The X-Files/Trivia

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Actor Allusion:
    • Bruce Campbell makes an appearance as a demon that actually swallows someone's soul.
    • "Salvage" has Robert Patrick referencing his breakthrough role: "What’re you saying? Ray Pearce has become some kind of metal man? ‘Cause that only happens in the movies, Agent Scully."
  • Actor Shared Background: Like his character, the Cigarette-Smoking Man, William B. Davis is a former champion water-skier. Go figure.
  • Cast the Expert: The episode "The Amazing Maleeni" features two stage magicians, both played by actual stage magicians.
  • Dawson Casting: Inverted with Agent Scully; she was born in 1964 while Gillian Anderson was born in 1968.
  • Enforced Method Acting: For the episode "X-Cops", the cameramen (including some from COPS) were not present during rehearsals so their camera work would look more spontaneous.
  • Fake American: The Cigarette-Smoking Man is a native of Ontario, eh.
    • Gillian Anderson was born in America to American citizens, but she moved to England when she was two and didn't move back until she was eleven, and by then her speech patterns had been set. She had to work to lose it when she went into acting, and if you pay attention to the early episodes of The X-Files it slips through at times. Now that she's moved back to England, she's got the accent back in full-force. Her American accent she acquired in her teenage years comes back whenever she's interviewed by an American reporter.
  • Fan Community Nickname: X-Philes.
  • Franchise Killer: The second movie is suspected of being one, although after a ten-year gap could be considered more of a failed attempt at resurrection.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Many familiar faces have popped up in the show's history:
    • Brad Dourif as a supposedly psychic serial killer on Death Row in "Beyond the Sea".
    • Felicity Huffman is in "Ice", with John Connor's step-dad as her partner.
    • Cary Elwes plays Agent Reyes' ex-love interest and jerk Brad Folmer during Season 9.
    • B.D. Wong plays an American-Chinese police officer in "Hell Money".
    • Terry O'Quinn appeared three different times as three different characters: once in "Aubrey", once in "Fight the Future", and finally as the mysterious man in "Trustno1".
    • Luke Wilson plays a sheriff vampire (who may or may not have bucked teeth) in the episode "Bad Blood".
    • John Finn had a recurring role as Michael Kritschgau over several seasons.
    • Ed Asner and Lily Tomlin played ghost lovers in the episode "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas".
    • M. Emmett Walsh also appeared in "The Unnatural".
    • Peter Boyle plays a psychic who can only predict people's deaths in "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". He won an Emmy for "Outstanding Guest Actor" for that episode, and was his only win out of 8 nominations, including 5 from Everybody Loves Raymond.
    • Mimi Rogers was to become the most hated character on the show when she played Diana Fowley during Seasons 5-7.
    • Michael Buble makes an uncredited appearance as a sailor in "Apocrypha" and "Piper Maru".
    • Jayne Atkinson (most know her from her role as Erin Strauss on Criminal Minds) played Willa Ambrose in "Fearful Symmetry".
    • Tony Shalhoub in "Soft Light".
    • Tobin Bell in "Brand X".
    • Seth Green in "Deep Throat".
    • William Sanderson in "Blood". In the same episode, John Cygan (Canderous Ordo of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) plays Sheriff Spencer.
    • Bruce Campbell plays a demon trying to have a child in "Terms of Endearment".
    • Kolchak creator Darren Mc Gavin, oddly, does not appear as the character he created, but as Arthur Dales, the agent who ran the X-Files in the fifties.
    • Tony Todd is the villain of the week in "Sleepless".
    • Bokeem Woodbine, Ken Foree and J.T. Walsh appear in "The List".
    • R. Lee Ermey and Kenneth Welsh in "Revelations".
    • Jack Black and Giovanni Ribisi play a pair of high school slackers in "D.P.O.".
    • Donal Logue shows up as a Jerkass fellow federal agent in "Squeeze".
    • Ryan Reynolds has a small part at the beginning of "Syzygy".
    • Kurtwood Smith (Red Foreman from That '70s Show or Clarence Boddicker if you prefer) is Agent Bill Patterson in "Grotesque".
    • Amanda Tapping appears as the victim of the week in "Avatar".
    • A. J. Buckley as a teenaged stoner in "War of the Coprophages" and "Quagmire".
    • Andrew Robinson as Dr. Detweiler in "Alpha".
    • Casey Biggs as an oil rig worker in "Vienen".
    • Adam Baldwin as Knowle Rohrer in the last few seasons.
    • A very young Jewel Staite plays a kidnap victim in "Oubliette".
    • Shia LaBoeuf as the Littlest Hepatitis Patient in "The Goldberg Variation".
    • A young Andrea Libman plays the possessed little girl in "Born Again". You'll never watch Madeline or My Little Pony the same way again.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!:
  • Irony as She Is Cast: Retroactively, that is. William B. Davis spent years fending off true believers who loved his character and couldn't believe that he is a real-life apostate. Davis eventually got in touch with the skeptic community to develop better argument strategies, and is now a lecturer on the skeptic circuit.
  • Lying Creator: Word of God said Mulder and Scully wouldn't ever kiss. Watching the show comes to convey the contrary.
    • Word of God also said that there would never be any romantic relationship going on between Mulder and Scully, before admitting after the show's run that having them together in the end was the original intention. Word of God is a big liar, basically.
  • Old Shame: Chris Carter, the episode's writer, hates "Space" just as much as anybody who's ever had to sit through it. It's routinely ranked as one of the worst episode of the series, even when taking the last few seasons into account.
  • The Pete Best: Not the same character exactly, but the principle applies: Charles Cioffi as SCI Blevins, Mulder and Scully's boss in the Pilot and "Conduit", was intended as a regular character but Cioffi proved unable to continue in the role (though he did reappear in the Gethsemane/Redux arc in Seasons 4-5). He was replaced in "Fallen Angel" by the one-off character Section Chief McGrath, played by Frederick Coffin. Finally, Mitch Pileggi played Skinner in "Tooms" and the rest is history.
  • Reality Subtext: In "Hollywood A.D.", a film producer decides to make a movie based on Mulder and Scully's adventures, casting Garry Shandling and Tea Leoni for the roles, respectively. Scully mentions to Mulder that Leoni may have a crush on him, which he considers ridiculous. Any guesses to whom David Duchovny is married in real life?
  • Recycled Script:
    • They reworked Season One episode "Ice" (about a parasitic alien that caused its victims to turn psychopathic and eventually die) into the Season Two episode "Firewalker" (you can probably guess the main difference). Both were based, in turn, on the classic John W. Campbell short story "Who Goes There".
    • "One Breath" and "Audrey Pauley", aired seven seasons apart, are almost exactly the same episode, just with a different partnership in the spotlight. Both involve the female half of the team (Scully and Reyes, respectively) falling into a coma after a traumatic event, and eventually being declared brain-dead. While in a coma, they have their own sub-plot on a different plane of existence. Meanwhile, the male half of the team (Mulder and Dogget, respectively), run around trying to figure out the paranormal aspect of the episode, as well as try to find a way to bring the female half of the team out of the coma and threatening bodily harm to those who attempt to shut off life support. There are a few minor differences: "One Breath" was part of the show's Myth Arc while "Audrey Pauley" was Season 9 filler, "Audrey Pauley" had a more clear-cut paranormal aspect to it, and the causes of the coma are quite different. However, the scripts are so similar that in some scenes, Doggett repeats Mulder word-for-word.
    • Of course, this also brings about a few Funny Aneurysm Moments. While "One Breath" was meant to show the deepening bond of Mulder and Scully's friendship, "Audrey Pauley" was used explicitly to showcase Doggett and Reye's romantic relationship. Using almost the exact same script. It also make's Scully's unsympathetic nature towards Doggett rather ironic — she is the one making the arrangements to take Reyes off life support and donate her organs, and thinks Doggett is crazy for trying to save her. It's Justified in that she was in a coma for almost all of "One Breath" and didn't see Mulder do the exact same thing, but it's still makes her seem like that much more callous.
  • Star-Making Role: For both leads.
  • Technology Marches On: Most of the computer-y episodes, but the trope is most prevalent in "2Shy", which features floppies, chatrooms and proper online grammar.
  • What Could Have Been: Lou Diamond Phillips, Hart Bochner and Bruce Campbell were each finalists for the role of John Doggett.
    • Johnny Cash was almost a Man In Black in "Jose Chung's From Outer Space"!
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