YMMV / The X-Files

• Actor Shipping: Some fans ship Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny rather intensely. You can check YouTube Fan Vids.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Does O'Malley genuinely believe the conspiracy theories he espouses or is he a double agent for the Syndicate, or simply in it for the money? Mulder even ponders on the last one.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: A barely-known creator and male protagonist, along with a completely unknown actress, plus a premise that could alienate people given the Sci Fi Ghetto. Fox even put the show right after The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. feeling that would be the hit, and The X-Files would get the residual audience... when Brisco County Jr struggled with falling ratings and didn't get renewed, and The X-Files only improved its audience within S1 and eventually lasted for 11 seasons.
• Anvilicious: "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati" really goes nuts with the Mulder-is-Jesus subtext. At one point, Mulder is strapped to a cross-shaped operating table clad in nothing but a loincloth with some sort of brain-scanning device on his head that looks eerily like a crown of thorns, whilst the Smoking Man is babbling on about the sacrifice Mulder's making for the world and how wonderful it is that he's dying for everyone.
• Archive Panic: With nine seasons of twenty-odd episodes each and two revival seasons having 6 and 10 episodes respectively, it takes a long time to get through the series if you're starting from the very beginning.
• Better on DVD:
  • All seasons, and the movies, are on Hulu. Go crazy.
  • And now, it's better on Blu-Ray. All 10 seasons can be bought on Blu-ray for 20 bucks a piece on average as of June 2016. Better yet, these releases, for the most part, use 35mm film transfers whereas the DVDs (and for a long time until January 2016, Netflix) used old tapes. Before the release, there was a seemingly built-in case of They Changed It, Now It Sucks! due to seasons 1-4 being presented in 1:85.1, until the director of photography issued a statement clarifying that the seasons were always filmed in widescreen so that it would be "Available". Some episodes of earlier seasons had to use upconverted video sources due to the film being too damaged (or downright missing), but the consensus for the most part among fans is that, except for the updated opening titles, this is the definitive way to watch this series.
• Bizarro Episode: Most notably the "Rashomon"-Style episodes "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" and "Bad Blood". Then there's "Post-Modern Prometheus", which is filmed entirely in black and white and ends with a song-and-dance number featuring a Cher lookalike (after Mulder had effectively broken the fourth wall because he decided the original ending sucked). And Jerry Springer was in it, too.
• The Chris Carter Effect:
  • For the first half of the 1990s, the fans were convinced that Carter had plotted an elaborate and minutely thought-out web of deceit and lies for his FBI agents to unravel. Forests of Epileptic Trees sprouted around every new tantalizing hint revealed. No reference was too obscure for devoted X-Philes, who cheerfully threw themselves into history, folklore, myth, science, or any other branch of human knowledge that seemed like it might shed some light on the story. By the latter end of the decade, though, the Myth Arc story had churned along for years without really answering any of the questions raised. And any answered questions would usually either just ending up raising more questions, or the answer would soon thereafter be retconned. It had mutated into a dense Kudzu Plot, and fans began to suspect that there was no intricately plotted story — he had just been making it all up as he went along. (Carter eventually confirmed this suspicion.) Fans were irritated by the resolutions to side plots that were long-running, such as the fate of Mulder's sister — turns out she was spirited away by the fairies! This eventually went on into the finale which made promises of resolving the Myth Arc which not only fails to do so but also in the last ten minutes presents a teaser for an alien invasion set to occur in 2012 (which to this day looks like it may never be resolved at all).
  • When the series was given an unexpected revival in 2016, it didn't take this trope long to hit it again. The first episode begins with a massive Retcon that makes a hash of a lot of the previous mythology, aliens not having much interaction with humanity at all, and most of their supposed crimes being the work of humans using stolen alien technology — despite the numerous aliens that had been on the show before. Most of the season was filler, and the season finale ends on yet another Cliffhanger, despite another season not being greenlit at that point and the principal actors not signed on for more. Fans who were hoping to finally get some closure after years of waiting were left sorely disappointed; at best, they might finally get a resolution in another few years, at worst, the show gets cancelled again and they're right back to where they started.
  • Two years later, the revival would get a second season, only for it to start with the extremely controversial twist that Scully was essentially raped by the Cigarette-Smoking Man to produce William, and end with the Cigarette-Smoking Man yet again being killed for presumably the last time, and yet again the X-Files are shut down as a Cliffhanger. Once again, fans were less than satisfied, though general reception for the season was more positive than the first.
• Complete Monster: Has its own sub-page.
• Continuity Lockout: The show's mythology is incredibly elaborate from the beginning and becomes increasingly more difficult to follow as the seasons go by (in particular after the destruction of the Syndicate).
• Creator's Pet: Doggett's detractors accuse him of being one of these — the writers seemed determined to have him save the day as often as possible when he first appeared, even if it required making Scully uncharacteristically weak or stupid. Confirmed according to The Other Wiki. Carter was obsessed with making much of the 8th season about Doggett. This upset David Duchovny who then asked to get to write and direct an episode revolving around Mulder's abduction. Chris Carter then rejected this idea because it "wasn't about Doggett".
• Crosses the Line Twice: In "Teliko", the MOTW feeds on pituitary hormones that stimulate the production of the pigment melanin — the one that gives us our skin color. As a result, his preferred victims are people of African descent. Even funnier, pituitary melanocyte-stimulating hormone is not responsible for the baseline skin tones of humans. He'd have been better off attacking Caucasians with obvious suntans, or people with Addison's disease. So in other words, the monster just might be racist. As if that weren't enough, Mulder's remark upon seeing one victim's body was:
  Mulder: I'm sure there's a Michael Jackson joke in there somewhere.
• Crossover Ship: There's a relatively large fanbase for shipping Dana Scully and Stella Gibson (The Fall (2013)), especially on sites like AO3, mainly due to both being played by Gillian Anderson.
• Delusion Conclusion: Some viewers believe that the show takes place entirely in Mulder's head, providing him a fantasy world in which the conspiracies he believes in are real and he often turns out to be correct.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Krycek. No matter how many times he tried to kill Mulder and Scully and how horrible deeds he committed, some fans still root for him and think he's the force for the good, very much like the agents.
• Dry Docking: Why do you think people were so happy that Mulder and Scully held out for so long?
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • A meta-example among the cast and crew: Darin Morgan, who played the flukeman in "The Host", went on to write some of the smartest and funniest episodes of the series, gaining a personal fanbase throughout the series and playing a more recognizably human Monster of the Week in "Small Potatoes". Morgan was popular enough that he was brought back to write an episode for season 10 over a decade later, "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", as well as season 11 episode "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat".
  • The flukeman is one of the most popular and well-remembered monsters that Mulder and Scully have encountered. Many fans are disappointed that the Sequel Hook ending its episode had was never followed up. The season 10 comics even brought it back and gave it a proper backstory.
  • Skinner is a great example. For some people, him just showing up in the second movie was the best thing about it.
  • The Lone Gunmen. A trio of conspiracy theorists and nerdy friends of Mulder's were welcome additions to the show from their very first appearance.
  • Eugene Victor Tooms distinguished himself as one of the series' most popular Monster of the Week, even being one of the few to appear in more than one episode.
  • Mrs. Scully. Sheila Larken's performance was always a joy to watch. Only one thing - pity that Mrs. Scully usually showed up only for a family crisis and thus was seen to suffer a lot.
  • Agent Pendrell, a science guy with a crush on Scully. Amazing that he managed to become a fans' favourite with so little number of occurrences.
  • The Peacock Family are some of the most well-liked MOTWs, simply for how utterly terrifying they managed to be despite not having any real supernatural traits.
  • Clyde Bruckman only appeared in one episode and died at the end of it, but is beloved for being simultaneously tragic and hilarious, and his episode is regarded as one of the best of the series.
• Evil Is Cool: The Cigarette-Smoking Man is this, especially in the early seasons where he's a mysterious and imposing figure mostly lurking in the background.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation:
  • The ultimate reveal of Samantha's fate. Mulder was tormented by her clones and doubles and statements that she's still alive. It was finally revealed that she had been abducted by the conspiracy who had collaborated with the aliens, we learnt that horrible tests had been performed on her and then she had lived with the Cancer Man's family. So far so good — fans always suspected something like this. However, when she was 14, she was "saved" by fairies or angels that made her body disappear, meaning that her corpse will never be found, but Mulder did see her ghost.
  • The implication aliens have never really been in contact with humans, beyond the Syndicate seizing their tech and using it for nefarious purposes in "My Struggle". Especially given there are a lot of things contradicting this in the original run, a lot of fans are hoping for it to be a fakeout.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Moose and Squirrel: Mulder and Scully (after Bullwinkle Moose and Rocky Squirrel). As a team, they are known as the Dynamic Duo.
  • The Organization: The sinister group that consists of many adjectival men and who the Smoking Man works for.
  • Cigarette Smoking Man, a.k.a. Morley Man (after his preferred brand), a.k.a. Cancer Man. "Cancer Man" eventually started being used in the show itself. "Marlborough Man" has also been used, after the source of the expied brand used in the show and the spokes-character introduced to sell it after it was switched from being a woman's brand.
  • Ratboy: Krycek. Also known as Skippy.
  • The Schwarzenalien, the Mighty Morphin Bounty Hunter. Shapeshifting alien played by Brian Thompson.
  • The Fowl One: Diana Fowley (also referred to by more colorful names).
  • Plam: The knife with the retractable blade that the show implied was THE ONLY weapon that could kill the aliens. Named from a moment when Mulder's mother was trying to tell him she'd hidden one in her lamp - but she'd had a stroke, so "lamp" came out "plam".
• Fanon: For fans of Agent Doggett, it's half-jokingly said that after Season 9, he had to get a new identity and joined Team Scorpion, which is why he's nowhere to be found in the revival seasons.
• Fanon Discontinuity: One of the reasons for the whole Broken Base mess. People differ on where they put the cutoff, but if you want a calm friendly discussion about the show it's safest to avoid bringing up seasons 8 and 9.
  • "Jump the Shark" is one of the episodes that gets this the most, where the Lone Gunmen die. Fans everywhere declared that Fletcher was lying through his teeth and it's one of the most divisive episodes of the series. The creators weren't very fond of it either, as the comic continuation retcons the Lone Gunmen's deaths away with a Hand Wave.
  • The 2016 revival was especially divisive because it retconned the entire mythology the show had spent 9 years building, as well as bringing the Smoking Man Back from the Dead in the most implausible way imaginable, even for this show. Many fans choose to believe the revival never happened.
  • Strangely inverted with "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"; Word of God says that it's not canon or is pseudocanon (that is, parts of it happened but other parts didn't) but many fans take it as canon since it gives a lot of backstory and characterization to the Cigarette-Smoking Man.
• Growing the Beard: After the first episode of the revival, "My Struggle" proved to be divisive, "Founder's Mutation" managed to regrow the beard for the show with its classic monster of the week action and emotional looks at Mulder and Scully's regrets.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • "Deep Throat" has a mention of Desert Storm part 2. Ten years later, guess what happened.
  • An even harsher example from the following episode: Scully and a Quantico classmate discuss a mutual acquaintance's career progress in "Squeeze", and both dismiss him as a suck-up who's climbing the FBI ladder because he's a publicity hog, working high-profile media cases but not getting any real work done. How did this ex-classmate get himself noticed by the upper ranks? Investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
  • "Fresh Bones", of all episodes, ticks a lot of boxes its writers couldn't have foreseen in 1995:
    • The episode features a Marine Colonel administering a Haitian refugee camp say: "We're soldiers, not prison guards. And we're being asked to police a hostile population of foreigners without the resources to feed or house them." Hard for a contemporary viewer not to think of Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo.
    • Haiti itself produced lots of refugees following the 2010 earthquake - forcing the creation of a camp in Brazil, which doesn't help these matters either.
    • And the whole plot of immigrants and refugees being indefinitely detained in a government-run camp is definitely this after the controversy over immigrant detention centers during the Trump Administration. Then there's Mr. X's comment to Mulder: "The Statue of Liberty is on vacation. The new mandate says that if you're not a citizen, you'd better keep out."
  • "Dreamland II" reveals that Saddam Hussein is a character created by the government for whenever they need someone to do some saber-rattling.
  • "Monday" ends with Pam Taking the Bullet for Mulder in the chest to end the "Groundhog Day" Loop. Pam's actress, Carrie Hamilton, would die only three years later in 2002 from metastatic lung cancer aged 38.
  • "Three of a Kind" ends with Langly trying to cheer up Byers after his separation from a romantic interest, Suzanne, by quipping that "growing old with [him and Frohike] ain't so bad". Three seasons later, the Lone Gunmen are all killed at a young age.
  • David Duchovny's later admission that he had a severe sex addiction puts the recurring gag about Mulder's porn fetish in an uncomfortable new light.
  • From "Tunguska". Chris Carter always claimed that he and the writers had an amazing, mind-blowing plan for the Myth Arc. Later revealed that they had not.
    Krycek: The truth? The truth?! There is no truth! These men are making it up as they go along!
  • As if Eugene Victor Tooms wasn't creepy enough, Doug Hutchison later turned out to be a sexual predator who groomed and married a teenager while in his 50s.
• He Really Can Act: "Terms of Endearment" certainly didn't receive universal acclaim, but Bruce Campbell was widely praised for his guest appearance as Wayne Weinsider. Many observed that he had effectively played against type. This performance even made Campbell considered to play John Doggett.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Chris Carter has stated that Scully's initial character profile was Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs in all but name. Gillian Anderson later took a role in the prequel series Hannibal (and was the first choice to play Clarice herself in the film of the same name, except her contract with the show forbade her from playing other FBI agents).
  • Donal Logue playing a clean-cut, ambitious FBI agent in "Squeeze". These days, he's better known for playing slovenly, laid-back detectives.
  • The character 'Deep Throat' gets his nickname from the Watergate informant. Mulder claims the shows' 'Deep Throat' is "...in the FBI". In Real Life, the 'real' 'Deep Throat' was later shown to be have been in the FBI.
  • In "Fire", Scully finds herself at odds with a Scotland Yard detective, Phoebe Green, who had a history with Mulder. 18 years later, Scully's actor, Gillian Anderson would have a role as the head of British Intellgence.
• Ho Yay:
  • Mulder and Krycek. Krycek got the ball rolling in his debut episode by being the "new girlfriend" to Scully's "ex-girlfriend" and never let up.
  • Mulder and Skinner. They are reasonably close for two law-enforcement loner agents, and especially considering that Skinner is Mulder's superior and all-around hardass boss. In the season 10 premiere, Skinner notes a day hasn't gone by in 14 years in which he hasn't wanted to call Mulder.
  • Mulder in general is... very comfortable with his masculinity. In the season 2 episode "Humbug":
    Mr. Nutt: Just because I'm not of so-called average height does not mean I must receive my thrills vicariously. Not all women are attracted to overly tall, lanky men such as yourself. You'd be surprised how many women find my size intriguingly alluring.
    Mulder: You'd be surprised how many men do as well.
  • If you're in a Les Yay mood, the two teen girls in "Syzygy" are... close. Their catch-phrase "Hate him, wouldn't want to date him" is introduced as "Hate her, wouldn't want to date her," and Terri turning on Margi can easily be read as her being furious that Margi wants a boy over her.
  • The nude exam scene◊ between Scully and Dr. Nancy Da Silva in "Ice" is rather tender.
• Jerkass Woobie: Leonard Betts, the cancer eating mutant. He doesn't want to hurt people and tried to only eat from corpses, but then he got exposed by a car accident and just couldn't fight the hunger anymore. Rob Roberts suffers from similar problems.
• Magnificent Bastard: "Bad Blood": Sheriff Hartwell seems to at first be an ally to Mulder and Scully, but is in reality a cunning yet polite vampire. Charming and gentlemanly in Scully's interpretation yet foolish and simple in Mulder's, Hartwell deceives both and leads them away from the vampiric Serial Killer Ronnie Strickland, effortlessly cloaking his vampiric nature all the while and delaying them until they seemingly kill Ronnie. When they return to hunt down Ronnie once again, as he remains alive, Hartwell politely works alongside them. Nonchalantly sending Mulder into a trap, leaving him unconscious, Hartwell explains to Scully the truth, admitting that the entire community is composed of vampires. Hartwell states that while he cannot approve of Ronnie's murderous actions, he is nonetheless a community member who must be protected. Drugging Scully and leaving both herself and Mulder unharmed, Hartwell disappears with his community, Ronnie included, fully achieving his goals and escaping any form of justice.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The theme song. Wah-wah-wah-wah-WAH-wah (Deedledeedledeedle) Wah-wah-wah-wah-WAH-wah (Deedledeedee) WAH-wah-wah-wah-WAH. ^note  Humming, playing, or whistling the melody indicates that something paranormal or at least something very weird is going on (somehow actually deposing the theme from The Twilight Zone (1959) for the job). It's also associated with conspiracy theories about The Illuminati, often by people parodying said theories (usually by pasting the Eye of Providence onto anything that's vaguely triangle-shaped and then playing the music).
  • I want to believe. ^note  Both the phrase itself and Mulder's UFO poster displaying it, which has spawned its own set of online photoshops.
  • The truth is out there. ^note  It was the main message appearing at the end of the opening credits. Represents the constant search for what exactly is going on. Repeatedly said by Mulder. Very often quoted and referenced.
  • Trust no one. ^explanationThe season 1 finale changed the phrase in the opening credits for the first time from 'The truth is out there' to 'Trust no one', and Mulder's first Mysterious Informant Deep Throat told him the phrase as his dying words. It kept resurfacing from time to time.
  • Agent Mulder and Agent Scully. ^explanationEven people who never watched the show know them by name and the vast majority of people know that Mulder is a whacky believer and a conspiracy nut, while Scully is a sceptic with scientific mind.
  • The Scully Effect. ^explanation In the late nineties, there was a significant increase of women studying STEM subjects and seeking careers in such fields. This is attributed to the influence of the positive portrayal of Dana Scully, an FBI agent, a medical doctor specializing in pathology. 21st Century Fox partnered with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Their research survey of women in the USA found a correlation between women who were familiar with, or fans of The X-Files and its influence on their career choices.
  • "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" helped give us the persistent refrain "ayy lmao" with a screenshot from the episode serving as the original macro template. ^note  The phrase is used as a caption for any picture of an extra-terrestrial, ostensibly because that is the only thing an extra-terrestrial ever says.
  • It was fans of the show who invented the term "Shipping", as a way of labelling the fans who wanted Mulder and Scully to get together (shippers; from the word relationship) and the ones who didn't (noromos, from "no romance"). Though the phenomenon actually predates the show.
  • "Mulder, are you suggesting that..." ^explanationand other variations of such, almost once per episode as Scully's reaction to Mulder's outrageous explanations regarding the paranormal stuff or wide-ranging conspiracies. And he happens to be almost always right.
  • "Mulder, it's me." / "Scully, it's me." ^explanation Scully's and Mulder's way of answering on the phone or starting their phone conversation. To the point that it was winkingly used as Scully's introductory line in the first movie. Mulder and Scully were among the first characters on TV who were using cell phones regularly, and early designs of mobile phones became their iconic props.
  • Red speedos. ^explanation In "Duane Barry", Mulder is seen doing laps at the inside swimming pool, wearing only red speedos. This tiny piece of clothing has become legendary and iconic among the show's fans. Supposedly, it was even given to the Smithsonian with other X-Files memorabilia. It became an Ascended Meme twice: When Mulder shows his FBI badge in the Simpsons episode "The Springfield Files", Mulder's has a picture of him in speedos (admittedly black ones). In the revival series' episode "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", Mulder is seen lying in bed, wearing nothing but red speedos.
  • Flashlights of various sizes.^explanation They are the agents' iconic items that they always kept carrying and using while solving their cases. It helped to create a mysterious atmosphere.
  • ... bleeping dead alien. ^explanation In "Jose Chung's ''From Outer Space''", detective Manners curses like a sailor, which they can't show in the "Rashomon"-Style episode. So he says "bleep" or "blank" a lot. Both Mulder and Scully quote the detective in phrases like "blankety-blank bleep", "blank-hole", "Yeah, that's a bleeping dead alien body if I ever bleeping saw one." or "He said they just found your bleeping UFO." Popular phrase and pattern to copy.
  • Cockblocking bee. ^explanation In the first movie, Mulder and Scully share a deep emotional moment and their Almost Kiss is stopped by an alien bee that was hidden in Scully's clothes. The bee is very much hated to memetic levels by Mulder/Scully shippers in the fandom.
  • Mulder's flirty "come-on" lines to Scully. ^explanation Mulder has a tendency to jokingly flirt with Scully, and his suggestive lines are very memorable. "I think it's remotely plausible that someone might think you’re hot" after Scully's comment about Lone Gunmen or "birds do it, bees do it, even educated MD's do it" - after discovering that all the babies with a tail share the same father; or "Hey Scully, should we be picking out china patterns or what?" Said after Scully guesses Mulder's theory. Or while climbing a tree: "Hey, Scully, is this demonstration of boyish agility turning you on at all?"
  • A meme mixed with "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" by Ylvis. As far as the X-Files fandom is concerned, the Fox says "Scullyyyyy!" ^explanation Mulder's unusual first name is Fox and Say My Name of Scully happens all the time in the series. Other Fox/fox puns are common as well.
• Moral Event Horizon: Krycek officially crosses it in "Patient X", where he captures a boy who's seen a UFO, infects him with the Black Oil, and makes sure he remains infected, by sewing his mouth and eyes shut so that the Oil can't leak out.
• My Real Daddy: As the show wore on, episodes written by creator Chris Carter were regarded as less and less worthy by both critics and fans. By the time of the 2016 revival, Carter-penned episodes were consistently regarded as extremely poor on all fronts, but especially in terms of both inept plotting and dull characterization; any critical praise for the show was strictly for episodes written by pretty much anyone else. Darin Morgan, who only wrote a handful of episodes throughout the series run, is often regarded by fans as the best 'pure' X-Files writer, while numerous other series writers (Frank Spotnitz, Glen Morgan, Vince Gilligan) also have strong fan bases.
• Narm: Most of the weekly promos for classic X-Files episodes are filled with tension and horror towards the potential next threat faced by Mulder and Scully. Only for the "Firewalker" and "Excelsis Dei" promos, a single instance of the Howie scream turns those trailers from scary to flat-out funny.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • "Home". Ew. Double Ew. Murderous, incestuous family with all kinds of genetic defects. "Home" was so disturbing that after it first aired, it was banned from network TV.
  • There's "Sanguinarium". Dear lord, it's ten times worse! Medical horror at its most disturbing.
• Never Live It Down: David Duchovny's doing a Sexy Surfacing Shot in red speedo in "Duane Barry". This was acknowledged in a revival episode.
• Paranoia Fuel: The whole. Goddamn. Show. Government hiding info? Alien invaders? The fact the monsters of the week are hiding in everyday America? The revival is adding mass government surveillance to the paranoia stew.
• Popularity Polynomial: After enjoying massive success in the '90s, the show's popularity went spiraling downhill in the '00s due to both Seasonal Rot and, more importantly, the profoundly altered cultural climate post-9/11. The mixed reception of I Want to Believe seemingly confirmed that the show was dead. However, it enjoyed a solid comeback in the '10s, thanks to both the rise of binge-watching (see Better on DVD above) and the Edward Snowden revelations helping to put conspiracy culture back into the mainstream.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Both Doggett and Reyes are seen this way by many fans. Doggett got less of it, mostly due to Robert Patrick's performance; many fans like him as a supporting/recurring character and only disliked the fact that he replaced Mulder. Reyes wasn't as lucky. The chemistry this pair of agents had couldn't compare to the epic levels which Mulder and Scully had. Some fans who liked Doggett weren't happy when he didn't return for the 2016 revival and that Reyes did (not helped by the fact that Patrick currently appears in Scorpion).
  • Marita Covarubbias wasn't especially popular compared to her predecessors Deep Throat and X. Her myriad double-crosses and hooking up with Krycek didn't endear her to many fans, either.
• Retroactive Recognition: Quite a few.
  • Probably the most notable is Bryan Cranston in "Drive". Vince Gilligan, who wrote the episode, claims his performance in that episode is what inspired him to cast Cranston in his Star-Making Role in Breaking Bad. Funnily enough, Bryan would later be in a movie called Drive (2011).
  • Three years before the first season, David Duchovny had a recurring role as the transgender FBI Agent Denise on Twin Peaks.
  • Several prominent personalities of the early 2000s appear in the series, either as Monsters of the Week (Tony Shalhoub appeared as the Monster of the Week in Season 2's "Soft Light", seven years before Monk made him a household name), victims (Jack Black is killed off in Season 3's "D.P.O.") or major roles in a single episode (a very young Shia LaBeouf had a role as the kid with jaundice in Season 7's "The Goldberg Variation").
  • A young Seth Green, fresh off of It is the stoner boy in "Deep Throat".
  • Jennette McCurdy in S7 "Closure". Bizarrly enough, nobody, not even IMDB, knew, and the first time people realized she was one of the trapped children was after she wrote about the shooting of said episode in her biography I'm glad my Mom died.
• The Scrappy: Diana Fowley, AKA The Fowl One, was loathed by a vast majority of fans. She was not meant to be likeable, but she was hated even more than the writers anticipated. She was assigned to the X-Files cases when Mulder and Scully were Reassigned to Antarctica and she soon revealed herself as a rat collaborating with The Conspiracy. Moreover, she was forced as a Romantic False Lead and Old Flame to Mulder, so naturally especially shippers hated her. Her final deeds and death redeemed her a little, but there was hardly a fan who shed a tear for her.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Some fans loathe Season 7, due to questionable twists in the Mythology (especially the Samantha reveal in "Closure"), a perceived excess of humorous episodes and the assorted twists in "Requiem." In fairness to Chris Carter and Co., Fox was planning to cancel the series and only renewed it at the last minute, causing the show to prematurely wrap up loose ends. Still, even X-Philes who dislike Seasons 8-9 sometimes rate them above the 7th. However, a lot of fans still view it as a great season, with some even calling it the last good season.
  • Season 9. There's some disagreement as to exactly when the show took a wrong turn and started going downhill, but many agree that by Season 9, at least, major problems had set in. Although the replacement of Mulder with John Doggett in Season 8 at least had a mixed reception, the same can't be said of Season 9, where Scully was phased out in favor of Monica Reyes, and the conspiracy arc was dragged out for far too long, leading to a series finale that offered very little resolution. The finale was intended to be a set-up for a series of feature films that would finally start resolving the Myth Arc, but that ultimately didn't come to pass.
  • The 2016 mini-series isn't exactly beloved by fans either. The nature of the Government Conspiracy shifted in quite a radical way which heavily contradicted much of what came before (even accounting for the fact that the show's Myth Arc had never exactly been consistent), and a certain amount of Values Dissonance in the way conspiracy theorists were depicted in the 1990s (as heroic crusaders for the truth) compared to how they are widely viewed in 2016 (as deluded and potentially even dangerous followers of fringe and extremist political movements) meant that the premise hadn't aged very well in several ways.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Good God. In the show's heyday, whole websites and mailing lists were devoted to shipping wars. It might be, if not the Ur-Example, at least the Trope Codifier.
• Special Effect Failure: Lots of 'em, especially in the first three seasons or so, when the show had little budget to speak of.
  • Early on, the show's special effects were created using the NTSC 29.97 frame rate, while the show was recorded on 24fps film stock. As a result, the digital effects would move much at a completely different (and much smoother) frame rate than the background plates, or the vehicular action would be very obviously sped up in post to try and lend it some thrills.
  • The swarm of bugs in "Darkness Falls". It's painfully obvious that the bugs are just random dots that move around. When the swarm "moves", it looks like the bugs are confined by a flat surface in the direction of motion.
  • The age-makeup in "Død Kalm". Especially if you compare it to the awesome make-up of victims of an unknown disease a few episodes later.
  • In "Anasazi", there are some very unsuccessful composite shots◊ that attempt to place the actors in the New Mexico desert rather than a quarry in Vancouver.
  • The possession effect in "Space" is one of many well-known issues with the episode.
  • HD remasters only: while the production team had excellent foresight in regards to widescreen television usage, in "Hollywood A.D." it's obvious when a stunt double fills in for Gillian Anderson in the Funny Background Event where Scully shows Téa Leoni how to run in heels.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Kolchak: The Night Stalker, share similarities as both are Monster of the Week cop shows with a supernatural twist. Several X-Files episodes are directly inspired by Kolchak episodes.
  • It also has much in common with The Omega Factor, a 1979 BBC Scotland drama about a psychic newspaperman and a physicist (Doctor Who's Louise Jameson) working for a government Paranormal Investigation department. Said department is also infiltrated by a vast conspiracy organization with designs on world domination, through very different methods.
  • Given it's influence, it has several shows of it's own, including Fringe, Torchwood, Lost, Supernatural and many other Paranormal Investigation programs. Fringe in particular so closely resembled X-Files that it was criticized by fans as being a ripoff of the original.
  • It also influenced the mood and writing of less obviously related shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which Joss Whedon described as My So-Called Life meets The X-Files), Alias, Bones and Eleventh Hour.
• Squick:
  • "Squeeze": Tooms's bile.
    Scully: Oh my God, Mulder, it smells like... I think it's bile.
    Mulder: Is there any way I can get it off my fingers quickly without betraying my cool exterior?
  • "F. Emasculata" is the squickiest squick that ever squicked. Two Words: Bursting pustules.
  • "Home": All of it. It doesn't get any creepier than discovering that a reclusive, deformed mother actually mated with her own three children to continue their bloodline.
  • "Sanguinarium". It may as well be considered the A Serbian Film of the series. A woman vomiting up a bunch of bloody needles is one of the less disgusting things that happen.
  • "Leonard Betts": The processing unit at the hospital was bad enough, but a monster who eats tumours?
  • "Brand X" has beetles that hatch inside your lungs and then eat your face off.
• Stoic Woobie:
  • Scully. The more upset she is, the more she'll insist that she's fine.
  • Clyde Bruckman. He seems like a guy with a stiff upper lip, but then you learn how miserable his powers make him.
  • Mulder as of "Founder's Mutation". He tells Scully he's worried about William just like her but is trying to move on. The flashback at the end of the episode shows this is far from true.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Doggett gets one in his very first scene when Scully angrily throws water in his face. Chris Carter has said that he knew replacing Mulder with Doggett wouldn't be a very popular move, so instead of Character Shilling, he gave fans what they wanted right off the bat.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Ask ten different X-Files fans and you're likely to get ten different answers about when, exactly, the show started to suck.
  • After David Duchovny left the show in season 8, and Robert Patrick was brought in to play John Doggett as a replacement to Mulder, several fans abandoned the show, noting that the interactions between Mulder and Scully were a major aspect of the show's appeal.
  • Some cite season 6 as the start of the decline due to the move from Vancouver to Los Angeles (claiming that the often dreary northwest weather enhanced the quality of the show, in contrast to bright and sunny Hollywood) and the introduction of a romantic arc between the two main characters (which alienated those who preferred to see them as Platonic Life-Partners).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Crew-Cut Man sets himself up as a legitimate threat in the season 1 finale, "The Erlenmeyer Flask", after he casually shoots Deep Throat in the chest. But when he comes back in "Red Museum", he doesn't even appear until the end, and apart from a brief fight with Mulder, is shot down by a minor character. People expected more from him, believing he could have been a main antagonist. Even one of the writers, Glen Morgan, hated this decision.
  • Doggett and Reyes in the revival seasons. Reyes has a Face–Heel Turn and Doggett suffers from Chuck Cunningham Syndrome (courtesy of Robert Patrick having scheduling conflicts). As a result, some feel that Doggett's absence should have been at least explained while being open enough for his possible return, especially if it was a tragic event that contributed to why Reyes ended up the way she was in her own return, like in the comic continuation. It's rather glaring since Season 9 ended with them being almost as major to the show as Scully and Mulder, only for the show to return to status quo.
  • Mr. Y and Erika Price. They were introduced at the beginning of season 11 as former members of the Syndicate. Their main goals are to colonize space with a select few, through the use of Dyson spheres, man-made environments and human mind uploading into digital simulations, the latter of which was revealed the next episode. Apart from that, we never learn about what drove them to these plans or its details, something that the Syndicate mythology actually did midway through season 6. Instead, the two are killed in that season's finale with little fanfare.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • At the end of The X-Files: Fight the Future, Scully mentions that the virus she was exposed to has a cure: the mysterious vaccine. Trying to retrieve the Well-Manicured Man's research or developing the vaccine at the labs of the Bureau would make for a great story arc. Some people kept enjoying season 6, but more serious and darker episodes would have been welcome, and the Myth Arc had visibly less screen time, which disappointed some fans.
  • Anytime a Monster of the Week episode ends with a Sequel Hook (such as "The Host" where the last few minutes reveal that the flukeman survived its fight with Mulder) that is never followed up on.
  • The series' original run ended with the Super Soldiers having formed a new Syndicate and preparing for the alien invasion of Earth (supposedly taking place in 2012). The second movie, I Want to Believe, completely ignores this storyline for... a monster-of-the-week type plot.
  • The 2016 revival again ignores the invasion and the Super Soldiers, focusing instead on a less interesting Myth Arc involving the Spartan virus and the search for William.
  • One minor case that is actually agreed to have turned out for the better: "Squeeze" ends with an ominous shot of the food slot in Tooms' cell, implying that he could escape through it, but in his return appearance he's still imprisoned until he gets out legally...which works incredibly well in putting the screws to Mulder and Scully as they have to take him down without actually having any authority to do it.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Especially in the early seasons, it suffered from this;
  • This is mostly due to a bad case of Technology Marches On. The series frequently showcased new technology; cell phones, computers, e-mail, the internet, and various other items are seen in every episode of the original nine-season run. Unfortunately, season 1 was in 1993. They were very good about updating their technology — season 8 episodes (2001) see flat-screen Apple computers — but just the sheer size and appearance of the technology in the early and mid seasons is enough to date it horribly. The AV Club's review of the season 1 episode "Ghost in the Machine" notes how the show often portrayed new technologies as a source of mystery, awe, and potential horror, which can cause unintentional laughter in people who've grown up with those technologies and are all too aware of their limitations.
  • There's also the values of the show. It was made in a post-Cold War environment where the big buzzword was the "new world order", Bush Senior's term to describe the new, American-dominated state of global affairs where market capitalism and liberal internationalism reigned supreme — and coincidentally, also a term used by conspiracy theorists to describe the Evil Plan of the conspiracy. The militia movement and their pet conspiracy theories were at their peak during this era, especially after President Bill Clinton was caught with his pants down. It's been argued that the real death blows for the show (beyond Seasonal Rot) were the attacks at the World Trade Center in New York, New York and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia in 2001 and The War on Terror removing that environment from the mainstream, consigning it to the radical fringes of society and making it somewhat disrespectful to openly support for the next decade or so — and it's not a coincidence that the show's 2016 revival came just as conspiracy culture has returned to prominence.
• Values Dissonance: The 2016 revival got some criticism for presenting Mulder's old theories completely at face value again, with little to acknowledge how conspiracy theories are now largely associated with extreme fringe nuts, rather than the more sympathetic view they had in the '90s. The premiere even features Joel McHale as a No Celebrities Were Harmed take-off on Alex Jones who's presented as a hero with no sense of irony. Despite enjoying the episode, the AV Club's reviewer thought that real-life tragedies such as 9/11 were being mercilessly exploited.
• The Woobie:
  • Poor, poor Max Fenig. His abductions give him seizures and generally, his life is only suffering.
  • Lanny in "Humbug", largely due to the performance of the late Vincent Schiavelli.
  • Mulder and Scully themselves, especially Mulder given his deeply tragic backstory and motives.
  • The Soul Eater. An Empathetic Healer who gets abused as a disease trash can by the selfish townspeople, with the result that he's been left as a crippled wreck who can barely walk.

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