Fox Mulder
From X-Files Wiki
- Mulder redirects here. For other people of the same last name see Mulder (disambiguation).
| Fox Mulder | |
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| Gender: | Male |
| Born: | 13 October 1961 |
| Father1: | William Mulder (legal, Deceased: 1995) |
| Cigarette Smoking Man (biological, Deceased: 2002) | |
| Mother: | Teena Mulder (Deceased: 2000) |
| Children: | William Scully III |
| Actor: | David Duchovny |
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Fox William Mulder was a highly skilled FBI Special Agent who brought his often-criticized method of formulating unconventional theories to the X-Files. (TXF: "Pilot", et al.) In 2002, he went on the run from the law with his former partner, Dana Scully. (TXF: "The Truth")
He was raised as the son of William and Teena Mulder, and brother of Samantha Mulder.
- William and Teena Mulder first appeared in TXF: "Colony", but Teena was not named until "Kitsunegari". His sister was first seen in "Conduit", but only appeared in two photographs from her youth.
Childhood & Teenage Years
Fox Mulder was born on Friday, October 13, 1961, in Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard. (TXF: "Paper Clip", "Dreamland II")
His first words were "JFK", when aged 11 months. (TXF: "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man") He was four years old when his sister, Samantha, was born. (TXF: "Paper Clip")
The Mulders had a summer house in Quonochontaug, Rhode Island, where the children would play on the grass while William Mulder, Fox's father, would go water-skiing with C.G.B. Spender on the water nearby. (TXF: "Demons", "Talitha Cumi") The Mulders had a rope swing out in their backyard but didn't have a modem, fax machine or a cell phone. (TXF: "Paper Hearts", "Home")
- It can probably be assumed that the family didn't have those devices because the technology hadn't been invented yet. However, this assumption is not established nor disproved by episode information.
From early in his youth, Fox wanted a peg leg. He gave the idea a lot of thought and eventually came to the belief that, if he had a peg leg or hooks for hands, other people might not expect him to achieve anything more than to simply keep on living, braving facing life with his disability. Fox never grew out of his boyhood desire for a peg leg and, in 1996, he still suspected it would have its advantages. (TXF: "Quagmire")
Young Fox Mulder had several nightmares from which he awakened in the middle of the night, thinking he was the only person left in the world. The loud crunching from his father eating sunflower seeds in the family's study reassured Fox that he was not alone. (TXF: "Aubrey")
In Fox's childhood, he and his father were Indian Guides. (TXF: "Detour")
One day when he was climbing a tree, Fox had an up-close encounter with a praying mantis. Although he initially thought the mantis was a leaf, he screamed when he realized the insect's true nature. He later remembered that his scream wasn't a "girlie" one, but of a person being "confronted by some before unknown monster that had no right existing on the same planet [he] inhabited". He was repulsed by the mantis and has hated insects ever since. (TXF: "War of the Coprophages")
Once in his youth, Fox dressed up as the fictional character Spock and his father recorded a home movie of him playing with his sister, Samantha. Fox made silly faces at the camera and was irritated when his fake ear fell off. (TXF: "Dreamland II")
He and Samantha would play all-day pick-up games of baseball out on the vineyard, ride their bikes to the beach and eat bologna sandwiches. The only regular responsibility that they had was getting home in time for dinner. (TXF: "Home")
Fox once posed, half-naked, for a photograph with his sister, while she wore a swimming costume. (TXF: "Conduit")
Fox played right-field in baseball and owned a New York Nets replica basketball jersey. (TXF: "Blood", "Little Green Men") At home, he enjoyed watching The Magician, a series that starred Bill Bixby. (TXF: "Little Green Men", "Paper Hearts") He also liked playing Stratego with Samantha. (TXF: "Little Green Men", "Colony", "Paper Hearts")
- Fox and his sister are seen playing Stratego before Samantha's abduction in the episodes "Little Green Men" and "Paper Hearts", but those sequences may not be historically accurate. When Samantha is supposedly returned in the episode, "Colony," she asks Mulder if it's too late for a game of Stratego, supporting the theory that they used to play it as children.
Once, his best friend's house burnt down and he spent the night in the wreckage to guard it from looters. For several years after the incident, Fox had nightmares about being trapped in a burning building. In 1993, he still had an extreme hate of fire. (TXF: "Fire")
- Mulder's phobia of fire, established in the episode "Fire", was never referred to again. Some fans speculate that Mulder may have overcome his phobia in the establishing episode, yet others believe that Mulder's fear remains but was just never dealt with.
Fox chose to study French in high school. (TXF: "731")
His ambition was to become an astronaut and his hero was NASA Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Aurelius Belt. Aged 14, Fox stayed up all night to watch Belt's space walk. (TXF: "Space")
Sister's Disappearance
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Fox's parents loved him, he got all his flu shots and pretty much led a normal life until his sister disappeared. (TXF: "Dreamland II")
On the evening of November 27th, 1973, Fox was twelve when he was babysitting for his eight-year old sister in 2790 Vine Street, Martha's Vineyard. (TXF: "Little Green Men", "Pilot", "Conduit")
- 2790 Vine Street was once the address of The X-Files production office in Vancouver.
By an unknown force that Fox later came to believe was alien, Samantha was taken from the house without explanation. (TXF: "Colony") As Fox's father, Bill Mulder, worked at high level in government, an unusually large search operation was conducted and even the FBI's Treasury Department became involved, but nothing was found. (TXF: "Closure") The incident tore the Mulder family apart as there were no facts or evidence to offer any hope and no one would talk about it. (TXF: "Pilot")
As a child, Mulder had a ritual of closing his eyes before walking into his room as he believed that one day when he opened them, his sister would be there, lying in bed like nothing had ever happened. He later initiated an X-File concerning his sister's unexplained disappearance, with the case number X-40253. (TXF: "Conduit") According to Mulder, his belief that aliens had abducted his sister "sustained [him], fueling a quest for truths that were elusive as the memory itself". (TXF: "Colony")
- For information on Mulder's efforts to recover his sister, see the Relationships - Samantha Mulder section. For differences in his recollections of her disappearance, see Questionable Information - Memories of Sister's Disappearance.
Education and Early FBI Career
Oxford
After the disappearance of his sister and the divorce of his parents, Mulder attended Oxford University(TXF: "Pilot", "Unusual Suspects"). His FBI credentials incorrectly say that he graduated summa cum laude -the correct British term is with first class honors- in 1982 with an AB in Psychology (TXF: "Kill Switch") before going on to achieve his doctorate, also from Oxford, from 1983 until 1986. His credentials remain unspecific on which Oxford program Mulder participated in. It was likely during his time at Oxford that he wrote his monograph on serial killers and the occult that helped to capture Monty Props. (TXF: "Pilot").
While a reader at Oxford, he watched a documentary at the university about an insane asylum, in which a patient named Creighton Jones claimed to have been abducted by "fire demons", that gave Mulder nightmares (TXF: "Our Town"), and would influence his reactions to later cases at the FBI.
- The ten years between his sister's abduction and his enrolment at Oxford University are largely unaccounted for.
- Mulder was probably affected by the "fire demon" documentary due to his fear of fire and because he imagined what might have happened to Samantha if she was abducted the same way as Creighton Jones claimed to have been.
- In "Little Green Men", Mulder mentions taking music appreciation with Professor Ganz, where he learned that the famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach had a genius for polyphony. Mulder possibly studied this course at college, but there is not adequate evidence to prove this theory, especially since Oxford degrees are narrow in subject and usually do not allow for students to take many classes outside of their degree path. It might have been that Mulder attended a guest lecture on his own time.
FBI Training and Early Career
After graduating from university at the top of his class, Mulder studied at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia in 1986. (TXF: "Kill Switch", "Unusual Suspects") On his first day at the Academy, he learned that every fingerprint is unique. (TXF: "Squeeze") Later that year, Mulder graduated with honors. (TXF: "Dreamland II")
In 1988, the FBI successfully captured murderer Monty Props with help from the monograph on serial killers and the occult that Mulder had written during his time at Oxford University. (TXF: "Pilot")
In the same year, Mulder was studying at the Investigative Support Unit, based in Quantico and run by William Patterson, the leading authority on behavioural science, when Mulder quit the unit. As Patterson's student, Mulder had learned that to know an artist, you must first look at his art - a lesson he interpreted as meaning that if you want to catch a monster, you have to become one yourself. (TXF: "Grotesque")
- It is unclear when Mulder began his assignment to the ISU, but it may explain the missing two years between his next assignment and his graduation from the FBI Academy that are otherwise unaccounted for.
Also in 1988, Mulder was assigned to the FBI's Violent Crimes Section. (TXF: "Unusual Suspects") There, he saw "the worst of humanity" and wondered how the violent suspects and killers he encountered had become evil. Although Mulder realized that there were psychological explanations, that the men were victims of their parents or their environments, the scientific explanations never truly satisfied him and he began to think of evil as a contagious disease that could spread "from man to man or age to age". (TXF: "Empedocles") During this period, Mulder was also witness to several graves that had been unearthed. (TXF: "Irresistible") His partner was Jerry Lamana and his supervisor was ASAC Reggie Purdue. (TXF: "Ghost in the Machine", "Young at Heart")
First FBI Case
Mulder's first case at the FBI as a field agent was in 1989. He investigated a series of armed robberies in Washington, D.C. in which the thief, a criminal named John Barnett, had killed seven people. While working on the case, Mulder was a member of a large task force. He had an unlikely suspicion that Barnett had an inside connection to an employee at the armored car company, who was providing the criminal with information about large shipments of cash. Barnett started sending taunting notes to Mulder as he continued working on the case.
Eventually, the task force had a customs warehouse at an airport staked-out in the hope of capturing Barnett's informer. However, Barnett was actually inside the vehicle himself when it arrived. Sensing that something was wrong, Barnett took the driver of the vehicle - his own accomplice - hostage. The FBI task force surrounded the criminal, ordering him to surrender his hostage and his weapon. Mulder took up a position directly behind Barnett with a clear shot at the criminal, but obeyed FBI regulations that prohibit agents from unnecessarily endangering the life of a hostage. Mulder suspected that Barnett would surrender as he had no means of escape, but the killer shot his hostage at point-blank range and then fired his gun at Agent Steve Wallenberg's face. Although Mulder shot Barnett twice, in the shoulder and hand, he was convinced that he could have saved Agent Wallenberg's life and never forgave himself for the deaths.
Mulder later attended Barnett's trial and presented a testimony in court. He recalled the events of the shoot-out and angrily insulted Barnett while the judge ordered him to step down from the witness stand. After Mulder eventually complied with the instruction, Barnett threatened him, "I'll get you". (TXF: "Young at Heart")
The Gunmen Incident
In May, 1989, Mulder was assigned to conduct a search for Susanne Modeski, who was suspected of murdering four employees at the Army Advanced Weapons Facility at Whitestone, New Mexico.
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While attending a computer and electronics show at the Baltimore Convention Center, Mulder noticed that two men - Melvin Frohike and John Fitzgerald Byers - were watching him from a distance. He walked to a product display where a recorded voice repeatedly announced, "They're here. Alien invaders are among us. Detect their presence with high-tech modern products." After exiting the showroom, he was followed into a corridor by the two men. He confronted them and, using a photograph of Modeski, asked whether they had seen her. Although they replied negatively, the men had indeed spoken to Modeski but she had told them that Mulder was her psychotic former boyfriend.
In a warehouse at 204 Fells Point Road, Mulder found Modeski with Frohike and Byers, as well as another man, named Richard Langly. As Mulder approached the group, he announced that Modeski was under arrest. When the three men claimed that Modeski was innocent of murder, Mulder announced that they were also under arrest and ordered them to get on the ground. They complied, simplifying Mulder's job of physically arresting Modeski. However, two other men appeared who told the suspected criminal to accompany them. The men, who were armed with machine guns, refused to identify themselves to Mulder and eventually opened fire on him. Mulder rushed behind a stack of boxes, unaware that they contained an ergotamine-histomine gas that could cause anxiety and paranoia in small doses. When the shots from his attackers' weapons released the gas into the air, Mulder was affected. He coughed and groaned as he removed his shirt. His attackers approached his body as it writhed around on the ground and were about to kill him when Modeski shot the men with her own gun. She subsequently fled the scene in Mulder's car, shortly before a group of men arrived and sanitized the area. The group was led by a man who Mulder would later know as X.
As the group worked on eliminating the gas from the warehouse, Mulder thought they were actually aliens. The group removed Mulder's attackers in bags, even though one was still alive. A member of the group discussed with his superior whether to "bag" Mulder, but X replied, "No one touches this man".
Nearly immediately after the group left the warehouse, a SWAT team arrived and found Mulder under a large piece of cardboard that was leaning against a crate. He was nonresponsive to questions and continually repeated the words, "They're here". Frohike, Byers and Langly were later imprisoned and questioned by a Detective Munch, but he doubted their version of events. When Mulder regained consciousness the next morning, he confirmed as much of their story from the little he could remember and the men were consequently released. The police discovered that Mulder's car had been stolen and taken to a train station.
- It's unknown if the car was ever recovered.
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Mulder went to the Baltimore Convention Center, where he found the three men. He told them that he was feeling better but had some "weird ideas in my head that I can't seem to shake". He also informed the men that Modeski was still missing, but was no longer wanted by the FBI and the case had suddenly closed. Mulder was curious as to what had really happened the night before. The three men started to tell him that "secret elements within the United States government seek to surveil us and control our lives". (TXF: "Unusual Suspects") Mulder would later know the three men as "the Lone Gunmen". (TXF: "E.B.E.", "First Person Shooter")
- Although the Lone Gunmen first appear in Season 1's "E.B.E.", Mulder doesn't mention their collective name until the Season 7 episode, "First Person Shooter".
The BSU & "Paper Hearts"
According to Mulder, he worked at the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit for three years, profiling serial killers. (TXF: "Tooms")
- The exact dates of Mulder's assignment to the BSU are unknown although "Travelers" establishes that he was assigned to the unit in November, 1990. The "three years" that he mentions in "Tooms" may have been a rough estimate, but he did mention that duration in a court of law.
By 1990, the bodies of ten young girls had been found scattered across the eastern seaboard, the earliest discovered in 1979. The killer had abducted each of his victims from their homes and would take cloth heart trophies from each victim, a routine that influenced ViCAP to name the case "paper hearts". Mulder's ASAC, Reggie Purdue, brought him onto the case, believing that Mulder would be able to get inside the killer's head. He concluded that the murderer was probably a salesman, most likely someone who seemed ordinary, could gain people's confidence and traveled around a lot.
The case proved difficult and the killer was extremely hard to catch. Ultimately, however, Mulder's profile was instrumental in the capture of the killer, a vacuum cleaner salesman named John Lee Roche. By the time he was caught, a total of thirteen victims had been found, ranging from eight to ten years of age. Roche admitted he had killed precisely thirteen girls and a polygraph test established that he was telling the truth. However, the cloth hearts that Roche had taken from his victims were never found, a fact that would irritate Mulder for the next six years. He always wanted to find the hearts and count them to see if they really added up to thirteen. (TXF: "Paper Hearts")
By November 1990, Mulder had moved address to Apartment 42 of 2630 Hegal Place, Alexandria, Virginia. (TXF: "Travelers", "Small Potatoes", "Dreamland II")
- Mulder's address - Apartment 42, 2630 Hegal Place, Alexandria, Virginia - was first given in "Small Potatoes" and appeared again near the start of "Dreamland II", in an X-File labelled X-71009. "Travelers" establishes that he was living there in 1990. Apartment 42 is a reference to "the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything", from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels by Douglas Adams.
Finding the X-Files
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Mulder's success at applying behavioural models to criminal cases allowed him a certain freedom to pursue his own interests and he found the X-Files in 1990. (TXF: "Pilot", "Travelers")
Initially, the files seemed to him like "a garbage dump for UFO sightings, alien abduction reports, the kind of stuff that most people laugh at as being ridiculous". Mulder, however, was fascinated by the files and read hundreds of them, including all the cases he was allowed access to. He read everything he could about paranormal phenomena and the occult. (TXF: "Pilot")
He found many X-Files that recorded accounts of alien abductees who had suffered intense radiation burns. (TXF: "Fallen Angel") He also discovered file X-649176 and the first X-File, initiated by J. Edgar Hoover in 1946. Both files contained reports of men who had been able to physically transform into wild animals. (TXF: "Shapes") Another file Mulder saw dated back to 1952 and concerned something that had killed livestock and terrorized people living in Point Pleasant, West Virginia for over a year. After witnesses had described seeing primitive looking men with red piercing eyes, the culprits had become known as "moth men". (TXF: "Detour")
Although the X-Files constituted a project outside the Bureau mainstream, Mulder pursued the files because witnessing his sister's abduction continued to haunt him. (TXF: "Pilot", "The Truth") He was assigned to the cases in 1990. (TXF: "Kill Switch")
One of the first X-Files Mulder investigated himself involved a killer named Edward Skur. In November 1990, Mulder met Arthur Dales, a former Special Agent with the FBI who, in 1952, had opened an X-File on Skur labeled X-525652. Skur revealed William Mulder's involvement in experiments that had been conducted involving xenotransplantation. (TXF: "Travelers")
After joining the FBI in 1991, Diana Fowley, an FBI agent with a background in para-science and Mulder's girlfriend since his graduation from the FBI Academy, helped him investigate a few of the X-Files. While working on the cases, Mulder and Fowley spent some time in psychiatric hospitals where they suspected that some patients serving criminal sentences had been misdiagnosed. Additionally, a few patients showed impressively accurate clairvoyant and telepathic abilities. Mulder learned that Fowley had run brain scans and psych evaluations. After the Berlin Wall was dismantled, Fowley accepted a counter-terrorism legate assignment in Berlin, Europe, simultaneously ending her tenure on the X-Files and her relationship with Mulder. (TXF: "The End")
- It is unclear how many and which psychiatric patients Mulder and Fowley felt had been misdiagnosed, whether those patients also showed telepathic abilities and, if so, how many. It is uncertain whether Mulder witnessed the patients exhibit telepathic abilities, only that Diana Fowley did so. It is also unclear if Mulder, having graduated from the FBI Academy before Diana Fowley, showed her how to run brain scans and psych evaluations or if she learned how to conduct those procedures herself. Logically, she may have either learned how to perform such tasks prior to investigating the relevant case, which might or might not have involved the psychiatric patients, or during the case. Historically, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall ended in November 1991 but this date has not been established in The X-Files Universe, only that "the Wall came down".
By March 1992, Mulder's office was in the basement of the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington, D.C., where the X-Files were also stored. (TXF: "Pilot") The office had only dusty skylight windows and Mulder had decorated the walls with artifacts related to the paranormal, including a UFO poster proclaiming "I Want to Believe" that he had obtained from a head shop on M Street shortly before March 6. (TXF: "Pilot", "Chinga")
- The origins of the "I Want to Believe" poster are revealed in "Chinga", in which Mulder reveals that he got it "about five years ago". The episode is set in early 1998 but the poster is seen as early as "Pilot", set in early 1992, meaning that he must have obtained the poster six years before. This does not clash with the "about five years ago" statement Mulder makes in "Chinga" because the date he provides is only approximate.
Division Chief Scott Blevins, Mulder's superior, believed he had developed a consuming devotion to the X-Files. (TXF: "Pilot") As a result, Blevins assigned Special Agent Dana Scully, a medical doctor with a background in hard science, to assist Mulder on the X-Files and provide an analytical perspective on the cases, including field reports and observations on the validity of their work. (TXF: (TXF: "Pilot", "Gethsemane")
When Mulder first met Scully, he told her that his memories of the abduction of his sister had marked him so deeply that nothing else mattered. (TXF: "Pilot", "The Red and the Black") On their first assignment together, Mulder and his new FBI partner investigated several mysterious deaths of high school students in Oregon. Mulder was thrilled when he and Scully apparently experienced a sudden loss of nine minutes while working on the case, as time loss was a phenomenon commonly reported by alien abductees. He later came to the unlikely conclusion that Billy Miles, a paralyzed boy who had been in a "waking coma" since 1987, was responsible for the deaths. Mulder also remarked that the experience of seeing an extremely bright light illuminate and eventually engulf an area of Collum National Forest while Billy Miles stood under it, holding a teenager up in his arms, was "incredible". (TXF:"Pilot")
Around this time, Mulder first met a forensic anthropathologist named Arlinsky. The two would keep in contact until 1997. (TXF: "Gethsemane")
In 1993, Mulder discovered that Eugene Victor Tooms, an employee of the Baltimore Municipal Animal Control, was actually a limb-stretching serial killer who had murdered his first victim in 1903. Mulder believed that Tooms was a genetic mutant who awakened from hibernation every thirty years and needed his victim's livers for sustenance. When Tooms attacked Scully in her apartment, Mulder co-operated with his FBI partner to handcuff the killer, who was later jailed. (TXF: "Squeeze")
Soon thereafter, Mulder met a man who claimed to have an interest in his work. The man confessed that he was in a position to know a lot about the American government. (TXF: "Deep Throat") As Mulder and Scully continued their work on the X-Files, the man would occasionally provide Mulder with information and the agents would eventually come to know their secretive contact as "Deep Throat". (TXF: "Deep Throat", "The Erlenmeyer Flask")
While investigating reports of UFO activity near Ellens Air Base, Mulder sneaked onto the base himself and saw a huge triangular craft that hovered above him. Moments after it sped away, Mulder was taken into custody by men who strapped him to a gurney, injected him with an unknown drug and then transported his body through a hangar building where he caught a glimpse of another triangular craft. In a medical room, doctors forced drops of unknown liquid into Mulder's eyes and injected him. Scully eventually managed to secure her partner's release. However, Mulder seemed dazed as he uneasily walked out of the base and had no memory of what had happened to him when Scully spoke to him later. (TXF: "Deep Throat")
- An unused section of dialogue from the script of "Beyond the Sea" establishes that it was November 1992 when Mulder's profile of Luther Lee Boggs landed the criminal on death row.
Alone, Mulder investigated a murder case in which he believed the killer was the mythological Jersey Devil, but he was arrested during the investigation. A local detective accused him of misconduct and obstructing an investigation, as the FBI had no jurisdiction in the case. He spent a night in jail but all charges against him were later dropped and he was released from confinement. (TXF: "The Jersey Devil")
Mulder was reunited with his former FBI partner, Jerry Lamana, in October of that year. Together with Scully, the agents investigated a case that was not an X-File. However, Agent Lamana was killed while working on the case. (TXF: "Ghost in the Machine")
Later that year, Mulder was honoured to meet his childhood hero, Colonel Belt, at the Houston Space Center. When he and Scully found Belt having a seizure in his office, Mulder saw the colonel's face momentarily morph into an alien's face. He was able to determine that the colonel was responsible for the sabotage of a troubled shuttle and, by relaying instructions given to him by Colonel Belt, Mulder helped to save the shuttle and assisted in its return to Earth. After Colonel Belt fell to his death, Mulder came to the conclusion that he had been possessed by something from space and had given his own life in order to stop it. With Scully, Mulder attended a military funeral held in honour of Colonel Belt. (TXF: "Space")
Shortly thereafter, Mulder met Max Fenig, a NICAP member who, with the other members of NICAP, had been following Mulder's career very closely, ever since he had become involved with the X-Files. Although Max did not believe that he, himself, was an alien abductee, Mulder suspected that he was, after seeing an unusual incision previously found on two women who had both claimed to have been abducted. In a warehouse at the Lake Michigan waterfront, Mulder was attacked by an invisible force and saw Max Fenig non-responsive, suspended in a beam of light. After the light engulfed the room, Mulder was left alone in the warehouse and realized that Max had somehow apparently disappeared. (TXF: "Fallen Angel")
Mulder first encountered a group of clones after two young members of the Lichfield Experiment's Eve Series separately murdered their individual fathers at exactly the same time. Mulder helped catch the murderous clones, who were subsequently placed in the Whiting Institute for the Criminally Insane. (TXF: "Eve")
After Mulder's former girlfriend, Phoebe Green, brought an unexplained arson case to his attention, they worked together with Scully. While investigating the case, Mulder suffered from smoke inhalation but later managed to overcome his phobia of fire to rescue two boys from a burning building. (TXF: "Fire")
Although Mulder was generally open to unusual and bizarre explanations, he refused to believe a claim of psychic ability by criminal Luther Lee Boggs in January, 1994. Boggs claimed to have information relating to the kidnapping of two teenagers, but Mulder suspected that he was actually working with the kidnapper and was trying to save himself from the electric chair. While following one of the criminal's leads, Mulder was shot by the kidnapper, who swiftly left the area. As he recovered from his injury, Mulder told Scully that he believed Boggs was seeking revenge after he had placed the convict on death row about a year before. (TXF: "Beyond the Sea")
Although criminal John Barnett had apparently died in 1989, Mulder learned that Barnett was still alive but was unable to stop the criminal from killing his former ASAC, Reggie Purdue. By regardlessly endangering the life of a hostage, Mulder managed to finally kill Barnett and was ultimately able to save the hostage. (TXF: "Young at Heart")
During Mulder's next investigation with Scully, he discovered a bug hidden in his apartment. (TXF: "E.B.E.")
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In Olympic National Forest, Mulder and Scully tried to determine what had happened to a team of loggers who had mysteriously disappeared. The agents learned that the team had unleashed a swarm of deadly insects and were hospitalized with serious injuries after they were exposed to the same species of insect. (TXF: "Darkness Falls")
Later that year, Eugene Victor Tooms was released from confinement against Mulder's strong advice. The FBI agent finally killed Tooms by grinding his body beneath a moving escalator and the case, file X 129202, was subsequently closed. (TXF: "Tooms") Mulder's impressive work on the extraordinary case gained him a reputation; he and Scully were requested to investigate a case by Detective Sharon Lazard, whose brother worked for Baltimore Police Department and had told her about Mulder's work on the Tooms case. (TXF: "Born Again") About the same time as Tooms had been released, however, Mulder had realized that the FBI intended to shut down the X-Files and had a hunch that something was about to change for himself and Scully. (TXF: "Tooms")
Shortly thereafter, Mulder found evidence that a series of experiments had been secretly being conducted in an attempt to create a human/alien hybrid. Deep Throat provided him and Scully with information regarding the experiments and told them that evidence of the tests was being systematically eliminated. While searching for one of the test subjects who was on the run from the law, Mulder was exposed to a toxic green substance after the fugitive was shot by a man who took Mulder hostage. In exchange for Mulder's release, Deep Throat gave Mulder's captor an alien fetus that had been the original source of tissue used in the hybridization experiments. Though Mulder was freed, Deep Throat was simultaneously shot to death.
Thirteen days after his release, Mulder was called into the FBI's headquarters and was told by Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who had replaced Section Chief Blevins as the agents' superior, that he and Scully would no longer be investigating the X-Files and would instead be assigned to other sections of the FBI. Mulder relayed the news to Scully and vowed that he wouldn't give up. (TXF: "The Erlenmeyer Flask")
After the X-Files Closed
Following the termination of the X-Files, Mulder was reassigned to carry out routine duties as a General Assignment Agent. He was given the tasks of conducting electronic surveillance, including wiretapping, and investigating white-bread cases like bank fraud, insurance fraud and healthcare swindles. Meanwhile, Scully assumed the role of an instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
One case that Mulder investigated was the surveillance of male suspects in Washington, D.C.'s Longstreet Motel. After three days, Mulder was sure he had enough evidence to arrest the men on charges of bank fraud but was restricted from doing so by Assistant Director Skinner. Mulder spent the next several months trying to acquire more evidence that the men were guilty. However, he was suspicious that other members of the FBI were simultaneously conducting surveillance on Scully and himself.
Because he had no solid evidence to substantiate the things he had seen while investigating the X-Files, Mulder began to doubt whether they had actually existed and even started to question if his sister had really been abducted.
Without notifying Scully or the rest of the FBI that he was leaving or where he was heading, Mulder left his current assignment and, on July 7, 1994, he journeyed to Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory in Puerto Rico to ascertain whether first contact had been made with extraterrestrials. Both his former partner and Assistant Director Skinner searched for him while he was gone and the FBI conducted surveillance on his apartment.
In Puerto Rico, Mulder thought he saw extraterrestrials visit the site. When Scully found him shortly thereafter, he was unconscious. Despite his claim of alien contact, the only item Mulder managed to take from the observatory was a recording of his findings he had made there, as he and Scully were chased away from the site by the Blue Beret UFO Retrieval Team, who had been authorized to use deadly force.
After the agents returned to the FBI, Mulder was criticized for leaving his current assignment, which another agent had assumed while he had been gone. All the work he had done to incriminate the suspected bank frauds had been lost and he was therefore ordered to return to his assignment and continue the surveillance.
Mulder complied with the instruction but found that the recording he had taken from Puerto Rico was mysteriously blank. Once again, he was left with no solid evidence of what he believed he had seen. (TXF: "Little Green Men")
Mulder was soon relieved of his assignment, replaced by an Agent Bozoff, and began investigating a case that the FBI had classed as a murder investigation. He flew to Newark, New Jersey, where he met with a Detective Norman. In a sewer, the detective showed Mulder a body that had been found there. Although Mulder initially complained about the case, he relented after he was pressured to return to the assignment. However, he simultaneously contemplated leaving the FBI while investigating the case.
At first, Mulder believed that the killer was a "giant bloodsucking worm" but, with the help of Scully, he eventually determined that the culprit was a human who had been born in radioactive sewage salvaged from and disposed after the meltdown at Chernobyl. It was capable of spontaneous regeneration, which allowed it to secretly survive injuries Mulder had inflicted on it.
During this investigation, Assistant Director Skinner hinted to Mulder that the decision to close down the X-Files had not been his own, and Mulder was contacted by a secretive informant who told him that he had to make sure reinstatement of the X-Files was undeniable. (TXF: "The Host") Mulder did not know at the time that the man was X, the same man who had overseen the elimination of ergotamine-histomine gas from the warehouse at 204 Fells Point Road in 1989. (TXF: "The Host", "Unusual Suspects")
Later in July, Mulder was requested to investigate the Franklin incidents - a series of bizarre murders recently committed by several unrelated but similar killers in Franklin, Pennsylvania. The murders initially confounded Mulder and he once admitted that he had never had a more difficult time developing a profile of the various killers. By this time, Mulder had been reassigned to the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit, based in Quantico, where he had returned to his previous assignment as a behavioural profiler. (TXF: "Blood")
- It is unclear when Mulder returned to the Behavioural Science Unit. In "The Host", after Mulder reveals to Scully that he is considering leaving the FBI, she suggests that he could "request a transfer to Quantico, come back to the Behavioral Science Unit". Referring to their superiors in the FBI, Mulder replies, "They don't want us working together". Although the agents do work together in that episode, no other mention is made of the BSU and it is unclear what department Mulder is assigned to. When he first appears in the following episode, "Blood", a Sheriff Spencer refers to Mulder as a profiler for the Behavioural Science Unit.
After he returned to Washington, D.C., Mulder attempted to investigate the death of Doctor Saul Grissom. The case fell under the jurisdiction of the New York Police Department, who refused to work with Mulder unless the Attorney General permitted the assignment. He therefore asked Assistant Director Skinner to prompt the Attorney General to authorize the investigation. Although Mulder had a day's worth of wiretap tape to be transcribed, Skinner nevertheless granted him consent to investigate Dr. Grissom's death.
- The wiretap tape that Mulder works on in "Sleepless" is unrelated to the recordings he listens to in "Little Green Men" and "The Host".
Mulder was partnered with Agent Alex Krycek but was initially reluctant to be appointed his new partner, insisting that he worked alone. With Krycek's help, Mulder confirmed that Grissom had actually not been trapped in a burning building as the doctor had incorrectly believed. The agents discovered that another man named Henry Willig had died in apparently similar imagined circumstances, although it seemed as if he had been the victim of gunshot wounds rather than exposure to fire.
With Krycek's assistance, Mulder managed to determine that the two deaths had been caused by Augustus Cole, who Mulder believed had developed the ability to remotely project telepathic hallucinations so real they could kill. Mulder and Krycek were successful in saving a Dr. Gerardi from being murdered by Cole, who was ultimately killed by Krycek.
Although Mulder had come to respect his new partner while they had been investigating the case, he was unaware that Krycek was actually working for a man with many pseudonyms, including "the Cigarette-Smoking Man", who could often be found in Assistant Director Skinner's office.
During his first investigation with Krycek, Mulder alone met with his mysterious contact, X, for the first time since his assignment to the X-Files. X warned Mulder that closing the X-Files, separating him from Scully, was just the beginning and that the agents had never been in greater danger. (TXF: "Sleepless") He would continue to secretly provide Mulder with information over the following next several years. (TXF: "Sleepless", "Herrenvolk")
In August 1994, Mulder was requested to negotiate with an escaped mental patient named Duane Barry - a former member of the FBI who claimed he had been abducted by aliens on many occasions and that he was under their control. Barry had taken four people hostage in a travel agency, one of whom was a doctor from the hospital where he had been confined. Mulder was briefed by qualified hostage negotiators who told him that Barry wanted safe passage for himself and the doctor to an alien abduction site.
When Barry shot and injured one of the hostages, Mulder was sent into the travel agency to deliver medical aid. Rather than follow the advice of the hostage negotiators, however, Mulder endangered the situation by announcing that he believed Barry was an abductee. Barry released the injured hostage in return for Mulder, who ultimately managed to persuade his captor to also free the other two prisoners.
Mulder knew that several snipers were waiting outside but Barry was unaware of this fact. Although Mulder secretly saved Barry from being shot by one of the snipers, he told his captor that the door to the travel agency remained unlocked from when the last two hostages had been released. As Barry approached the door, he was shot by one of the snipers, allowing Mulder to finally escape from the situation.
Injured by the gunshot wound, Barry was taken to Jefferson Memorial Hospital, although he later escaped and abducted Scully. (TXF: "Duane Barry")
Mulder desperately searched for his former partner and managed to track Scully and Duane Barry to Skyland Mountain. Krycek secretly informed his superior of Mulder's discovery and journeyed to the site with Mulder, who took a tram to the top of the mountain while Krycek stayed with the tram operator at the bottom. In a successful attempt to stall Mulder, Krycek killed the tram operator and halted the tram before it could reach the top. Krycek eventually restarted the tram and Mulder arrived at the top of the mountain, only to find Scully gone. He saw a helicopter hover above the ground before it raced away and found Duane Barry, exhilarantly pleased that an unspecified group had taken Scully instead of him.
Mulder later interrogated Barry in an effort to find his former partner, but momentarily lost control of his temper and strangled the suspect. He eventually released Barry from his grasp and left the room, telling Krycek that no-one else was permitted to interrogate the untrustworthy kidnapper. While Mulder was gone, however, Krycek secretly killed Barry. Mulder later determined that Krycek had been working for the Cigarette-Smoking Man, had killed Barry and may have killed the tram operator. However, Krycek did not return to work. (TXF: "Ascension")
Continuation of the X-Files
1994
The X-Files were re-opened by Assistant Director Skinner, who realized that the Cigarette-Smoking Man and those working for him were most afraid of that happening. (TXF: "Ascension") Mulder later recalled that he had "worked [his] ass off to get the files reopened". (TXF: "Never Again") With the loss of both Krycek and Scully, Mulder returned to his office alone. He removed dusty plastic wrapping that covered every piece of furniture in his office, including his desk and the cabinet containing the X-Files. Scully's disappearance had recently been added to the files with the case number 73317.
- It is unknown when this X-File was added to the other files but it is slightly puzzling that it was already in the cabinet containing the files before the plastic wrapping had been removed from Mulder's office as the X-Files, and presumably the office, had been closed prior to Scully's disappearance.
In Los Angeles, California, Mulder investigated the Trinity Killers, who believed themselves to be vampires, and a woman named Kristen Kilar. She and the Trinity Killers had murdered more than seven people in three states of the US. Mulder added the case to the X-Files, with the case number X256933VW, but became romantically involved with Kilar while investigating the case. The four murderers ultimately burned to death in a fire caused by Kilar. (TXF: "3")
Shortly thereafter, Mulder learned that Scully had been admitted to Washington, D.C.'s Northeast Georgetown Medical Center in critical condition. He traveled to the hospital with her mother and demanded to know how Scully had arrived there, but he was provided with no answers. Mulder consulted the Lone Gunmen, who, with the help of their latest member, a hacker known as "the Thinker", diagnosed Scully's condition. Nevertheless frustrated at the lack of evidence, Mulder handed in his resignation but it was seen as unacceptable and was therefore refused. (TXF: "One Breath") After Scully recovered, Mulder decided to continue working on the X-Files with her. (TXF: "One Breath", "Firewalker")
One of the first cases they investigated upon their return to the X-Files led them to the man who had killed Deep Throat. The man was shot and killed during the investigation, which was added to the X-Files with the case number XWC060361. (TXF: "Red Museum")
Mulder soon learned that Andy Schneider, a member of the Mutual UFO Network who he personally did not know, was familiar with him. Andy Schneider had given Mulder's details to FBI Agent Moe Bocks, who required Mulder's help on a case that involved the discovery of a mutilated body found in an unearthed grave. Agent Bocks was unaware that Mulder had previously encountered unearthed graves while working in the FBI's Violent Crimes Section. While Mulder worked on the case with Agents Bocks and Scully, he admitted he had previously seen similarly horrific cases break agents with twenty years' field experience. He was later instrumental in finding the criminal, named Donald Pfaster, who was ultimately jailed. (TXF: "Irresistible")
1995
In early 1995, Mulder learned that identical clones were being systematically killed by a shape-shifting alien bounty hunter, which at one point assumed Mulder's appearance in a failed attempt to fool Scully. (TXF: "Colony", "End Game") In pursuit of the bounty hunter, Mulder journeyed to the Arctic alone but was unable to stop the alien from leaving. Mulder suffered simultaneously from exposure to extreme cold and the bounty hunter's "blood", which acted as a deadly alien virus. A naval reconnaissance squad found Mulder and took him to Eisenhower Field. After Scully, who had studied the virus, located him there, she saved him by demanding that his body be placed in a cold environment and he gradually then recovered. (TXF: "End Game")
On a mission in the North Atlantic with Scully, Mulder and his partner experienced accelerated aging. Unlike Scully, Mulder's aging was not slowed by the consumption of water and he ultimately lost consciousness, though he and Scully were eventually rescued and received medical care. (TXF: "Død Kalm")
Later that year, Mulder helped a group of Romanian elders perform a successful exorcism that separated Charlie Holvey's soul from a dark and malevolent force said to have previously existed as Cain, Lucifer and Hitler. During the ceremony, Mulder was told that if he looked at the possessed Charlie, the evil spirit would recognize him, but he did not heed the advice. After the exorcism, Mulder was advised to be careful as the dangerous force now knew him. (TXF: "The Căluşari")
In April 1995, Mulder learned that "the Thinker" had hacked into the Department of Defense computer system and stolen classified MJ documents, containing details on every encounter with UFOs since the Roswell incident. The files were given to Mulder when he met with "the Thinker", who was murdered, execution style, shortly thereafter.
At night, Mulder's father was shot to death in his house by an unknown assassin while Mulder was in another room of the house. In the same month, Mulder's life was threatened several times, both by the Cigarette-Smoking Man - who desperately wanted the MJ documents - and Alex Krycek - who stopped working for the Cigarette-Smoking Man around the same time. Believing that Krycek may have killed Mulder's father, Scully shot her partner in order to save him from shooting Krycek. Mulder recovered in Los Alamos, New Mexico, but the Cigarette-Smoking Man later managed to trap him in a locked boxcar there and he almost died. He was recovered and miraculously nursed back to health by local Navajo healer, Albert Hosteen.
After his recovery, Mulder learned that, around 1973, his father had secretly been working with the Cigarette-Smoking Man, Deep Throat and others, on a scientific project that had originated in Nazi Germany. When Mulder and Scully traveled to the Strughold Mining Company, where the project had been based, they found a tunnel in which many medical files were stored, including documents on Scully and Mulder's sister - a file that had originally been Mulder's. Another man who had secretly been working there, the Well-Manicured Man, explained to Mulder that he and his colleagues had been attempting to create a human-alien hybrid.
Although the MJ documents were ultimately destroyed, Skinner traded the continued secrecy of the information within the classified files for Mulder and Scully's safety. Mulder was unaware that the MJ documents had been destroyed but the death of his father motivated him to return to the X-Files with a renewed sense of determination. (TXF: "Anasazi", "The Blessing Way", "Paper Clip")
- Mulder seems shocked to learn of his father's part in the conspiracy. This seems slightly puzzling as "Travelers" establishes that Mulder was told about his father's involvement by former FBI Agent Arthur Dales in 1989.
Months later, Mulder learned that a group of Japanese scientists had also been continuing the attempts started by Nazis to create a human/alien hybrid, but were being systematically murdered. (TXF: "Nisei") He again became locked in a boxcar, this time with one of the men responsible for murdering the Japanese scientists. The boxcar was rigged to a bomb and was adjacent to another locked car containing a deformed humanoid that seemed alien. Ultimately, Mulder was unconsciously rescued from the boxcar by X, who also killed the man who had murdered the Japanese scientists, but the deformed humanoid died when the car exploded. (TXF: "731")
During this investigation, Mulder found evidence which suggested that an American salvage ship, the Talapus, had retrieved a UFO from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and had secretly transported the craft and its occupant to Newport News, Virginia. As usual, Scully's opinion differed from Mulder's and she believed that the "UFO" was actually a Russian submarine. (TXF: "Nisei")
1996
In early 1996, Agent William Patterson - Mulder's former instructor from the Investigative Support Unit - requested that Skinner assign Mulder to an unexplained murder case that Patterson and the ISU were already assigned to. Skinner did so, but the fact that Agent Patterson had requested him was initially unknown to Mulder. During the investigation, Mulder attempted to follow Patterson's past advice of studying an artist's art in order to know the artist and struggled to understand the killer. At first, he was suspected of involvement in the murders but eventually realized that Agent Patterson was the actual killer. Mulder shot Patterson, but he survived and was later jailed. (TXF: "Grotesque")
Mulder discovered that a French salvage ship, the Piper Maru, had journeyed to the same location where the Talapus had retrieved a craft from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The Piper Maru's crew had been exposed to extremely high levels of radiation, but the source of the contaminant was undetermined. During the investigation, Mulder located Alex Krycek in Hong Kong, who offered to lead him to the MJ documents in Washington, D.C.. Unknown to Mulder, however, Krycek was soon possessed by an oil-like substance that Scully and Mulder would come to know as "black oil". (TXF: "Piper Maru")
While driving through Maryland at night, Krycek and Mulder were forced off the road by two men. Mulder saw a bright flash as the black oil within Krycek irradiated the men and he soon lost consciousness. Once again losing track of Krycek, Mulder was hospitalized in Northeast Georgetown Medical Center. Once released, he determined that Krycek had been possessed by the black oil, which had also irradiated the Piper Maru''s crew. The search for the possessed Krycek led Mulder and Scully to an abandoned missile silo in Black Crow, North Dakota, where Mulder correctly suspected the UFO that had been retrieved from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean was stored. The agents found bodies of men with radiation burns inside the facility, but were forced off the premises by soldiers working for the Cigarette-Smoking Man before they could locate Krycek. (TXF: "Apocrypha")
With Scully, Mulder investigated Robert Patrick Modell - a highly intelligent but extremely dangerous serial killer. Modell was searching for a "worthy adversary" and, believing that Mulder might fit the role, the killer taunted him throughout the investigation. (TXF: "Pusher") In a downtown hospital, Modell brandished a firearm and tried to motivate Mulder to shoot Scully in retaliation for her shooting him earlier. (TXF: "Pusher", "Anasazi") Although Modell had caused the deaths of another FBI agent and a Loudon County Sheriff's deputy, Mulder managed to resist Modell and shot the criminal. The agents apprehended the killer, who was ultimately convicted on charges stemming from the incident in the hospital. When Mulder and Scully last saw him, Modell was comatose with Mulder's bullet in his head. His last prime target had been Mulder. (TXF: "Pusher")
With Scully, Mulder investigated Assistant Director Skinner's involvement in the murder of prostitute Carina Sayles. Though Skinner was dismissed from the FBI, Mulder eventually proved that Skinner was innocent and that a conspiracy of men had been trying to weaken Scully and himself by removing Skinner, who had been protecting the agents. Mulder was unaware that the men were working for the Cigarette-Smoking Man. (TXF: "Avatar")
While investigating several murders committed by otherwise ordinary citizens, Mulder and Scully were both exposed to an altered television signal. The fact that Mulder was red-green colorblind made him immune to the altered signal, however. He later learned that the signal had been part of a mind-control experiment conducted under the supervision of the Cigarette-Smoking Man. (TXF: "Wetwired")
Shortly thereafter, Mulder encountered Jeremiah Smith, a man with amazing healing abilities. Mulder helped Jeremiah Smith to escape from an alien bounty hunter in the hope that Smith would heal his injured mother, who had just suffered a stroke. (TXF: "Talitha Cumi") However, Smith took Mulder to Canada where he saw several male and female clones working on a farm near a cave containing many bees. (TXF: "Herrenvolk") Around this time, Mulder consulted a doctor named Valedespino regarding killer bees. (TXF: "Zero Sum") Additionally, X was killed for providing Mulder with information, although he left a message in blood as he died. The message, "SRSG", led Mulder to the Special Representative to the Secretary General of the United Nations, where he met Marita Covarrubias. She informed him that an investigation into the Canadian farmland had proven unsuccessful. (TXF: "Herrenvolk") However, Mulder would continue to approach her for information on several subsequent occasions in 1996. (TXF: "Herrenvolk", "Teliko", "Tunguska", "Unrequited")
While working on a case involving the disappearances of four men in Philadelphia, one of whom had been found dead with a seed from a rare plant in his body, Mulder was injured by a similar seed and became temporarily paralyzed as a result. (TXF: "Teliko")
During an investigation into the Temple of the Seven Stars cult and its leader, Vernon Ephesian, Mulder and Scully discovered evidence that suggested Mulder had been reincarnated at least twice, having previously lived as a soldier during the American Civil War and as a Jewish woman in Poland during World War II. (TXF: "The Field Where I Died")
Soon after, Mulder was provided with evidence suggesting that the Cigarette-Smoking Man had been keeping an interest in his work on the X-Files since before December 24, 1991, and that Scully's assignment to the files had originally been secretly arranged and supervised by the Cigarette-Smoking Man. (TXF: "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man")
While investigating a black rock which may have come from Mars and seemingly contained black oil, Mulder was taken prisoner in Tunguska, Russia. Trapped in a Russian gulag where the prisoners mined the rock for what seemed to be black oil, Mulder was injected with an unknown substance and he, along with many other prisoners, was infected with a form of the black oil as part of an experiment. (TXF: "Tunkuska") After he regained consciousness in his cell, a prisoner in the cell adjacent to his told him that he had actually been infected with the black cancer, which the prisoners mined in the Tunguska rock. The substance that Mulder had been injected with earlier was actually a cure for the black cancer. Mulder later escaped from the gulag and was found by a Russian family who helped him travel to St. Petersburg, from where he returned to the US. Upon his return, he narrowly avoided an explosion in North Dakota that destroyed much of the alien black oil in the country. (TXF: "Terma")
Shortly thereafter, a recurring dream that Mulder had been experiencing lead him to recover the body of John Lee Roche's fourteenth victim. Scully believed that Mulder may have been unconsciously thinking about the case since he first investigated the killer and reminded Mulder that he had once stated, "a dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned how to ask". With the continued help of Mulder's dreams, he and Scully located evidence that Roche had killed sixteen girls. After the body of the fifteenth victim was found, Mulder became unintentionally responsible for Roche's escape. The criminal kidnapped another girl, who was freed when Mulder shot and killed Roche. (TXF: "Paper Hearts")
- Scully's recollection that Mulder once said, "a dream is an answer to a question we haven't learned how to ask" is a paraphrased version of a statement he makes in "Aubrey", in which he says, "I've often felt that dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask".
1997
In early 1997, Mulder was forced to adhere to FBI regulations and take his first vacation in four years. Before he left, he asked Scully to continue investigating a case she had unenthusiastically been working on with Mulder. The case involved claims of two alien craft which had reportedly crashed and been retrieved from the Sea of Barents, before employees at a military space center in the Republic of Karelia had been assigned to work on them. While Scully journeyed to Philadelphia in order to investigate the claims, Mulder made a "spiritual" journey to Memphis, Tennessee, where Elvis Presley had lived. Believing the claims of alien craft to be bogus, Scully handed the case over to the Bureau field office in Philadelphia. Mulder was appalled when he learned this during a phone call to Scully, but he later also came to the conclusion that the claims had been fictitious. He returned from Memphis a week after he had traveled there. Once Scully returned, Mulder decided that they should investigate reports of the image of a missing child that was appearing on a blank billboard outside of Arlington. (TXF: "Never Again")
- It is unclear whether Mulder and Scully concluded the investigation pertaining to the billboard near Arlington, as Mulder only begins the case in the final scene of "Never Again".
Shortly thereafter, Scully informed Mulder that she had cancer. (TXF: "Memento Mori") The previous year, Scully had met a group of women, purported abductees, who had developed cancer after having had implants removed from the base of their necks. (TXF: "Nisei") Although all but one woman had died as a result of their cancer, Mulder tried to determine what else he could learn about the group while Scully was hospitalized.
He came to realize that Scully's cancer was also most probably a result of her abduction and that some of the women had been undergoing treatment for infertility at a federally-operated specialized clinic. After he broke into the clinic, he discovered a file - a directory for a mainframe in the Lombard Research Facility - that contained Scully's name. Mulder subsequently broke into the Lombard Research Facility and was shocked to discover a group of clones inside the facility who were attempting to develop more clones in their own image, using human ova extracted from the group of female abductees. The ova included those belonging to Scully, which had been harvested during her abduction. An armed man shot at Mulder before he managed to safely escape the facility. Although Mulder had taken Scully's ova with him, he did not inform her of his discovery. They watched in the hospital where she was undergoing treatment as the surviving member of the group of female abductees peacefully died. Believing that she had to learn to live with cancer, Scully returned to work on the X-Files with Mulder. (TXF: "Memento Mori")
During their next case, a neo-Nazi copy shop owner suspected Mulder of working with Jews and commented that he at least looked like a Jew. Mulder did not respond to the remark, however, and simply laughed. While investigating the same case, Mulder was later attacked by a golem but survived the assault relatively uninjured. (TXF: "Kaddish")
- For an essay discussing the possibility that Mulder was Jewish, click here.
On February 23, 1997, a woman came to Mulder and Scully in a Washington, D.C. bar and told them that her brother, Max Fenig, had just died in a recent plane crash. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit") While investigating the crash, Mulder learned that the doomed passengers of the plane, like he and Scully on their first case, had lost nine minutes immediately before the plane had crashed. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit", "Pilot") Mulder consequently began to suspect that Max had been abducted off the plane before its crash, even though his deceased body was found soon thereafter. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit")
In one of his closest encounters with extraterrestrials yet, Mulder discovered the body of a "Grey" alien beneath Great Sacandaga Lake. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit") However, he was soon captured and arrested by the military on charges of interference with a military investigation into the crash of a commercial airliner. (TXF: "Tempus Fugit", "Max") By the time he was released, Mulder had realized that Max Fenig had been carrying an object which constituted physical proof of the existence of alien life and intelligence. The object had been divided into three separate parts, one of which had been aboard the plane when it crashed and another part had also been taken. Mulder managed to obtain the third part and, although the object was highly radioactive, he attempted to transport it in a bag from an airport in Syracuse to Barnes Corners, New York. On the way there, however, the object was taken by a man who, like Max Fenig before him, was abducted off the plane. Mulder and the other passengers landed safely. (TXF: "Max")
He and Scully later encountered Eddie Van Blundht, a man who had impregnated four women by making himself physically appear to be their husbands. The agents attempted to arrest Blundht, but his shape-shifting ability helped him to evade capture. While he was being pursued, Blundht changed his facial appearance to that of Mulder's. He later attacked Mulder and locked him in a hospital basement, while he assumed Mulder's lifestyle, even managing to fool Scully into believing that he was Mulder. Luckily, the real Mulder managed to escape from the basement and Blundht was later placed in the Cumberland Reformatory, where he was medicated with a form of muscle relaxant that stopped him from being able to change his facial appearance. When Mulder visited him one month later, Blundht remarked that Mulder was a "loser" and advised him to "live a little, treat yourself". (TXF: "Small Potatoes")
Similarly to Eddie Van Blundht, Assistant Director Skinner soon also assumed Mulder's identity while secretly working to destroy evidence regarding the death of a female postal worker who had been fatally stung by bees. (TXF: "Small Potatoes", "Zero Sum") As Scully was dealing with complications related to her cancer, Mulder alone investigated the postal worker's death and that of Dr. Valedespino, the expert in bees he had consulted six months before. Mulder believed that the bee attacks were related to the bees he had seen on the Canadian farmland earlier and discovered that the bees had been carrying the smallpox virus, a fact he had suspected but had never been able to prove. He finally also uncovered Skinner's involvement in the case, who explained that he had been trying to make a deal with the Cigarette Smoking Man in order to obtain a cure for Scully's cancer. (TXF: "Zero Sum")
Around this time, Mulder contacted sixty-two year old Amy Anne Cassandra, who believed she was an alien abductee. He learned that she had been undergoing an experimental form of psychiatric treatment that had been effectively recovering repressed memories of her past. On April 10, 1997, Mulder drove to Providence, Rhode Island, where he submitted himself to the same form of therapy that Amy had been undergoing, hoping it would trigger his memory of the night his sister had disappeared. As part of the procedure, Mulder was subjected to light and sound that simulated an electrical impulse in his brain and was injected at the hip with a veterinary drug known to cause hallucinations, memory loss and blackouts. The drug caused Mulder to experience frequent painful seizures accompanied by vivid flashbacks to his childhood. He later witnessed Amy kill herself and her husband, David, using his gun. Covered in their blood, he drove David Cassandra's car to a motel, where he booked a room at about noon on April 11 and fell asleep alone in the room.
The next day, he awoke in shock with no memory of what had happened to him since two days before. He and Scully pieced together his previous two days but he was soon suspected of having murdered Amy and David Cassandra himself, and was consequently jailed. By the next day, Scully had determined that he was not responsible for the deaths and he was released from imprisonment. Mulder refused to be hospitalized because he believed that his seizures were helping him recall the events surrounding his sister's disappearance. They also made him question whether his real father was Bill Mulder or the Cigarette Smoking Man. Alone, Mulder returned to Dr. Charles Goldstein, the psychiatrist who had originally treated him, and requested for the operation to be completed. After his treatment, Mulder irrationally held Scully at gunpoint. He eventually acquiesced and his seizures ultimately subsided with no evidence of permanent brain damage. However, he was also left with no memory of the events that had led to Amy and David Cassandra's deaths. (TXF: "Demons")
Later that year, Mulder's forensic anthropathologist contact, Arlinsky, notified him that a frozen corpse that seemed alien had been discovered in the Saint Elias mountain range, located in the Yukon Territory, Canada. At first, Mulder believed the supposed discovery of the frozen corpse was a hoax but, after he witnessed a limited physical examination on the corpse conducted at a warehouse in Sethburg, Virginia, Mulder came to believe that the discovery was genuine.
However, Scully introduced him to Michael Kritschgau, an employee of the Department of Defense, who provided an astonishing story about how the conspiracy Mulder had been trying to unravel was actually an elaborate ploy by the government to cover up secret military experiments while leading the public to believe in aliens and UFOs. Kritschgau also claimed that the frozen body was a fake that would never be fully examined, as Mulder had only been meant to see it to encourage him to continue believing the lie that aliens existed. Mulder soon discovered that Arlinsky had been killed and that the frozen corpse had been removed from the warehouse, seemingly proving Kritschgau's story. (TXF: "Gethsemane") Mulder was so immensely affected on an emotional level by having his entire belief system shaken by Kritschgau's claims that he seriously considered suicide. (TXF: "Gethsemane", "Redux")
Kritschgau realized he had been followed after speaking with Mulder and Scully and called Mulder to warn that he was under surveillance. Mulder discovered he was also being spied upon, by a Department of Defense employee named Scott Ostlehoff. Moments after realizing that Ostlehoff had been spying on him from an apartment above his, Mulder shot the man in the face, simultaneously killing him and effectively removing his identity. In the same room where Ostlehoff had been shot, Mulder found a DOD clearance card and proof that he had been in contact with a member of the FBI for the last two months. Mulder believed that he and Scully may have been under surveillance since they were assigned to work together on the X-Files. (TXF: "Redux")
Mulder, having effectively faked his own death (a feat that he once believed only Elvis Presley had managed to successfully accomplish), immediately contacted Scully. (TXF: "Redux", "Shadows") He had Scully "identify" Ostlehoff's body as his own and used Ostlehoff's DOD clearance card to infiltrate the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where he began seeking a cure to Scully's cancer. With the assistance of Kritschgau, Mulder discovered rows of tables, each one supporting a body that appeared to be extraterrestrial. He also saw bodies of several women who had enlargened stomachs and lay on tables as irregular flashes of light illuminated them. Mulder later gained access to a large storage facility by a hallway connecting underground to the Pentagon. He took a vial with him before he exited, believing that it might contain a cure for Scully's cancer, but later discovered that it contained only deionized water. (TXF: "Redux")
After revealing that he was alive and returning to the FBI, Mulder was told that Scully was dying as a result of her cancer. Acting on advice from the Cigarette Smoking Man, Mulder further analysed the vial and found a computer chip hidden within. Though thankful for the information, Mulder flatly refused an offer to leave the FBI and begin working for the Cigarette Smoking Man.
Although the FBI had evidence that Mulder had killed Scott Ostlehoff, he was told that he would be exonerated if he named the person at the FBI who Ostlehoff had been in contact with. Mulder was encouraged by Section Chief Scott Blevins to call out Skinner as Ostlehoff's contact. However, on a hunch, Mulder instead called out Blevins as the FBI contact. Realizing that Blevins had been exposed, another member of the Syndicate shot and killed the Section Chief in his office. The Cigarette Smoking Man was also shot in his office around the same time and Mulder received news of his death. With the help of the computer chip that Mulder had discovered in the Pentagon storage room, Scully's cancer soon went into remission. (TXF: "Redux II") She returned to working with Mulder.
He and Scully later traveled to a team seminar with two other FBI agents, Michael Kinsley and Carla Stonecypher, but they were stopped at a roadblock while driving through Leon County. At Mulder's request, he and Scully joined an investigation into several recent attacks that had taken place there, while their FBI companions continued to the seminar. Together with Scully and two local experts, Michele Fazekas and Jeff Glaser, Mulder helped search for an attacker in the Apilachacola National Forest. However, both local companions separately went missing when they were suddenly pulled under the foliage by one or more transparent creatures that Mulder saw and shot at. Mulder was also pulled to the ground but Scully caught sight of him struggling with an invisible creature and shot at it, freeing him.
The agents stayed in the forest through the night, during which Mulder suffered from cold related to shock. The next morning, he witnessed Scully fall down a hole into a network of caves and, as a creature approached him at ground level, Mulder jumped into the hole, painfully landing in a heap next to Scully. As a second creature in the cave prepared to attack the agents, Mulder warned Scully, who shot the predator. The agents were saved by Search and Rescue, aided by Agents Kinsley and Stonecypher, later that day. The second predator was never found. (TXF: "Detour")
On December 23rd, 1997, Mulder rushed into his apartment as his phone was ringing. He answered the phone call, but there was no reply. (TXF: "Christmas Carol") Mulder was unaware that the caller was Scully, who later contacted him after she discovered that a girl, Emily Sim, who had been living with adoptative parents, was actually her own daughter. (TXF: "Christmas Carol", "Emily") In fact, Emily was a hybrid partially created from eggs that had been taken from Scully during her abduction. Emily had been used in secret experiments conducted by members of the Syndicate, who sent an alien bounty hunter to kill her after Scully and Mulder had discovered her existence. Unfortunately, Mulder was unable to stop the bounty hunter from succeeding. (TXF: "Emily")
1998
In early 1998, Robert Patrick Modell escaped from confinement. Mulder attempted to search for Modell and Linda Bowman, the criminal's murderous sister. However, Mulder's judgment was impaired once by each criminal during the investigation. Suspecting that Modell's influence over Mulder might be more than temporary, Skinner tried to suspend him from active duty but Mulder resisted. Modell was ultimately killed by Skinner, and Scully later killed Linda Bowman. (TXF: "Kitsunegari")
While pursuing Karin Matthews, a suspect who Mulder believed was capable of controlling nature, his car crashed into a fallen tree. Mulder narrowly avoided a branch that smashed through his car's windshield and, despite several bruises to his face, he managed to continue following the suspect on foot.
Shortly thereafter, he became immersed in mud while trying to save Bobby Rich, a victim of Karin Mathews, from death. As Mulder and Bobby Rich continued to sink in the mud, a woodsman killed Karin Mathews and her influence on nature, as well as on the mud in which they were sinking, abruptly ended, allowing them to be pulled out of the mud. (TXF: "Schizogeny")
Despite agreeing with Scully that they would both take a specific weekend off work, Mulder returned to the X-Files office and called his FBI partner soon after new information pertaining to one of the cases was discovered. He was unable to investigate the case, however, because Scully refused to return early from her vacation in Maine. She consulted him on a case she had discovered involving an outbreak of people acting involuntarily violent toward themselves but all of Mulder's suspicions regarding the case were incorrect. Mulder spent the rest of the weekend affixing pencils to the ceiling of the X-Files office, a fact that Scully discovered after she returned to work. (TXF: "Chinga")
Soon after, Mulder was electrocuted several times by Esther Nairn using a taser to attack him. He later became trapped in a trailer crammed with electronics by an artificial intelligence program that strapped him to an upright harness. The program fed him illusory images of buxom blonde nurses, including one named Nancy, who operated on him, amputating his left arm and both his legs before he was ultimately freed by an illusory Scully. Mulder realized the images he was seeing were being generated by the artificial intelligence program but could not escape the illusory world it was creating until Esther Nairn and the real Scully eventually rescued him. (TXF: "Kill Switch")
After Mulder apparently killed a boy he seemingly incorrectly believed was a vampire, he was extremely frustrated by the incident and became worried that he and Scully might even go to prison for their murderous actions. Eventually, however, Mulder and his FBI partner learned that the boy was still alive and that the town where he lived, Chaney, Texas, was full of people who, like the boy, had eyes that they could turn luminous green. Mulder was attacked by the town's residents and, although two victims had been found dead with two bite marks on each of their necks, the residents left Mulder still alive. After he regained consciousness, he discovered that his shoes, like those belonging to the previous two victims, were untied, linking the town's residents to the previous murders. They also abducted Scully around the same time but she and Mulder could find no sign of the residents after they recovered. (TXF: "Bad Blood")
Mulder accepted an invitation to a Visiting Lecturers' Forum in the Massachusetts Institute, at which he publicly announced his loss of belief in the existence of extraterrestrials and revealed his conviction that those who did believe in alien life had been persuaded by a bombardment of lies concocted by the government. He later met Cassandra Spender, a woman who claimed to have been abducted by aliens on several occasions. She revealed that she had been inspired by the story of Mulder's encounter with Duane Barry and warned him that she expected to soon be summoned by aliens, believing that Mulder was the only person who could stop them from taking her. Although Mulder did not believe Cassandra's claims of abduction experiences nor that she would again be taken, he and Scully were warned by her son, Jeffrey Spender, a young FBI Special Agent who hoped to build a good impression within the Bureau, against listening to her stories. Mulder later learned of two incidents in which many victims had been burned to death on Skyland Mountain - where Scully had been taken by Duane Barry - and in Kazakhstan. Shortly thereafter, Mulder discovered that both Scully and Cassandra Spender had suddenly disappeared. (TXF: "Patient X")
He later discovered that they had been at another mass burn site, this time on a bridge above Ruskin Dam. There, Scully was found alive but with no memory of what had happened to her. Cassandra Spender was still missing, though Mulder believed she would ultimately be found. At his suggestion, Scully underwent hypnosis, during which she seemed to vividly recall witnessing an alien ship destroy faceless men who had set fire to several victims surrounding her and Cassandra Spender, who had then apparently been lifted up in the air by the same alien ship. Mulder suspected that Scully's memories were an interpretation of a very powerful event, staged by the military, and that Cassandra Spender had been taken aboard a military aircraft.
He was later attacked by Krycek, who revealed that one of the warring alien races planned to colonize the planet unless Mulder opened his eyes to the truth. Krycek also revealed that the mass burn sites were destined to serve as alien "lighthouses" for the invasion, but had been used as battlefields where alien rebels had struck abductees as an attempt to upset plans for the occupation of Earth. Krycek tasked Mulder with freeing one of the alien rebels from an airforce base but, realizing that the rebel was aboard a military truck leaving the base, Mulder boarded the vehicle himself. However, another alien rebel abducted both the rebel prisoner Mulder was attempting to rescue and the driver of the truck, an alien bounty hunter loyal to the colonization plans. Mulder's belief in the existence of extraterrestrials had come full circle and he now realized that the aliens planned to colonize the planet. (TXF: "The Red and the Black")
Despite the changes in his beliefs, Mulder was never referred to as "skeptical" until a detective remarked that he was, while Mulder was trying to prevent Marty Glenn, a 28-year-old blind woman who seemed to have murdered two victims, from being sent to prison. Mulder single-handedly proved that Marty's estranged father, Charles Wesley Gotts, was the actual murderer, but Gotts was later killed by Marty, who was consequently sent to prison. (TXF: "Mind's Eye")
While tailing a possible suspect, Mulder became involved in helping Scully to conduct an unofficial search for several missing girls. (TXF: "All Souls")
As a result of broadcasting his feelings about the government and their conspiracies against the American people at the UFO conference, Mulder was contacted by a militia group called the New Spartans. He infiltrated the group as part of a classified, deep-cover assignment. In order to gain the trust of the group's second-in-command, Jacob Steven Haley, Mulder was forced to let Haley commit murder with a bio-toxic weapon. When Haley grew suspicious that Mulder was spying on the group, he was interrogated by Haley and a bald man who broke one of Mulder's fingers before Haley finally announced that he believed Mulder. In Mulder's apartment, he and Scully talked openly about his infiltration of the group, unaware that the group's leader, August Bremmer, was listening in to their conversation. Mulder was later forced to help the group commit an armed bank robbery. Despite Haley's belief that Mulder was not spying on the group, Bremmer convinced him otherwise by playing an audio recording of Mulder's discussion with Scully. However, Bremmer, who was actually working for the CIA, secretly freed Mulder, telling him never to return. (TXF: "The Pine Bluff Variant")
When later assigned the task of performing a threat assessment for VinylRight, a Chicago company which had received an audio-taped manifesto that spoke of a monster stalking employees, Mulder complained to Scully that the assignment was not worth their time. (TXF: "Folie à Deux") By then, Mulder's fingers had been taped to help them heal after his last assignment. (TXF: "Folie à Deux", "The Pine Bluff Variant") Mulder decided to investigate VinylRight alone, without Scully's assistance, and used his previous experience transcribing wiretap tape to study the recorded manifesto. (TXF: "Folie à Deux", "Little Green Men", "The Host", "Sleepless")
After learning that the case might be related to a former X-File, he asked Scully to help him perform the threat assessment. Before she could reach him, however, Mulder was taken hostage by VinylRight employee Gary Lambert, who had recorded the manifesto believing that his boss, Greg Pincus, was a monster. Lambert managed to convince Mulder that Pincus was indeed a monster but was shot and killed by a SWAT team soon after. To such an obsessive degree that he angered Skinner, Mulder searched for proof that Pincus was a monster, discovering that the situation was related to five previous X-Files. However, believed to be delusional, Mulder was restrained in a psychiatric ward of a hospital, where he believed he was visited by the monster. He was rescued by Scully, who shot the creature as it fled, but she and Mulder were later unable to locate Greg Pincus. (TXF: "Folie à Deux")
Mulder was reunited with Diana Fowley, his former girlfriend and FBI partner, after she requested reassignment to Washington, D.C.. Together with Fowley, Scully and Agent Jeffrey Spender, Mulder worked on investigating the shooting of an adult male chess champion in Vancouver. He correctly suspected that the man's opponent, a boy named Gibson Praise, had been the real target and that Praise was telepathic. Suspecting that Gibson Praise might be the key to understanding everything in the X-Files, Mulder suggested that the shooter be given immunity from prosecution in exchange for information. However, both Skinner and Diana Fowley worried that the X-Files might be shut down once again, if the agents investigating the files drew the wrong kind of attention by requesting the shooter's immunity.
After interviewing the shooter, Mulder came to the conclusion that Gibson Praise' telepathic ability was due to the fact he was part alien. Soon after this realization, Mulder discovered that Gibson Praise had been kidnapped and that Diana Fowley had been hospitalized in critical condition after having been shot while trying to protect Gibson. Mulder also learned that Gibson's shooter had been murdered in his cell by the Cigarette Smoking Man or someone working for him. As he had seen Agent Spender meet with the Cigarette Smoking Man earlier, Mulder approached Spender at FBI Headquarters and accused him of having killed the shooter.
Mulder was soon informed of talks that were being held on the issue of reassignment for himself and Scully that included instructions from the Justice Department to close down the X-Files. Although Mulder believed that the situation he and Scully now found themselves in had all been planned without his knowledge, Scully told him that it might no longer matter what he believed as the forces against them seemed to have won. Later, Mulder received news of a fire within his basement office. He and Scully returned to the FBI's Headquarters, where they saw that the office containing the X-Files had been severely incinerated in the fire. All information pertaining to the cases they had worked on over the past four years had been apparently destroyed and lost forever. (TXF: "The End")
Aftermath
No longer able to investigate the X-Files as the department had been closed by their superiors in the FBI, Mulder and Scully were assigned to search for a bomb in Dallas as part of a large task force directed by Special Agent-in-Charge Darius Michaud. In a building he chose to search on a hunch, Mulder discovered the bomb hidden within a vending machine in a room that locked when he entered it. He was eventually freed by other FBI agents, including SAC Michaud, who insisted on remaining in the building until it was evacuated in an attempt to defuse the bomb. However, Michaud was killed when the bomb exploded.
After coming late to a hearing with the FBI's Office of Professional Review - led by Assistant Director Jana Cassidy - and meeting a paranoid doctor, Alvin Kurtzweil, who professed to have been watching Mulder's career since before he was a "promising young agent", Mulder came to believe that SAC Michaud had intentionally let the bomb in Dallas explode under orders from people who wanted to hide evidence of an alien virus that had infected two firemen and a young boy whose deceased bodies had been in the building when it had exploded. He also learned that the virus would be unleashed during colonization.
After traveling with Scully through Texas on the trail of several trucks he believed were transporting the virus, Mulder and his FBI partner discovered a cornfield in the middle of the desert, surrounding two white lit domes in which bees were stored. They entered the domes but ran out of the structures when the bees were released. Two helicopters then chased them through the cornfield but left when the agents were almost out of the field. (The X-Files Movie) Though he never returned to the cornfield, Mulder ultimately learned that the corn featured pollen that was genetically altered to hold the virus, which would be transported by the bees and transmitted in their sting. (The X-Files Movie; TXF: "The Beginning")
After Scully was later stung by a bee carrying the virus that had remained hidden inside her clothing, Mulder called for an ambulance but he was unaware that his call had been intercepted. When an ambulance arrived, he assumed it was the one he had called for but he was shot in the head by the driver of the vehicle, which quickly carried Scully away. Though the bullet had only grazed his left temple, Mulder lost consciousness moments before the ambulance he had called for soon arrived and transported him to a hospital. When Mulder regained consciousness, he discovered that the bullet had grazed his brow and temporal plate, just slightly missing an area where the injury would have been lethal.
Mulder later managed to escape from the hospital and searched for Dr. Kurtzweil, who had been killed by the Well-Manicured Man. Mulder met with the man, who gave him an antidote for the virus and co-ordinates to a base in Antarctica where Scully had been taken. In his car, the Well-Manicured Man told Mulder that victims of the alien virus, like the firemen and the young boy whose infected and deceased bodies had been destroyed in the bomb, had begun to gestate and would do so during colonization, a fact only recently discovered by the Well-Manicured Man and his colleagues, who had been working collaboratively with the aliens. The Well-Manicured Man also revealed what had happened to Mulder's sister - she had been abducted so that she could be cloned and would eventually survive the viral holocaust as a human/alien hybrid. Although the man admitted he had been instructed to kill Mulder, the Well-Manicured Man instead shot the driver of his own car but died himself in a car-bomb explosion shortly after providing Mulder with help.
Mulder journeyed to Antarctica where, two days after witnessing the Well-Manicured Man's death, he discovered a vast alien ship that contained many cryogenically frozen humans in pods. Finding himself on an upper level within the craft, Mulder attempted to climb to a lower level but lost his grip and slid down the side of an enormous wall, only managing to save himself by catching hold of a ledge. After he climbed to safety, Mulder found Scully and injected her with the cure to the alien virus. As she was connected by a tube to the alien ship, Mulder simultaneously administered the vaccine to the craft. The body of each cryogenically frozen human, having been infected with the alien virus earlier, produced a vicious, long-clawed alien, several of which struggled to attack Mulder as he tried to escape with Scully, carrying her unconsciousness body over his shoulder. (The X-Files Movie)
Mulder luckily managed to escape from the ship with Scully but the craft, which had been buried under ice, rose beneath the agents, causing the ice to superheat and collapse. (The X-Files Movie; TXF: "The Beginning") The agents fell with the ice but landed on the hull of the alien ship as it continued to rise. They slid down the ship's hull and fell back on the ice where Mulder, before finally losing consciousness, witnessed the craft leave the ground. Reinvested and determined, he returned to Washington, D.C. with Scully and the X-Files were finally reopened. (The X-Files Movie)
- Though the alien virus is seen to be the black oil in the movie, Mulder never learns this information and neither makes nor investigates any comparison between the two.
Several months after the cases had been destroyed in his office fire, Mulder had been given a new office, a small and dark room with a computer which he used to determine that he would probably be able to recover a large percentage of the destroyed case material by a reassembling of fragments and by using an admittedly tedious process that restored moisture to the documents. (TXF: "The Beginning") He reported this discovery at an OPR meeting led by Assistant Director Maslin, who had replaced AD Cassidy. (TXF: "The Beginning"; The X-Files Movie) At the meeting, Mulder attempted to persuade Maslin to permit himself and Scully to begin immediate work on the X-Files, which fragments he had already recovered and reassembled would allow, and recounted the events that had taken place in Antartica. Mulder intended to continue work on the X-Files by first investigating the bees and corn he and Scully had seen in the desert earlier. Although he had no scientific evidence to support his account of the events in Antartica and presented no other information to justify his reassignment to the X-Files, the FBI officials at the meeting announced they would consider his reassignment to the cases. He returned to his attempts at restoring the files but was notified soon after that his request for reassignment had been unanimously refused.
At first, Mulder questioned how it could have been denied when he and Scully were the only reason he knew of for reopening the X-Files. After Mulder learned that a file folder in his old office might lead to proof that the virus was extraterrestrial and caused the growth of an alien being inside a human host, he went to his former office and discovered it had been redecorated. Mulder also learned that Agents Spender and Fowley, having recovered from her gunshot wound, had been assigned to investigate the X-Files and he stole the specific file he was looking for from the office.
The file led him and Scully on the trail of a ferocious alien that had only recently been produced but had already killed several humans in Pheonix, Arizona. However, the agents were discovered working on the case by Special Agent Spender, who threatened that he would get Mulder censured for ignoring his superiors and investigating without cause or permission. When he and Scully found Gibson Praise shortly thereafter, Mulder suggested using the telepathic boy to find the fierce alien but realized that Praise could be the evidence he had been searching for to prove all his claims of paranormal phenomena. Mulder left Gibson with Scully as he accompanied Diana Fowley to a nuclear power plant sixty miles east of Pheonix, where he and Fowley believed the alien had gone in search of heat essential to its survival. Mulder and Fowley saw Gibson Praise in the power plant, with a man who had kidnapped Gibson. After Gibson led the man, who was also searching for the alien, to a locked room, Mulder watched from a window as the vicious alien killed the man but did not attack Gibson. Though Fowley had left, telling Mulder she was going to look for another way into the room, she returned with armed guards who held Mulder at gunpoint.
Upon returning to the FBI Headquarters, he and Scully attended another OPR meeting at which AD Maslin warned them that refusal to cease all material association with the X-Files would result in their immediate dismissal from the FBI. The agents were informed that a probationary period would be set and they were ordered to report to Assistant Director Kersh from then on. In complete disregard of the instructions they were given, however, Mulder continued work on restoring the burnt X-Files. His theory that Gibson Praise was part alien, a belief he had postulated earlier, was proven by Scully, who had discovered that alien DNA in Gibson Praise was the same as in the fierce alien, in the alien virus and in every other human, meaning that all of humanity was part alien. (TXF: "The End", "The Beginning")
Mulder and Scully were subsequently assigned to investigate possible cases of domestic terrorism. Mulder found the routine checks he and Scully conducted boring and suspected that their superiors meant to humiliate the agents by assigning them such tedious work. One suspect he and Scully investigated was farmer Virgil Nokes, who had recently placed an order for five thousand pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. When the agents visited Nokes' home in Buhl, Idaho, he explained that he used the fertilizer for growing sugar beets, believing he had better things to do with it than "going around, blowing government buildings sky high".
Mulder saw a television news report in Nokes' home about the mysterious death of Vicky Jenkins Crump, who had apparently died from some kind of explosive rupture inside her head after a high-speed police chase had ended in Elko, Nevada. Interested in the report, Mulder called a captain presiding over the case who allowed him and Scully to become involved in the investigation. However, Mulder was soon taken hostage by Vicky Crump's husband, Patrick Garland Crump, and was forced to drive at high speed so that Patrick Crump would not die in the same way as his wife. Mulder dodged other cars, evaded pursuing police and stole another vehicle in an effort to save Crump, who nevertheless died when the pressure in his head became overwhelming.
Upon reporting to Kersh at FBI Headquarters, Mulder complained about the checks for domestic terrorism he and Scully had been conducting, calling the assignment "bozo work, investigating huge piles of manure". Mulder asked if he and Scully would be required to continue working on the routine checks, prompting Kersh to teasingly suggest he could always quit. According to Kersh, Mulder and Scully were done investigating X-Files and the sooner the agents recognized that, the better for them both.(TXF: "Drive")
On November 16, 1998, Mulder learned that the SS Queen Anne, a ship that had disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle in 1939, had inexplicably reappeared. He went looking for the ship but became lost in the Saragasso Sea during a storm that destroyed his boat, the Lady Garland. In an effort to recover him, Scully and the Lone Gunmen journied to the Bermuda Triangle, where they found the Queen Anne with no passengers aboard and Mulder floating in the water. In hospital, he claimed to have traveled back to 1939 and been forced to evade Nazis aboard the Queen Anne, which had included Scully and Skinner as passengers. He believed that, though the ship had been heading away from the Bermuda Triangle, which he suspected was some kind of time warp in which the Queen Anne had become caught, he had convinced Scully to turn the ship around so that history would resume as normal. (TXF: "Triangle")
After returning to work, Mulder was contacted by an anonymous source within the classified Area 51 Air Force base in Nevada. Believing that the proof he and Scully had been searching for was in Area 51, Mulder ignored the fact that he was now once again only a General Assignment Agent and returned to Nevada with his FBI partner to investigate rumors that, for the past fifty years, the military had been using the base to conduct classified experiments involving alien technology. However, he and Scully were stopped by soldiers while driving to the base.
As the agents stood talking to an employee at the base, named Morris Fletcher, an unidentified aircraft left Area 51 but crashed soon after taking off, causing Mulder to switch bodies with Fletcher. Mulder was forced to adopt Fletcher's life, as Fletcher assumed Mulder's identity. As an Area 51 employee, Mulder discovered two bizzare incidents similar to his own, while attempting to contact Scully in order to warn her about what had happened. However, Mulder struggled with Fletcher's roles as a husband and father of two. Mulder eventually discovered that the anonymous source who had contacted him earlier was a general named Wegman, who had accidentally caused the UFO to crash earlier. When the space-time continuum eventually corrected itself, Mulder and Fletcher returned to their rightful bodies, although they lost all memories of the events and only a few changes remained, such as Fletcher's tidying of Mulder's apartment. Kersh never learned of the agents' visit to Area 51. (TXF: "Dreamland", "Dreamland II")
- An X-File on Mulder is seen at the beginning of "Dreamland II", while Morris Fletcher inhabits Mulder's body. It is unclear whether the file exists after the correction of the space-time continuum and why the file exists at all, unless the document mostly concerns the disappearance of Mulder's abducted sister, though the information shown pertains to Mulder himself and does not focus on his relationship with his sister.
Mulder later discovered, in Agent Spender's trash, a shredded report regarding a woman who claimed she had given birth to an abnormal baby which had horns and a tail. According to the woman, her baby had been taken from her by a demon or devil while she had been lying in bed one night. Mulder reassembled the shredded report and, acting as if he were Agent Spender's deputy, immediately began investigating the case on a day when he was meant to meet with Scully and help her to run background checks. He managed to persuade a reluctant Scully into allowing him to consult with her, by way of cell phone. Though medical evidence seemed to suggest that the baby's mother had killed her own child, Mulder suspected the woman's husband of being the kidnapping demon, usually hiding in the physical form of a human.
When Mulder began following the baby's father, the man reported him to AD Kersh, accusing him of harrassment, to which Mulder responded that he was "doing a background check on someone". Scully soon joined Mulder on the case at his request and they, occassionally assisted by the local police department, uncovered evidence suggesting that the baby's father was indeed a demon who had previously lived in Czechoslovakia under another name and that, both there and in the US, he had been destroying countless women's lives and pre-natal infants in his search for a normal human child and a regular family. Both Mulder and his FBI partner were tricked into believing that another of the demon's pregnant wives was innocent, though she was actually a demon herself who took her newborn demonic baby with her when she left her home. Mulder only realized this revelation after the baby's father was shot and later died in hospital. (TXF: "Terms of Endearment")
On Christmas Eve, 1998, Mulder decided to explore a supposedly haunted house in Maryland with Scully. According to legend, the house was haunted every Christmas Eve by lovers Maurice and Lyda, who had forged a lovers' pact in Christmas 1939, before killing themselves in the belief that doing so could allow them to spend eternity together. In the house, Mulder and Scully encountered several highly peculiar phenomena, including their discovery and the later bizarre disappearance of two extremely decomposed corpses who seemed to have been shot to death and appeared to be the agents themselves.
Mulder later became separated from Scully and they each once met a man and woman who they believed were the ghosts of Lyda and Maurice. Mulder suspected the ghost of Maurice had been responsible for the strange phenomena he and Scully had encountered and was insultingly psychoanalysed by the man. The woman who Mulder believed was the ghost of Lyda tried to convince him to shoot Scully before she appeared to both Mulder and Scully individually, making them believe she was their FBI partner while apparently shooting them both. However, after he was reunited with Scully, Mulder realized that he had been tricked into believing he had been shot and helped Scully realize the same was true of herself before the agents finally managed to escape the house together. (TXF: "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas")
At FBI headquarters in early January 1999, Mulder spoke to a female co-worker of a Ms. Ermentrout while conducting routine background checks, by use of phone, in a large darkened room - the bullpen hallway - where several other agents, including Scully, also carried out background checks. Even though Mulder seemed bored when questioning the employee about Ms. Ermentrout and generally dissatisfied with his assignment, he revealed to Scully that he was not ready to quit the FBI as "that would make way too many people way too happy". He seemed dismayed after Scully was assigned to work with an Agent Peyton Ritter on a case that Mulder correctly suspected was an X-File, although Scully initially believed otherwise.
Mulder provided information to Scully while she worked on the case with Agent Ritter, discovering evidence that suspect Alfred Fellig was at least 149 years old, having used several false identities during his lifetime and having committed murder twice in 1929. Mulder relayed news of Fellig's guilt to Agent Ritter, who shot Fellig but also accidentally shot Scully. After Fellig died, Mulder visited Scully as she recovered in hospital and revealed that he believed Fellig would have lived forever, had he not been seeking death's opposite. (TXF: "Tithonus")
- Even though Mulder is shown to be working from an office that is exclusively his own in "The Beginning", it seems likely that, by "Triangle", he and Scully have been assigned to work from the crowded bullpen hallway. Scully can be seen working there in the episode and "Dreamland II" shows not only her but also Morris Fletcher, in disguise as Mulder, "working" there. Neither Mulder nor Scully are shown working in an office in the earlier "Drive" and it is not until "Tithonus" that the bullpen hallway is established as being also Mulder's place of work.
While working late one night, Mulder left the bullpen hallway to find that Assistant Director Skinner was having trouble with his eyes and had a nasty bruise on his ribcage. Mulder learned that AD Skinner had received a phone call in which a scrambled voice had told him he had 24 hours to live. With help from Scully, Mulder attempted to determine who was responsible for Skinner's condition, as it continued to worsen. Mulder found that, although the incident seemed to be connected to Senate Resolution 819 - a funding bill that also seemed to involve one of his informants, Senator Matheson - Skinner was most probably the victim of someone whose motive concerned the X-Files, which the Assistant Director still supervised. Mulder admitted this conclusion to AD Skinner after he suddenly recovered and requested permission to continue the investigation. Although Skinner secretly knew that he had been infected with microscopic, atom-sized machines by Alex Krycek, he did not reveal this information to Mulder or Scully and inhibited them from continuing their work on the case, reminding them that they were to perform their duties "as directed by AD Kersh and only AD Kersh". (TXF: "S.R. 819")
Shortly after, Mulder worked some hours of a day but did not return from an intermission, instead choosing to play basketball. He told Scully that he was ready to work but only if it weren't on "some background-checking jagoff shoeshine tip". He soon learned, however, that Cassandra Spender, the subject of an X-File, had recently been recovered in a train car where she had been the subject of operations conducted by a group of doctors who had been burned alive. Mulder continued to learn more about the Cigarette Smoking Man, the Syndicate and their collaboration with the race of aliens that intended to recolonize Earth, the alien black oil virus, and the race of alien rebels. Mulder also discovered that Cassandra's doctors had been incinerated by the alien rebels because the physicians had been working for the Syndicate, but both he and Scully were indefinately suspended by the FBI when Agent Spender, who was unwittingly working for the Syndicate, found that they had been using his office, where the X-Files were stored, to aid in their inquiries. (TXF: "Two Fathers")
After Cassandra Spender and virtually all members of the Syndicate were killed by the alien rebels, Agent Spender, who had realized he had mistakenly been supporting the Syndicate, strongly recommended to Assistant Director Kersh that Mulder and Scully be reassigned to the X-Files and AD Kersh began to realize that Mulder could be a valuable source of information, even if occasionally cryptic. (TXF: "One Son")
Return to the X-Files
On his first case with Scully after they had been reassigned to the X-Files, Mulder went undercover as Rob Petrie and gave Scully the alias of Laura Petrie, his character's wife, in order to investigate the unexplained disappearances of three couples from The Falls at Arcadia planned community, which had been built upon an old landfill. Though Mulder initially complained that the case was not an X-File, he later realized that it was, after glimpsing a creature that attacked one of the residents. Mulder later identified the creature as a tulpa and realized it had killed the couples previously been thought to have disappeared. After the tulpa attacked Gene Gogolak (who Mulder believed had willed the creature into existence), it started to pursue Mulder but crumbled into a mound of earth and refuse when Gogolak died due to his injuries. (TXF: "Arcadia")
In 2000, Mulder and Scully returned to the town which had provided the setting for their first case. It appeared that many of the class of 1986 that they had met 7 years previously were being abducted once more.
Back in Washington, the X-Files were in danger of being closed down once again due to budget cutting. Alex Krycek and Marita Covarrubias approached the two agents to inform them of a UFO in Oregon, from where they had just returned. They were encouraged to find this UFO before it was too late. It appeared that the ship was rebuilding itself and attempting to remove or destroy all evidence of its being. Taking this into account, Mulder asked Scully not to return to Oregon with him for fear of her previous abduction being a catalyst for her being removed by the aliens.
Assistant Director Skinner and Agent Mulder went out to search for the UFO, while Scully in Washington analysed medical scans from other abductees. She managed to discover a medical connection between Mulder and the other abductees, through a brain disorder Mulder had suffered from the previous year. Scully became ill before she could get on a plane to Oregon and she was hospitalised.
Abduction & Recovery
Meanwhile in Oregon, A.D. Skinner witnessed Mulder disappearing in a beam of light onto a spaceship which sped away. To a hospitalised Scully a little time later, Skinner vowed to find Mulder no matter what. At this point, Scully discovered the reasons for her illness and that despite her inability to conceive a child, she was pregnant.
To aid with the search for Mulder, Special Agent John Doggett was assigned to an official manhunt for the missing agent. However, his steady and to the book methods did nothing for the cause, only aggravating both Scully and Skinner.
The search, however, took them to the Arizona desert, to an alien bounty hunter, and to chess prodigy Gibson Praise. Unbeknownst to Scully, the ship which housed Mulder hid out in the desert, where he was being subjected to painful tests that included the drilling of his teeth and nasal passages, and the cracking of the chest.
Efforts proved uneventful, and Agent Doggett was assigned to The X Files to replace Agent Mulder. A friendship and bond slowly developed between Agents Scully and Doggett.
Months later, Mulder was returned in the desert, but by all intents and purposes was dead. Three months later, Billy Miles, a fellow abductee, was returned with the appearance of being dead, only later to discover that he was just barely alive, a virus holding him preserved so that the body might ongo a transformation into another breed of indestructible alien, a supersoldier. After digging up Mulder's body, they discovered the same case, that although he was in a state of decomposition, he was still alive.
Alex Krycek came forward with promise of a vaccine, only if Skinner were not to allow Scully to come to term with her baby, now six months pregnant. Skinner was unable to perform this task and saw fit to remove Mulder from his ventilation equipment in order to kill him, rather than have Scully go through losing her child. However, he inadvertently saved Mulder, the support equipment actually incubating the virus so that it might make the transition.
Through a course of anitvirals, Agent Scully was able to use her medical expertise to save Mulder from his predicament.
Further Disappearances & Trial
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After his return, Mulder admitted to having problems accepting where he fit in the world, having been out of the loop for so long. His partner was pregnant, partnered with someone else and Mulder remained haunted by the images of his abduction and torture. He was informed by Deputy Director Kersh that he was to have no more encounters with the X-Files.
After several run-ins with Agent Doggett, Mulder accepted his lot and began to gain a respect for Doggett's perseverance and honesty.
Doggett finally saw evidence of aliens and the black oil on an oil rig along with Agent Mulder. However, after they were blamed for the oil rig blowing up in order to hide the existence of the black oil, Mulder was dismissed from the FBI.
Jobless, he spent more time with Agent Scully who was now on maternity leave. He attended lamaze classes with her and took an active interest in her pregnancy.
Possible Late Life
For much of his life, Mulder considered taking a cruise somewhere once he got older. (TXF: "Død Kalm") He once commented that his work with the FBI demanded that he live in a big city but that, if he ever had to settle down and build a home, he would choose to live in a small town. (TXF: "Home")
For most of his adult life, however, Mulder was almost unable to consider a future without the X-Files. In 1998, when asked if he had any future plans, Mulder implied that he planned to continue investigating the files. He was unsure of what he was seeking, but believed that whatever he ultimately hoped to find was in the X-Files and suspected that he might know what he was searching for when he finally found it. (TXF: "The End")
However, once, a man who Mulder believed was actually a ghost commented that obsessive compulsiveness, workaholism and antisocial behaviour - which the man believed Mulder was prone to - were "fertile fields for the descent into total wacko breakdown". (TXF: "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas")
Scully once revealed that she believed Mulder would become insanely obsessed with hoping to catch a glimpse of the truth about paranormal phenomena, listening only to himself on a quest that no-one else could understand. She also suspected that Mulder's obsessive search for the truth would inevitably result in his death and that those who he took with him would also ultimately die. (TXF: "Quagmire")
In 1995, psychic Clyde Bruckman suggested that Mulder would die by autoerotic asphyxiation. (TXF: "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose")
In 1996, Mulder implied that he would like to be buried and wished a curse on anyone who might dig his skeletal remains up in a thousand years. (TXF: "Teso Dos Bichos")
Career History
- 1983-1986 Oxford University student
- 1986- FBI Academy student
- 1988-? Violent Crimes Unit, partner Special Agent Jerry Lamana, supervisor Section Chief Reggie Purdue
- Unspecified 3 years, including 1990- Behavioral Sciences Unit, no partner
- 1990- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section
- 1991- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Agent Diana Fowley
- 1992-1994 FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Division Chief Scott Blevins
- 1994- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 1994- FBI General Assignment Agent, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 1994- Behavioral Science Unit, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 1994-1998 FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 1998- FBI Special Agent, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Special Agent-in-Charge Darius Michaud
- 1998-1999- FBI Special Agent, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Alvin Kersh
- 1999-2000- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 2001- FBI General Assignment Agent
- 2002- Civilian; leaves FBI
Relationships
Family
Parents
Father
Main articles: William Mulder and Cigarette Smoking Man
In early 1961, the Cigarette Smoking Man had an affair with Teena Mulder, and would father Fox. (TXF: "The Truth") Although the CSM kept a close eye on Mulder over the years, Fox was raised to believe his father was William Mulder. His mother never told him his true parentage and would lie when confronted about the truth. (TXF: "Demons")
- For Fox Mulder's relationship with the Cigarette Smoking Man, see his section below.
Mother
Main article: Teena Mulder
Siblings
Sister
Main article: Samantha Mulder
Years after his sister disappeared, Mulder was continuing to search for her in the belief that she was still alive. (TXF: "Pilot", et al.)
During deep hypnotic regression conducted by Doctor Heitz Werber in 1989, Mulder was apparently able to access repressed memories of his sister's abduction. He supposedly recalled a bright light outside and a presence in the room. However, he apparently remembered that he had been paralyzed and unable to respond to his sister's repeated calls for help. (TXF: "Pilot", "Conduit", "Closure")
- Mulder told Scully that he had undergone hypnosis in "Pilot". She later listened to recordings of his regression in "Conduit" and watched a video of the process in "Closure".
- Some of Mulder's supposedly recovered memories contradict the version of events seen in "Little Green Men", as writers Glen Morgan and James Wong wrote that episode without having seen "Conduit". For more information, see "Questionable Information" below.
Mulder discovered the X-Files in late 1990. (TXF: "Kill Switch") His investigations into the paranormal phenomenon reported in the files were fueled by his belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens. (TXF: "Gethsemane")
In 1993, Agent Scully suspected that the supposed abduction of Mulder's sister had influenced him to request an assignment involving the abduction of a female teenager who had a young brother. After the teenager was located and the agents' investigation ended, Scully listened to an audio tape of one of Mulder's hypnosis sessions while he sat alone in a church and cried over a picture of his sister. (TXF: "Conduit")
In 2000, Special Agent Lewis Schoniger believed that Mulder's memories were actually a typical alien abduction fantasy compensating for the sense of guilt or fear that was preventing him from remembering the truth. The FBI expert explained that Mulder's delusion played into his unconscious hope that his sister was still alive, providing him with a reason to pursue her.
With the help of police psychic Harold Piller, Mulder eventually discovered his sister's fate in 2000. After her abduction, Samantha had lived on April Air Force Base in California, apparently with Jeffrey Spender and his father,C.G.B. Spender. According to a diary Mulder found on April Base, doctors had conducted brutal experiments on her in 1979, when she was fourteen years old. Samantha could vaguely recall an older brother but seemed to think that the doctors performing tests on her had stolen her memories. Mulder noted that in her final entry, she expressed an intense desire to run away.
He found a sergeant's blotter that confirmed that Samantha had escaped from the hospital where she had been held hostage and had been picked up by police as a runaway. She had then been taken to Dominic Savio Memorial Hospital, where she had seemed to be exhibiting signs of paranoia and had given no name to the police or nurses, explaining why Mulder had found it so hard to learn what had happened to her. The hospital medical staff had found scars on her knees, wrists and chest that they had considered to be the result of self-inflicted abuse. Samantha had allowed no-one except an ER nurse named Arbutus Ray to touch her. As Samantha slept, Nurse Ray had seen a brief vision of Samantha dead in her bed, but the vision quickly passed and Samantha was unharmed. Late that night, a group of men arrived to take Samantha, but Nurse Ray found that she had disappeared from a locked hospital room, never to be seen again.
When Mulder visited Ray's home with Scully and Harold Piller in 2000, he apparently met with an apparition of his sister and accepted Piller's theory that Samantha was with "walk-ins", old souls lurking in starlight who protect other souls from violent fates that are not meant to be. (TXF: "Closure")
By 2000, the Mulder family cemetery marker in Raleigh, North Carolina, was labeled with Samantha Mulder's name. The dates of her short lifespan were noted as "1965 - 1979". (TXF: "Within")
In 2002, Jeffrey Spender confirmed that Mulder had indeed witnessed his sister being abducted by aliens. However, she had been returned and was sent to California where she and Spender had been raised together. She was taken many more times and suffered horrible tests, eventually dying in 1987. (TXF: "The Truth")
Half-Brother
It has been suggested that Jeffrey Spender is Mulder's half brother (TXF: "William"), sharing as a biological father Cigarette Smoking Man.
Wife
see below under Romantic Interests
- There is some indirect evidence that Mulder may once have been married, but this is never explicitly proven.
Children
It has been suggested that Mulder is the biological father of Scully's child, William, whom she named in honor of Mulder's father (TXF: "Existence"). Questions of actual paternity aside, Mulder considers William to be his son (TXF: "The Truth").
Grandfather
In 1995, Mulder incorrectly recalled that his grandfather would take Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome for his stomach. (TXF: "The Căluşari")
In 2000, Mulder commented that Kuru, a disease that New Guinea tribesmen get from eating the brains of their relatives, seemed even more disgusting than when his "grandpa" used to slurp up soup. (TXF: "Theef")
Uncle
Mulder's uncle was an amateur magician. (TXF: "Humbug")
- This may or may not be true. In "Humbug", after Scully performs an old sleight of hand her uncle - an amateur magician - once taught her, Mulder performs a similar sleight of hand for her and tells her, "Everybody's uncle is an amateur magician". However, Mulder may have been joking at the time.
Romantic Interests
Phoebe Green
Main article: Phoebe Green
Diana Fowley
Main article: Diana Fowley
Wife
In 1990, Mulder wore a wedding ring, implying marriage. (TXF: "Travelers")
- Mulder was seen without a wedding ring in 1989 ("Unusual Suspects") and 1992 ("Pilot") suggesting his "marriage" occurred between those two dates. Many fans have speculated that his wife might have been Diana Fowley, as they had a relationship around this time. His marriage was not mentioned in any other episodes.
Dana Scully
Main article: Dana Scully Mulder's FBI partner on the X-Files unit for several years. The two developed a romantic relationship, and have a child together, William. In 2002, after receiving the death penalty in a criminal trial, Mulder flees, and Dana Scully accompanies him.
Colleagues and Mentors
Reggie Purdue
Main article: Reggie Purdue
Jerry Lamana
Main article: Jerry Lamana
William Patterson
Main article: William Patterson
Scott Blevins
Main article: Scott Blevins
Dana Scully
Main article: Dana Scully
On March 6, 1992, Special Agent Dana Scully was assigned to work with Mulder on the X-Files and the two agents met later that day. Mulder was already aware that Scully was a medical doctor who taught at the FBI Academy and had done her undergraduate degree in Physics. He had read - and liked - her senior thesis, "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation". Though Mulder believed that Scully had been sent to spy on him, she ensured him that she was not part of any agenda. (TXF: "Pilot") However, Scully was unaware that she had indeed been sent to spy on Mulder because the FBI distrusted his methods. (TXF: "The Truth")
Nevertheless, Scully remained Agent Mulder's partner for many years. As they investigated the X-Files together, Scully gradually came to believe in his theories; in the existence of extraterrestrial life and in a conspiracy inside the government to keep their existence a secret. (TXF: "The Truth")
Scully once told her best friend, Ellen, that Mulder was "cute". In early 1993, Ellen asked Scully if she would ever consider dating Mulder. Scully replied that he was "a jerk", but quickly denied that he was and stated instead that he was obsessed with his work. (TXF: "The Jersey Devil")
In early 1994, Mulder was concerned for Scully after the death of her father. He urged her not to believe criminal Luther Lee Boggs' claim of psychic ability, convinced that Boggs was trying to mislead her. (TXF: "Beyond the Sea")
- The first known example of Mulder using Scully's first name to talk with her is in "Beyond the Sea", although he could have previously done so off-screen.
After the close of the X-Files in 1994, Mulder and Scully would occasionally meet. Mulder's sign that he wanted to speak to Scully was using his pseudonym, George Hale. (TXF: "Sleepless") Scully's sign to Mulder that she wanted to speak to him was turning over a picture on his desk of his sister, Samantha. (TXF: "Little Green Men")
In 1994, Mulder left Washington, D.C. without informing Scully. She searched for him, learning his computer password ("TRUST NO1") along the way, and eventually found him in Puerto Rico. (TXF: "Little Green Men")
When Scully was abducted in 1994, Mulder desperately searched for her. (TXF: "Ascension") Although he returned to investigating the X-Files, Mulder's hope that his former FBI partner would be returned continued to be unrelenting. Shortly after she was discovered alive but in deteriorating health, her mother, Margaret Scully, commented that Mulder's relationship with Scully had been built on trust. (TXF: "One Breath") Scully recovered and returned to working with Mulder, although she was later diagnosed with cancer. (TXF: "Firewalker", "Memento Mori") Mulder investigated her cancer and other complications related to her abduction, such as the discovery of her daughter, Emily Sim. (TXF: "Memento Mori", "Emily")
By early 1995, Mulder had given Scully a key to his apartment. (TXF: "End Game")
In 1996, Mulder's observation that she had lost some weight pleased Scully. (TXF: "Quagmire") In the same year, the two agents held hands after helping to catch killer Robert Patrick Modell. (TXF: "Pusher") Also in 1996, Scully was exposed to an altered television signal that made her paranoid and caused her to believe that Mulder was part of the Syndicate working against them. She almost shot Mulder but he and Scully's mother managed to persuade her not to. (TXF: "Wetwired")
Walter Skinner
Main article: Walter Skinner
Darius Michaud
Main article: Darius Michaud
Jeffrey Spender
Main article: Jeffrey Spender
Alvin Kersh
Main article: Alvin Kersh
John Doggett
Main article: John Doggett
Informants
Mulder has had several informants over time. The Lone Gunmen and an unknown person called "Danny" have been two of Mulder's main sources of information. When he first began working on The X-Files, Deep Throat began providing Mulder with information. When Deep Throat was killed, X took his place. Marita Covarrubias, a Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, replaced X after his death.
"The Lone Gunmen"
Main article: Lone Gunmen
Danny
Main article: Danny
Senator Richard Matheson
Main article: Richard Matheson
During their first investigation together, Mulder told Scully that the only reason he had been permitted to continue working on the X-Files was because he had made connections in Congress. (TXF: "Pilot")
One of these "connections" was with Senator Richard Matheson, who, because he had an interest in Earth's first contact with an extraterrestrial life-form, supported Mulder's work on the X-Files at great risk to his own reputation. When the X-Files were closed down in 1994, Mulder realized that there was nothing the Senator could do to prevent that from happening, due to his reputation being in jeopardy.
Shortly thereafter, Mulder was given the opportunity to reveal his realization to the Senator, after he was taken to Matheson's office. At first, Matheson quizzed Mulder on his knowledge of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto Number 2, the first selection of music on the Voyager spacecraft, but learned that the FBI Agent was not as aware of the composition's importance as he himself was.
Mulder suspected that he had disappointed Matheson, due to the termination of his work on the X-Files, and discovered that Matheson feared the threat of audio surveillance being conducted on his own office. By lowering his voice while loudly playing a recording of Bach, the Senator instructed Mulder to journey to Puerto Rico's Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory in order to determine whether the radio telescope had received any transmissions from an extraterrestrial intelligence.
Matheson provided Mulder with a printed transmission from the radio telescope and ensured Mulder that he would attempt to delay the Blue Beret UFO Retrieval Team while the FBI Agent was investigating the transmission, even though he revealed to Mulder that he would only be able to postpone the team for about twenty-four hours. The Senator's information seemed to be accurate, as Mulder was chased away from the radio telescope by a deployment of armed soldiers the following day. (TXF: "Little Green Men")
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"Deep Throat"
Main article: Deep Throat
"X"
Main article: X
After the X-Files were closed in 1994, Mulder answered a phone call from a man who told him that he had "a friend at the FBI". When Mulder asked the anonymous caller to identify themself, the man ended the call.
Earlier, Mulder had told Agent Scully that he was considering leaving the FBI. He was convinced that Scully had since spoken to someone in an attempt to launch a campaign to help him and that that person had been the anonymous caller. However, when Mulder approached Scully with this belief, she assured him that she hadn't spoken to anyone about the issue.
Scully later notified Mulder that someone had shoved a magazine under her door that had helped her identify a victim. The same person who had called Mulder before had supplied Scully with the magazine, a fact that Scully realized and reported to Mulder.
Shortly thereafter, Mulder struggled to catch a human who he believed was a giant flukeworm and who looked like such a creature due to exposure to high levels of radiation. Mulder's mysterious contact phoned him again and told him that the success of his current assignment was imperative because reinstatement of the X-Files had to be undeniable. (TXF: "The Host")
Marita Covarrubias
Main article: Marita Covarrubias
Marita Covarrubias, a Special Representative to the Secretary General of the United Nations, provided Mulder with information on several occasions in 1996. Mulder was led to find her after X, in his dying moments, left a message written in blood outside Mulder's apartment.
On their first meeting, Covarrubias apologised to Mulder that an investigation into a Canadian farmland had not uncovered the answers he had hoped for. She was also curious as to why the matter was so important to him, as he had not told her that he had found a colony of clones that looked like his sister there. When Mulder awkwardly replied that he had "recently" suffered some very personal losses, Marita stated, "not everything dies". Mulder, who had recently been told that "everything dies" by an alien bounty hunter, started to wonder about her allegiances. (TXF: "Herrenvolk")
In August 1996, Mulder came to Marita Covarrubias and told her about a case he was working on. She seemed reluctant to speak with Mulder, claiming to have no knowledge of the case and declaring that she was unable to help him. Mulder suspected that she knew more about the case than she claimed to know but was unwilling to aid him. (TXF: "Teliko")
The Syndicate were secretly paying Covarrubias for the use of her diplomatic power in furthering their goal to develop an alien virus vaccine before the Russians could, an arrangement that Mulder had no knowledge of. Marita Covarrubias eventually came to hate the Syndicate and consequently chose to co-operate with Mulder as he worked on the X-Files. (TXF: "The Truth") She also helped Mulder because she could and because she believed in him and in his search for the truth. (TXF: "Tunguska")
On November 25, 1996, Mulder went to Marita's apartment at 12:36 pm. She slightly opened her door to him but opted to use a security chain that barred the entrance. When she asked why he had come to her home, Mulder made it clear that he needed her help. He apologized for bothering her but claimed that it was a matter of extreme urgency. Mulder explained that two men had died in relation to a diplomatic pouch which had left Russia and arrived in the United States and wanted to know the reason they had died. Marita finally unchained her door and allowed Mulder into her apartment.
Nearly four hours later, Mulder was sleeping on a chair in her living room while Marita, dressed in her nightgown in another room, made a phone call. After ending the call, she walked into her living room and knelt down beside Mulder. She relayed news to him that the diplomatic pouch had traveled an apex route to the Russian city of Norilsk, in the province of Krasnoyarsk. Mulder started to look for his cell phone to book himself a flight to Krasnoyarsk. When Marita offered to help him, Mulder initially thought she intended to help find his phone. She clarified that she could provide him with cover details, such as a visa and a diplomatic passport. Three minutes later, Mulder had left her apartment with the cover details she gave him. (TXF: "Tunguska")
When Marita was next contacted by Mulder, he told her he needed information on American prisoners of war. They met in the Lincoln Memorial, where Mulder explained that a POW named Nathaniel Teager may have returned from Vietnam and could be killing the men who had left him there. Although Mulder already knew the names of two of those men, Marita informed him that there was a third man but would not reveal his name. (TXF: "Unrequited")
By April 27, 1997, Mulder had a record of Marita's contact details that he kept in his office at FBI Headquarters. Marita later called the Cigarette-Smoking Man, who instructed her to tell Mulder what he wanted to hear. (TXF: "Zero Sum")
In early 1998, Marita discovered that Mulder had been at Skyland Mountain, where several burned bodies had recently been found.
After betraying the Syndicate, Covarrubias called Mulder from a pay phone. She checked that they were speaking on a secure line before revealing that she had been in the former Soviet Union, where an incident similar to the one on Skyland Mountain had occurred. Covarrubias also informed Mulder that she was with someone, a Russian boy infected with the alien virus, who knew that both incidents were connected. She told Mulder where she was, instructed him to go to the same phone booth and to wait for her to call with more directions. Suddenly, however, Marita dropped the phone in shock, abruptly ending her conversation with Mulder. (TXF: "Patient X")
When Mulder next saw Covarrubias, she was running through a deserted corridor at Fort Marlene Decontamination Center in early 1999. Marita momentarily stopped to look at him before quickly continuing on her way. Mulder ran through the corridor in pursuit of Covarrubias and eventually found her hiding in a laboratory. She looked poorly and warned Mulder that the Syndicate would kill her if they were found together.
Marita revealed that the Syndicate were cooperating with a race of aliens that planned to colonize Earth, but were secretly attempting to create a biological weapon to use against the aliens. She claimed that the Syndicate had conducted terrible tests on her as part of their attempt and explained that Cassandra Spender was part of a long-standing program in cooperation with the aliens to create an alien/human hybrid. Mulder suspected that Cassandra Spender was the result of the hybrid program and that she was the first successful alien/human hybrid. Marita warned that if Mulder's suspicion was accurate and the aliens discovered that a hybrid existed, they would begin relentlessly colonizing the planet. (TXF: "One Son")
In 2000, Marita went with Alex Krycek to visit Mulder in his office. They told him that the Cigarette-Smoking Man was dying and explained that his last wish was for Krycek and Covarrubias to find a downed alien craft that Mulder had been looking for and revive the conspiracy.
Mulder and Marita then visited the Lone Gunmen with Scully, Krycek and Skinner. As the Gunmen discussed detection methods to find the UFO, Mulder and the others learned from Marita that the ship was rebuilding itself. (TXF: "Requiem")
In May 2002, Marita defended Mulder at his trial. Although she was initially chosen as his central witness, Marita could not be found and other witnesses were therefore called. In his cell, Mulder was visited by a vision of X, who handed him a note of Marita's address.
After she was eventually found, Marita admitted at Mulder's trial that her hatred of the Syndicate had motivated her to help him. Mulder and other men present at his trial learned that Marita had resisted testifying before the tribunal because the conspiracy continued, only conducted by others. Skinner urged her to prove that the man Mulder had apparently killed, an alien replacement referred to as a super-soldier, was one of the new conspirators. Mulder realized that the conspirators would kill Marita if she admitted that they existed. Mulder consequently insisted that Skinner dismiss Covarrubias. Although Skinner believed that Marita was Mulder's "last best witness", he eventually complied with his client's wishes. Marita looked to Mulder for the first time at the trial and slightly nodded her head in thanks. Mulder returned the gesture before Covarrubias left the room. (TXF: "The Truth")
Enemies
"Cigarette Smoking Man"
Main article: Cigarette Smoking Man
After visiting the Mulder family in the 1960s, the CSM would fondly remember young Fox and Samantha playing. (TXF: "Talitha Cumi")
In October 1973, the CSM visited the Mulder household and may have had a role in choosing Samantha to being abducted. Fox remembered this situation in 1997 while suffering several hallucinations. (TXF: "Demons")
In March 1994, Mulder didn't recognize the CSM in Skinner's office when he was reprimanded by Skinner for possibly abusing Eugene Victor Tooms in an X-File case. (TXF: "Tooms")
In July 1994, the CSM wiretapped Mulder's phone in an attempt to send Mulder on probation and out of the FBI. His attempt failed when Mulder told AD Skinner about the wiretapping. (TXF: "Little Green Men")
In August 1994, Mulder was present at two meetings with the CSM involving Agent Scully's disappearance and the death of Duane Barry. He began to suspect that his partner, Alex Krycek, was working with the CSM after discovering cigarette butts in Krycek's car. (TXF: "Ascension")
In November 1994, shortly after Scully's return, Mulder discovered where the CSM lived. Mulder appeared at the CSM's apartment on 900 W. Georgia Street and attempted to threaten him for information. Mulder failed and, in his disgust, nearly resigned from the FBI. (TXF: "One Breath")
In March 1995, Mulder had a conversation with the CSM in Skinner's office in which the CSM informed Mulder that the truth sometimes needs to be hidden from the public in order to protect them. (TXF: "F. Emasculata")
In April 1995, Mulder came into possession of a top secret MJ document which was being searched for by the CSM and Garnet operatives. The CSM desperately searched for Mulder and nearly killed him when lighting an old refrigeration car on fire. (TXF: "Anasazi")
In November 1995, while searching through silos for a missing UFO, Mulder was discovered by the CSM and taken back to Washington when it was discovered that he knew nothing. (TXF: "Apocrypha")
In the summer of 1996, the CSM was threatened once again by Mulder when visiting Mulder's mother in hospital. (TXF: "Talitha Cumi")
Shortly thereafter, Mulder was told a possible history of the CSM after the Lone Gunmen pieced together information from two publications, 1968's Take a Chance: A Jack Colquitt Adventure and 1996's Second Chance: A Jack Colquitt Adventure, which the Lone Gunmen believed had been written by the CSM. (TXF: "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man")
In October 1997, the CSM allowed Mulder to gain the cure for Scully's cancer from the Advanced Research Project Facility in the Pentagon. He later visited Mulder and helped explain how the cure worked by inserting a microchip in Scully's neck. The CSM later brought a person who he claimed to be Samantha Mulder to meet with Fox at a restaurant. The next day, the CSM attempted to persuade Mulder to work for him, but Mulder turned the offer down. Mulder later believed that the CSM had died after much of his blood was found in his apartment. (TXF: "Redux II")
In May 1998, Mulder was extremely angered to discover that the CSM was alive and seemingly working with Jeffrey Spender. (TXF: "The End")
In August 1998, the CSM was quite perplexed when he discovered Mulder in Antarctica, and even more confused when he discovered that Mulder had the Purity vaccine. (The X-Files Movie)
In early 1999, the CSM had a conversation with Mulder when he found him searching Diana Fowley's apartment. The CSM told Mulder of the events involving his father in 1973, and informed Mulder of the location where the colonization was to begin. (TXF: "One Son")
In October 1999, after being exposed to an alien artifact, Mulder became an alien/human hybrid. When the CSM put him to sleep to work on extracting his alien genetic material, Mulder entered a dream state where he had several conversations with the CSM, and ultimately ended up living in the same neighborhood as he was while alien colonization that Mulder had apparently caused took place outside. (TXF: "The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati")
In May 2002, the CSM secretly sent Mulder the key to the Mount Weather Complex. With this key, Mulder learned of the date set for the colonization. When Mulder once again set eyes on the CSM, he at first believed him to be a ghost. (TXF: "The Truth")
Alex Krycek
Main article: Alex Krycek
Other Lives
In 1996, Mulder came to believe that his soul had been reincarnated on at least two occasions. The first life he believed he had lived was as a Confederate soldier named Sullivan Biddle, who fought during the American Civil War in the 1860s. In 1862, Biddle was photographed wearing his Confederate uniform. In November 1863, he and other Confederate soldiers under the command of General Cleburne witnessed several of their fellow men die in a battle with the Union army on Missionary Ridge and were forced to retreat. By November 25, 1863, Biddle and the soldiers with him had reached a field near Apison House in Hamilton County, Tennessee. That night, the soldiers built an underground bunker there, in which they stored their rifles. By the morning of the next day, a group of nurses, one of whom was Biddle's lover, Sarah Kavanaugh, had been ordered to rendezvous with the troops and had done so. Shortly before the sun rose on November 26, Biddle and his fellow Confederate soldiers battled with the Union army, hiding Sarah Kavanaugh and the other nurses in the bunker. Rather than retreat to Dalton, General Cleburne chose to continue fighting. As Union General Thomas pushed through the Confederate line, Sullivan Biddle was killed. His lover found him with a bloodied face, near the bunker in the field and, holding his body in her arms, she sadly watched him die. She was still holding him after the Union army had left the field. Sullivan Biddle's sergeant was also killed in the battle.
By 1996, Sullivan Biddle's photograph had been added to the Hamilton County Hall of Records. Under hypnosis, Mulder claimed that Scully's soul had been that of his sergeant and that Melissa Riedal-Ephesian, a woman who he and Scully were investigating, had been Biddle's lover, Sarah Kavanaugh.
According to Mulder's recollections, he had also lived as a Jewish woman who had resided in Poland at the time of the Second World War. Together with her son, the woman had seen ghetto streets, shattered glass and bodies of the dead. She had also seen her father, lying dead in the street, but had perceived that his soul had been waiting to be reunited with the woman and her son in their next lives. The woman had been unable to go to her father because Gestapo officers had been standing next to his body. Mulder also claimed to remember that, at one point in his life as the Jewish woman, her husband had been taken away from her and had been sent to a concentration camp.
According to Mulder, his sister, Samantha, had been the Jewish woman's son, Scully had been her father, Melissa Riedal-Ephesian had been her husband and the Cigarette-Smoking Man had been one of the evil Gestapo officers. (TXF: "The Field Where I Died")
Miscellaneous Information
Name
In the FBI Academy, Mulder earned the nickname "Spooky" due to his unconventional theories. (TXF: "Pilot")
A Native American once told him that his first name, Fox, was an Indian name and that he should be called "Running Fox", or "Sneaky Fox". (TXF: "Shapes")
On several occasions, Mulder has used pseudonyms. He wrote an article in Omni under the name "M.F. Luder", an anagram of "F. Mulder". (TXF: "Fallen Angel") He has also twice used pseudonyms related to the name "George Ellery Hale". (TXF: "Little Green Men", "Sleepless")
Appearances in Media
Several cases Mulder became involved in were reported in the media. These documented cases included the capture of Eugene Victor Tooms, who was caught by the FBI in 1993. Shortly thereafter, a newspaper article was printed with a picture of Tooms and the headline, "Suspect Caught in Serial Killings". (TXF: "The End", "Squeeze")
- Although Mulder and Scully were responsible for Tooms' arrest, as seen in the episode "Squeeze", it is unclear whether their involvement in his capture was reported in the newspaper article that can be seen in "The End". It is neither established when the article was printed nor in which newspaper it was featured.
About 1995, a written news story described how Mulder had helped Duane Barry, a man who had escaped from a hospital and had taken several people hostage at a travel agency because he believed he was being called by aliens. According to the report, Mulder was the only person who believed him. (TXF: "Patient X")
- It is not established in the episode whether the story was published in a newspaper, magazine or some other form of written medium and when the story was published. Cassandra Spender claims that she read the news story about three years prior to the episode, which is set in 1998. The incident occurred in 1994 and it is likely that the news story reported the incident shortly after it occurred, with Cassandra Spender's imprecise recollection of "about three years" before 1998 actually referring to 1994, although information given in episodes of The X-Files neither firmly supports nor disproves this theory.
- A newspaper article from the Washington Chronicle, with a picture of Duane Barry and the headline "FBI defuses Hostage Situation-; Captures 'Alien Abductee'", can be seen in "The End". It is unclear if this is the same report that Cassandra Spender refers to in "Patient X", or a different article. It is also not clear if the newspaper is the same as The Chronicle, available in the Washington, D.C. area, that also appears in "Patient X", and whether the article mentions Mulder's role in the FBI's success at defusing the hostage situation and their capture of Duane Barry.
In 1996, writer José Chung intended to write an adaptation of a case that Mulder had investigated with Scully involving two teenagers who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Mulder refused to speak with Chung, however, and tried to convince the author not to write the planned book. When finally published, the book described the character based on Mulder, "Reynard Muldrake", as a "ticking timebomb of insanity" and stated, "Muldrake's quest into the unknown has so warped his psyche, one shudders to think how he receives pleasures from life". (TXF: "José Chung's From Outer Space")
- Reynard is a commonly used name for foxes that feature in works of fiction.
By the end of that year, information about Mulder was readily available on the internet and anyone using the Net could learn practically anything about him. (TXF: "Paper Hearts")
In a televised episode of The Jerry Springer Show, a guest who had given birth to a "werewolf baby" revealed that Mulder had come to her house. Other mentions of Mulder on The Jersey Springer Show revealed that he was an expert on alien abductions.
In 1997, a newspaper article was printed on the front page of the Bloomington Today newspaper, which was distributed in a small town in Indiana. The article announced the arrival of FBI Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully to the town, reporting that the agents were investigating recent bizzare incidents in the area in connection with the Great Mutato, and had the headline, "FBI HUNTS HOMETOWN MONSTER!; Agent Admits Stories: 'BELIEVED TO BE TRUE'". Two later issues of the same newspaper had the headlines, "FBI AGENTS WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN" and "FBI AGENTS SAY MONSTER A 'HOAX'; SHAMELESS PLOY FOR PUBLICITY". (TXF: "The Post-Modern Prometheus")
- These publications may have been only fictional, as almost the entirety of the episode "The Post-Modern Prometheus" could be nothing more than an account of a story from a comic book rather than events set in The X-Files Universe. The episode starts with a shot of a comic book opening and ends with the book closing. Like the interior pages of the comic book but unlike all other episodes of The X-Files, the rest of the episode is entirely filmed in black-and-white. At the end of the episode, live action footage of Mulder and Scully dancing slows to a single frame that becomes a comic book drawing of the agents before a hand closes the last page of the comic book, both of which are in colour. Even if the events of "The Post-Modern Prometheus" are fictional, it is unclear whether any of the events are based on "reality" as it pertains to The X-Files Universe. If so, it is unclear which events are and to what degree.
In 1998, an issue of The Chronicle, a newspaper distributed in Washington, D.C., featured a special report on the Visiting Lecturers' Forum in the Massachusetts Institute. The front page of the newspaper quoted "panelist Fox Mulder" as saying, "ALL THIS CONJECTURE ABOUT LITTLE GREEN MEN -FALSE, DANGEROUS, DELUSIONAL." Mulder was also referred to in the article. (TXF: "Patient X")
As Mulder and Scully continued to investigate the X-Files, their adventures were serialised in film and television. They were usually played by actors, although their voices were used for at least one such project. (TXF: "Hollywood AD", MM: "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me", MM: "Human Essence") The agents also participated in a real investigation that was filmed and later broadcast. (TXF: "X-COPS")
Firearms
While investigating the X-Files, Mulder used his gun sixteen times. (citation required) He himself was shot four times. (TXF: "Beyond the Sea", "Anasazi", "The Goldberg Variation"; The X-Files Movie)
- In the episode "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas", Mulder and Scully shot each other in a hallucination.
Questionable Information
Memories of Sister's Disappearance
At 8:53pm, news about the Watergate hearings was on television while the children played a game of Stratego. Their parents, who were visiting the Galbrands next door, had allowed Samantha to watch a Western movie on another channel. However, Fox told his sister to leave the television as it was, as The Magician would be on after the news at nine o'clock. He reminded Samantha that their parents had left him in charge, but she changed the channel nevertheless. Irritated by his sister, Fox told Samantha to "get out of [his] life". Samantha screamed in frustration, but Fox insisted on watching The Magician.
When the lights suddenly went out and the television lost power, Fox was annoyed that a fuse had apparently blown. Objects in the room, including the Stratego pieces, pictures on a fireplace mantel and a painting of Fox with a black dog, started to shake. The plug that energized the television exploded in sparks. Both children looked towards a window, where strange red and blue lights flashed through a set of blinds. Fox approached the window and looked through. He gazed up at a trembling chandelier above him as a weird glow started to emanate through a door nearby. The doorknob slowly turned and the door creaked open, revealing a brilliant white light beyond. Fox’s eyes opened widely as he recognized a strange-looking silhouette that appeared to be slightly nonhuman. When Samantha screamed, Fox quickly turned to see her suspended in the air. He called her name in horror as she began to float towards the window, surrounded by a shaft of light.
Although Fox managed to retrieve a gun from a case hidden above a high cabinet, Samantha's body continued to move towards and then through the open window. The bright light from the door eventually engulfed him as he was left alone and in shock. (TXF: "Little Green Men")
- This sequence of events may or may not have happened as an adult Fox Mulder is seen waking from a nightmare directly after these events, as if the events had been a part of his dream. The events also contradict Mulder's supposed recollection of the incident that Scully listens to in "Conduit". Like the "nightmare sequence", Mulder's memories also may or may not be historically accurate. Either one, if not both, could simply be the result of Mulder's half-remembered recollections of the incident. The events seen in "Little Green Men" are reconstructed in "Paper Hearts" but it is serial killer John Lee Roche who Mulder sees open the door, not the figure of an alien. Although Roche claimed to have killed Samantha in 1995, it was later proven that Roche was lying. If Mulder thought he saw Roche in 1973 but didn't, is it possible that he may also have thought he saw aliens but didn't?
- On the other hand, Mulder's theory that his sister was abducted by aliens doesn't contradict any of the discoveries he makes about her ultimate fate in "Closure" or any information from the subsequent episodes. As hinted to by the episode's title, the production personnel saw "Closure" as a way to finally admit to Samantha's actual destiny. In "The Truth", Jeffrey Spender claims, in front of a court of law, "Mulder witnessed his sister being abducted by aliens". The other information Spender provides at the trial supports Mulder's discoveries in "Closure". Also, the events seen in the "nightmare sequence" begin with a legend that reads "November 27, 1973; Chilmark, Mass.; 8:53 P.M.". If the events were only a nightmare, it's likely that the legend would not be there as it would be obviously incorrect.
- To further complicate matters, video footage of Mulder's hypnotic regression was seen in "Closure", but his memories matched the events seen in "Little Green Men".
Letters from Mr. Haskall
A man named Duffy Haskell, whose "wife" was an alien abductee, wrote several letters to Mulder describing his "wife"'s multiple abduction experiences and her supposed recollections that aliens had done tests on her. Mulder added the letters to the X-Files but he was also sent a series of very threatening letters from Duffy Haskell, as the President of the Ohio Mutual UFO Network, which Mulder passed on to Assistant Director Skinner. (TXF: "Per Manum")
- It is confirmed in the episode that information in the X-Files reveals that a Mr. Haskell wrote several letters to Mulder describing his "wife"'s abduction experiences, but it is unclear when these letters were sent. Duffy Haskell claims to have sent the letters "about eight years" prior to the episode's setting of early 2001, before Scully was assigned to work on the X-Files with Mulder. This would give a rough date as late 1991 or early 1992. However, Duffy Haskell is later revealed to be a liar and may have lied that he had ever been married to a woman named Kath and/or that he had sent the letters about eight years earlier. In fact, the letters may have been placed in the X-Files at almost any point between 1990, when Mulder discovered the files, and early 2001.
- The recollections of Duffy Haskell's "wife" were extremely similar to Scully's experiences while working on the X-Files - of tests conducted during an abduction that caused a bout with cancer before a remission. It is somewhat surprising that Mulder never mentioned the letters onscreen and that Scully is unaware of them in the episode, unless Duffy Haskell did not send news of his "wife"'s bout with cancer and subsequent remission to Mulder.
- It is unclear when Mulder received the threatening letters or when he gave them to AD Skinner. They are a possible reason why Mulder never learned that Duffy Haskell's wife had suffered from cancer and had then been cured.
Background Information
- Mulder is the middle name of Chris Carter's mother. Mulder's first name, Fox, was the name of Carter's childhood friend.
- In the original script of the pilot episode, Mulder is described as having "longish hair, boyish good looks" and "doesn't look FBI.... If Mulder is difficult, he is not cruel. More mischievous; and intense. The FBI's bad boy in the basement."
- Initially, Lance Guest auditioned for the role of Mulder. However, Randy Stone, who originally cast the roles of Mulder and Scully, insisted that American actor David Duchovny audition for the part. Duchovny was eventually offered the role and consequently starred as Mulder throughout every season of The X-Files. Lance Guest later starred in the episode "Fearful Symmetry" as a separate character. Younger versions of Mulder were played by Marcus Turner in "Little Green Men", aged 12, and by Nick Lashaway in "Dreamland II". Archive footage of Marcus Turner's performance as a 12-year-old Mulder was used in "The Truth".
- Unlike Mulder, Duchovny neither wears ties nor has a habit of eating dried sunflower seeds and is skeptical of UFOs and the paranormal.
- Mulder's habit of eating dried sunflower seeds was first established by Chris Carter, as he is prone to that habit himself.
Appearances
See here for a list of appearances or here for all absences listed.
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| Incomplete! This article is lacking necessary information, and needs attention. Information regarding expansion may be found on the talk page. Feel free to edit this to assist with expansion. |
| Agents Assigned to the X-Files | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Arthur Dales | Fox Mulder | Dana Scully | Jeffrey Spender |
| Diana Fowley | John Doggett | Leyla Harrison | Monica Reyes |
| Members of the Mulder family | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| William Mulder | Teena Mulder | Samantha Mulder | Fox Mulder | William Scully III |
