outsider and him being the local. Subverted in the fact that Nathan is aware the Troubles exist, but he's in deep denial about them. He himself is Troubled, but convinces himself it's a medical condition. He'd much prefer to live in a rational world, while Audrey is Allergic to Routine and seeks out the unusual.
  • In the early episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street, Howard was quite superstitious and would accept a supernatural explanation for the crimes she investigated. This was mostly due to Early-Installment Weirdness and this trait vanished by the end of the first season outside of a single Call-Back.
  • Houdini & Doyle: Doyle, a devout spiritualist is the Mulder to Houdini's Scully, as was their real dynamic.
  • Marshall Eriksen from How I Met Your Mother believes in everything supernatural, examples include ghosts, miracles, aliens, Nessie and Sasquatch. He and his fiancée Lily once found a mutant animal they called 'cockamouse' as it was a combo of a cockroach and a mouse. Much like Agent Mulder's proofs of the paranormal, the cockamouse flew away.
  • Intrepid Reporter Carl Kolchak in the 1970s TV show Kolchak: The Night Stalker and related films. His Agent Scully was his editor Tony Vincenzo.
  • Detective (or Sergeant, depending on the season) Munch from Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. He espouses conspiracy theories constantly throughout the series, usually for delivery of a moral point or for simple comic relief. Portrayed by Richard Belzer, a Real Life Conspiracy Theorist author.
  • Lost:
    • John Locke is a good example, particularly when he believes he has to push a button every 108 minutes to save the world.
    • Frank Lapidus was written to be an Agent Mulder, according to the DVD extras.
    • Jack after he returned went from one of the most extreme examples of a Scully to as big a Mulder as Locke ever was. Locke's suicide note to Jack read "I wish you had believed me." Evidently Jack's guilt drove him to believe EVERYTHING as an apology.
  • MonsterVerse TV series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters: The younger Bill Randa in the 1950s believed in cryptids, dragons which produced ionizing radiation as they flew (which he was right about, but bear in mind this was before he joined Monarch), and finally, he believed that Godzilla had managed to walk around unseen by humanity for centuries via teleportation. Somewhat justified, as all of this is still happening after Bill witnessed a gigantic Flying Seafood Special sink the naval warship he was on in World War Two. The only thing Randa didn't believe in was aliens, which is ironic since the MonsterVerse version of King Ghidorah retains his traditional origins as an extraterrestrial.
  • Murdoch Mysteries:
    • Constable George Crabtree is the one most likely to believe that vampires, ghosts, werewolves, Martians, Venusians, or an Egyptian curse might be responsible for the crimes that are being investigated. Detective Murdoch is the resident Agent Scully, Doctor Julia Ogden is of scientific mind as well, and Inspector Brackenreid gets angry easily by these superstitious ideas.
    • Doctor Emily Grace, who joined the series in season 5 believes in the afterlife and that it's possible to scientifically prove it. She also thinks that ghosts exist and she and Crabtree try to gain evidence.
  • Felix from Nowhere Boys.
  • On Once Upon a Time, Emma Swan is the Agent Scully sheriff in the Town of Storybrooke. She's being hit by two Agents Mulder - her long-lost son and mysterious stranger August.
  • An interesting twist in Psych, where Scully is Shawn, who pretends to be psychic, while Mulder is Gus, the "Non-Psychic" one.
    • It might be a better parallel to say that Lassiter is Scully and most of the rest of the police department is Mulder-ish or at least becoming so (with respect to Shawn, at least, because it's hard to argue with his record).
  • Daniel Jackson of Stargate SG-1 is more than a little used to having his theories laughed at, but the real kick is that even though he is right, national security ensures that he can't prove it to anyone.
  • On The Strange Calls, about a cop solving supernatural mysteries, Gregor, the sidekick to the main character, always has a bizarre supernatural explanation for whatever situation the two are dealing with. He's pretty much always right.
  • Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks was as accepting as Mulder (maybe even more so), but he lived in a much weirder world. Possibly the weirdest world ever portrayed on television. Which meant that he was almost always right! To the extent that he conducts successful murder investigations by throwing a bucket of rocks at a glass bottle.
  • Warehouse 13 has a Agent Scully & Agent Mulder dynamic, with Myka Bering as Scully and Pete Lattimer as Mulder.
  • Without a Trace. Martin Fitzgerald is implied to be a mild version of this in the episode "Light Years". The Victim of the Week is a man who believes he was once abducted by aliens and Martin skillfully plays along with his loopy friends and later rattles off a lot of information regarding alien conspiracy theories, prompting the other agents to give him the side-eye and for one of the friends in question to refer to him and his partner Samantha as "the real Mulder and Scully". (A bit of Fridge Brilliance. They are FBI agents after all). It's not clear if he genuinely believes any of it or if it's just a hobby of his.
  • The X-Files:
    • Trope Namer Special Agent Fox Mulder. He always believed in the paranormal explanation of the case of the week, but he could change his perspective if Scully's scientific theory was proving to be the solution.
    • It was occasionally subverted. The earliest example of a role reversal is the episode "Beyond the Sea", in which a convicted killer on death row claims he's a psychic and that he can help them solve a kidnapping case. Mulder is skeptical, believing the killer has orchestrated the kidnapping himself, but Scully gradually becomes convinced when he seems to be sending her messages from her recently deceased father, such as the titular song lyrics. Or in the season 7 episode "Hollywood A.D.":
      Micah Hoffman: I am become Jesus Christ.
      Mulder: I am become... skeptical.
    • Whenever the Monster, Mystery or Victim of the Week was religious in nature, the "believer/skeptic" dynamic between Mulder (an agnostic/atheist) and Scully (a lapsed Catholic) would be inverted, with Mulder becoming overly skeptical and Scully becoming the believer. Most references to Mulder and Scully seem to forget this, including the 2008 movie.
    • By the end of the series, Scully is much less of a skeptic and becomes almost Mulder's ally in the supernatural. With Mulder absent in season 8, she is the believer in the X-Files office, while Doggett is the skeptic.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Don Quixote is used in the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game to name two distinct psychic mechanisms (aka psychosis) to save either the character's life or sanity as an effect of overexposure to Cosmic Horror Stories: The Don Quixote, who sees the supernatural threat in every mundane object, and The Sancho Panza, who explains away every clearly supernatural event as just normal.

    Video Games 
  • Life Is Strange: Warren is a science student at Blackwell Academy, but he's also a sci-fi aficionado, so he remains openminded when it comes to the possibility of the paranormal and other unexplained phenomena. It's first seen when Max confides in him that she believes Kate's suicide attempt is somehow linked to Rachel Amber's disappearance and the strange happenings in Arcadia Bay. Warren replies that he isn't much for conspiracy theories, but admits that Max might be onto something (episode 2). And when Max finally tells him about her rewind ability during episode 5, he believes her without question.
  • Boyd from Psychonauts. The level based upon his subconscious is the Trope Namer of the Milkman Conspiracy.
  • Persona 2 features two of these: Akinari Kashihara and Maya Okamura, both World History teachers at Seven Sisters High School. Kashihara wrote an entire book of conspiracy theories — ranging from Mayan prophecies to Nazi experiments to aliens living beneath Japan — based entirely on the ramblings of a mentally-disturbed student. Following his suspcious death, Okamura took up Kashihara's halberd, so to speak.
  • Francis York Morgan from Deadly Premonition, who is a Captain Ersatz of Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks above.
  • Dr. Garret Bryson in the Leviathan DLC of Mass Effect 3. In his own words, when the galaxy says something doesn't exist, he takes that as a chance to prove that it does. His daughter Ann also makes a direct Shout-Out to the Arc Words from The X-Files: "the truth is out there".

    Visual Novels 
  • Occult idol Kaoru from Spirit Hunter: NG readily believes anything related to the supernatural, even if it's from dubious sources like infomercials. This contrasts her with the sceptical Seiji and uninformed Akira.
  • 9-year-old Maria Ushiromiya from Umineko: When They Cry is this, believing strongly in the existence of magic and witches and being obsessed with the occult. This contrasts with her older cousin Battler, who's very much an Agent Scully.
  • You got Yasuhiro Hagakure from Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc through and through. For one thing, his specialty is clairvoyance, predicting the future which has the same chance of happening as getting a 1 or 6 on a traditional dice in his particular case. It even happens in one version of the story if you get the bad ending; in an earlier chapter, says that he and Makoto would have the same baby mama, and if you cause Kyoko to get executed, his prediction becomes correct. He also believes in the occult, humorously afraid of ghosts and at one point needing someone to prove that one of the living characters is not a ghost. Yes, he is kinda stubborn and clueless at times. Even in the end, he considers the notion that he might die in the apocalyptic outside world because of his psychic vibes. But even after he casts aside this fear, he still fits the bill by believing in hope instead.
  • Tara Bryck from Heart of the Woods runs a YouTube Vlog Series called Taranormal in which she investigates supernatural phenomena with her more skeptical best friend Madison. Their trip to investigate a remote village called Eysenfeld kicks off the plot.

    Webcomics 
  • Tiffany Tiger's Panda roommate, Yin, in the webcomic The Suburban Jungle, fits this fairly well. She's a font of crackpot conspiracy theories, and yet she manages to become a prisoner of 'The Village', abducted by aliens, and gains help from a dimension-hopping polar bear...
  • Parodied in the Sluggy Freelance X-Files parody "The Slug-Files" with Agent Muldy, who's making up so much crazy stuff all the time that he misses the actual crazy stuff around him — and there's a lot of it in this setting.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Agent Wolf has shades of this. Granted he's right about certain things like his coworker being an alien but then again he has a conspiracy journal.
  • Andrew Cross in morphE. He is a Brought Down to Normal mage who knows full well what magic is capable of and uses his knowledge and an unhealthy dose of paranoia to ward off potential attackers and lash out against Amical.
  • Fi from Storywisher is convinced that all magic is real and pursues it with reckless abandon. This usually gets her and the people she's dragged along with her into trouble.
  • In Freaking Romance, Zylith moves into her apartment after having a (seemingly) ghostly encounter. She loves the paranormal.

    Web Original 
  • Discussed in SF Debris' review of "Fresh Bones" from The X-Files — one of the problems with doing a paranormal show like X-Files is that Mulder, the believer on the team, must believe in everything, and what's worse, everything must be true. Related to that is a Fridge Logic question: now when people know that voodoo is real and that it works, what prevents people to use it on hostile aliens invading the Earth, huh?
  • The Encyclopedia of Hypothetical Police Procedurals tumblr has an entry that bears a striking resemblance to The X-Files except that the Mulder equivalent is paired up with an even more extreme Mulder equivalent, leading to plot summaries with sentences like, "They then spend the rest of the episode trying to track down Illuminati Vampires who kidnapped President Kennedy using psychic powers granted by an experimental serum developed by the Coast Guard." The Will They or Won't They? tension between the two of them is defused when they start having sex in the pilot.
  • In the backstory of Ruby Quest, Red was this. He was suspicious of the connection between the sudden outbreak of violence in the Metal Glen and the miracle cure that he had originally recommended. He tried to avoid taking it himself, which failed when the Agent Scully Dr. S found out what he was doing and reported it to Filbert, who then ordered Red to be secretly given the medicine.
  • Ryan, the co-host of BuzzFeed Unsolved. He created the show in the first place to definitively prove to skeptics that ghosts, and other paranormal creatures truly exist. The other host Shane frequently mocks his willingness to believe in anything, such as mermaids, which Ryan said in a Q&A session did have a possibility of existing.
  • "Nightfall": Eve has fully committed to believing in the astronomers that predict nightfall and the end of the world. Her boyfriend disagrees with her opinion that there's a bunch of unknowable things "out there".
  • The Weather: The cop played by Ben is the only one to initially think the identical, murdered butlers are clones of each other, and is both shocked and glad to hear that the caller-cop agrees with their theory, as everyone else assumed he was going crazy.
  • Wayward Guide for the Untrained Eye: Investigative podcaster Paul Schue-Horyn, upon discovering an account of a secret history of werewolves in the small town they're doing a story on, immediately believes and gets obsessed with this angle, despite his Agent Scully sister and co-host insisting they stick to the political corruption story they came to cover. (She comes around once she actually sees and hears them herself.)

    Western Animation 
  • Invader Zim is rife with Agent Mulders, ranging from the Swollen Eyeball organization who look to prove that mysteries and conspiracies are true, to clueless FBI crackpots (Count Cocoa Fang the cereal mascot being a real vampire) to disturbingly on-the-ball lice hunting countesses (there's a giant Alien-like lice queen who's responsible for lice infestations). Dib tends to come across as a desperate Agent Mulder making all number of bizarre claims, but it becomes apparent in later episodes that he's actually fairly rational and even skeptical. His problem is other people's stupidity and/or apathy, plus his horrible luck in losing his proof at the worst possible moment, every single time. Dib has claimed to see Big Foot in his garage ("he was using the belt sander") and a vampire hamster, and we never did find out if that was a baby sasquatch or a hairy kid — although its comment about wanting to eat grubs seems to suggest the former. So, depending on the episode, Dib tends to be either the Mulder or the Scully.
  • Mr. Crocker of The Fairly OddParents! is known for muttering insane theories to himself that climax in him doing a wild take and yelling "FAIRY GODPARENTS!" in a shrill voice at the top of his lungs. The scary part is that he's almost always right, and he still comes off as a raving loon to the viewer.
    • The viewer may be smarter than you think: while he is usually right, only once in a blue moon (notably in the movie, when he somehow manages to activate a wish-granting muffin) does he get any evidence to support his ideas (and when he does it's promptly magically wiped out of his head), the vast majority of his fairy-chasing plans not only come to naught but result in severe punishment when he accidentally does unpleasant things to his employer, and he just keeps at it. And then there's the yelling (generally accompanied by anatomically frightening poses)...
      • Interestingly, in one of the Time Travel Episodes, we learn that Cosmo and Wanda were his fairy godparents before they were Timmy's (they had surprisingly similar childhoods, including Vic, the babysitter) and he escaped the Mind Wipe of having them go away forever when they were revealed by writing a note to himself on the back of a device with which Timmy provided him through time travel, so he's not a crackpot after all.
  • Captain Black of Jackie Chan Adventures is the show's Agent Scully for most of the first season - until he gets an up-close look at Shendu's true form in the season finale. He switches to Mulder for the rest of the show.
  • Dale Gribble of King of the Hill is a conspiracy theorist and generally a survivalist nutcase. He uses his alias Rusty Shackleford for everything, even ordering pizza. He is so devoted to conspiracy that figuring out the flaws in the "second shooter" theory of the Kennedy assassination turned his entire life around, turning him into a pro-government "good citizen" until Hank, against his better judgment, convinced him that not every conspiracy theory is necessarily false. Fittingly, his design was based on a combination of Robert Patrick and a composite sketch (mostly the horribly inaccurate one of the Unabomber).
  • Dipper Pines in Gravity Falls. From the moment he first arrived in the town he was insisting that there was something weird going on, and he quickly becomes obsessed with learning the secrets of the town and learning everything he can about every supernatural being he encounters along the way, despite teasing and insistence from others that he's going overboard.
  • The Question in Justice League Unlimited. The guy believes that aglets have a sinister purpose, and that topically applied fluoride renders teeth visible by spy satellite. On the other hand, he's proven to be a highly talented detective, either in spite of his paranoia or even perhaps because of it- Batman even admits that the Question is a better detective than he is because of the Question's willingness to consider irrational possibilities. (And he did nail it with his theory about Baskin Robbins' secret, hidden Flavor 32.)
  • Martin Mystery really likes crazy theories about aliens and so forth, based mostly on comic books and B-movies. However, the fact that he and his sister, Dianna work for an organization dedicated to fighting aliens and so forth makes the theories much less crazy — well, some of them. He goes through a lot of downright ludicrous explanations before he finally arrives at the one that's actually happening.
  • Oh Yeah! Cartoons: The short The F-Tales, which is an X-Files parody in a fairy tale setting, gives us agent Chick Little, who is always paranoid about the sky falling.
  • Matt Bluestone from Gargoyles is a deconstruction. His quest to prove the Illuminati existed got him kicked out of the FBI, and after he joined the police most of his colleagues view him as a crackpot despite him being a brilliant detective thanks for his obsession. It later turns out the Illuminati is real, and unlike most shadowy governments, they set about ruining his life and even had one of their members pose as an Agent Scully to provide him with false leads. When he manages to find proof despite all this, he impresses them so much that they make him a member, which pisses him off to no end.
  • Stork of the Storm Hawks believes in pretty much everything (As he says in the Origins Episode), including and especially the so-called "imaginary threats" of Atmos. Luckily, he always makes sure he's Crazy-Prepared.
    Aerrow: I know it seems hard to believe...
    Stork: Nah, I believe pretty much anything.
  • Mindy and Lillian, but especially Mindy in Ready Jet Go!. They believe that witches, ghosts, and the like are real as shown in "That's One Gigantic Pumpkin, Jet Propulsion!".
  • My Adventures with Superman: Jimmy Olsen will instantly jump to the most outlandish conclusions imaginable about any scoop he can think of, with his favorites being that merpeople or aliens are behind something. Occasionally, he's right, such as his conclusion that Superman is an alien.
  • Rick and Morty: In contrast to what you'd expect from a TV scientist, Rick Sanchez is surprisingly open to the supernatural things like vampires or Satan, although he ultimately believes (correctly for the most part) that he can outdo them all with science.
  • The bird bath owner, the daughter/Jennene, and the moderator, Mr. Pratt from the Looney Tunes short, Punch Trunk, each claim they saw a tiny elephant. The bird bath owner to the orderlies; Jennene to her mom, Marsha; Mr. Pratt to Robert.
  • Molly of Denali: In "Mystery in the Night Sky," Tooey believes that aliens are real, and mentions wanting to join an alien conspiracy theorist's club.


Alternative Title(s): Agent Cooper

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