William Mulder

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William Mulder in 1995.

As a member of the Mulder family, William "Bill" Mulder was the father of Fox and Samantha Mulder as well as the husband of Teena Mulder. He worked for the State Department and later for an offshoot of that organization, known as the Syndicate. (TXF: "Colony", et al.)

[edit] Profile

[edit] Early History

William Mulder had a habit of eating sunflower seeds and, repeatedly, the sound of him doing so, in the Mulder family study, was the first sound that his son heard after waking up from nightmares that influenced Fox Mulder to think he was the only person left in the world. (TXF: "Aubrey")

While working in the State Department, William Mulder found that the choices that needed to be made were highly complicated. (TXF: "Anasazi") He would often travel by road, a fact that stayed in his son's memory.

William Mulder also brought his Syndicate colleagues home, on at least one occasion, and Teena Mulder met them at this point. (TXF: "The Blessing Way")

William Mulder knew the Well-Manicured Man, a Syndicate member, since they had both been young men. (TXF: "Paper Clip")

Another of the men that Mulder worked with in the Syndicate was the Cigarette Smoking Man. Together, they dreamed that computers would someday exist, ignorant of the fact that such technology would one day be home appliances capable of the most technical espionage. (TXF: "Anasazi")

In the 1950s, William Mulder and other men like him were instructed by the government to gather genetic data on the general populace for the purpose of post-apocalyptic identification, due to the threat of nuclear holocaust at that time. Mulder helped collect the data, so that former Nazi scientist Victor Klemper had access to a DNA database of nearly everyone who had been born since 1950, but Mulder strenuously objected once he realized that Klemper was using the medical data in an effort to create a human/alien hybrid. This work was officially known as Operation Paper Clip. (TXF: "Paper Clip")

William Mulder in 1953.

On August 19, 1953, Mulder was a member of a group of Washington officials who traveled to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii to recover information from an irradiated survivor of the Zeus Faber, a submarine whose captain had been infected with the alien "black oil" virus. Despite the ill crewman expressing that he refused to inform the US Navy of what had happened, Mulder assured the survivor that the reason he and his group had come all the way from Washington was to hear the survivor's story and ensure that justice was served. Mulder was then instrumental in questioning the survivor about the incident aboard the Zeus Faber but he looked to the Cigarette Smoking Man – another of the three men who were debriefing the survivor – upon the crewman asking Mulder specifically whether he could be trusted to ensure that the truth was exposed. (TXF: "Apocrypha")

In about 1972 or '73, Mulder was photographed alongside other members of the Syndicate, outside the Strughold Mining Company in West Virginia. He stood on the left of this image, between the Cigarette Smoking Man and Victor Klemper. (TXF: "The Blessing Way", "Paper Clip") Despite being in or near the Strughold Mining complex, William Mulder never went home wearing a miner's cap. (TXF: "Paper Clip")

He ultimately agreed with the CSM that they would have limited contact with each other. (TXF: "Anasazi")

For another photograph, William Mulder posed with his wife, son and daughter. (TXF: "The Blessing Way")

As Teena Mulder found it too difficult to select one of her children, William Mulder instead chose. His wife, however, hated him for making the choice and would continue to hate him for it even after he was dead and buried. (TXF: "Paper Clip")

On the night of 1973 when Samantha Mulder was abducted, William Mulder and his wife had said that Samantha could watch a particular movie that she wanted to see but had left Fox Mulder in charge as they had gone to visit their next door neighbors, the Galbrands. (TXF: "Little Green Men")

Incomplete!

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[edit] Subject of a Dream & Later Life

In 1994, when attempting to persuade autistic murder suspect Roland Fuller to divulge his dreams, FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder claimed to Fuller that he himself had experienced a dream in which his father had temporarily featured. According to Mulder, he had dreamt that he had been swimming in a pool and could see his father underwater but lost sight of him and couldn't find his father when he tried to leave the pool, while an observing man tried to ask him questions that he preferred not to answer. (TXF: "Roland")

In 1995, William Mulder was living in a two-story house in Martha's Vineyard, West Tisbury, Massachusetts.

One afternoon in that year, he received a puzzling phone call from a clone claiming to be Samantha Mulder. He then tried to gather the other members of the family, calling Teena Mulder and unsuccessfully attempting to contact their son. He also contacted FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who finally let Mulder know that his father had been trying to contact him and that there had been a family emergency. William Mulder spoke to his son when Agent Mulder called him. He recalled that he had received a strange call earlier but did not go into further details about it yet, stating that he would know more by the time that his son came to his home.

At night, he greeted Agent Mulder on the porch of his own house, where he was smoking a cigarette and had been sitting alone on a seat in the dark. He initiated a hand-shake with his son and told the younger Mulder that his mother needed some time and had wanted him to come. William Mulder admitted that it was a difficult time and that he appreciated his son's arrival at such short notice. When asked by his son what the emergency pertained to, William Mulder cryptically implied that the certainty he had felt concerning Samantha's disappearance had become a comfort that had allowed him to move on and that he had buried his memories of the incident after so much had been destroyed, never expecting a resolution. Finally, he told Agent Mulder that his mother, who could be viewed from the porch as she talked to another woman, was actually talking to Fox Mulder's sister.

Soon thereafter, the clone commented to Agent Mulder that William Mulder (who the clone referred to as "dad") had seemed like he couldn't think of what to say and had simply sat in the seat where he had been sitting upon his son's arrival. The clone also claimed that, after her abduction, she had been placed with another family and had lost all memory of Samantha's parents. (TXF: "Colony")

After the clone fell off a bridge and into icy water immediately following a hostage trade for Agent Scully, Fox Mulder found it much harder to tell his father what had happened than reporting the same news to AD Skinner. At his son's request, William Mulder visited Fox Mulder's apartment. He was immediately aware, however, that his son had not asked him to come so far just to give him some good news and told his son as much, upon Agent Mulder answering his door to the older Mulder. With a series of questions, William Mulder prompted his son to recount what had happened and wondered whether Fox Mulder realized how the news would affect his mother. His latter query was not directly answered by his saddened son, who instead apologized profusely. William Mulder started to turn away from the apartment but paused to show his son an envelope that the Samantha Series clone had left at his West Tisbury home, having intended the envelope to be given to Agent Mulder. Leaving the envelope on a table before slamming the apartment door shut behind him, William Mulder exited his son's apartment. The envelope that he had delivered led Agent Mulder to discover that the woman he had thought had been his sister had merely been one of a series of clones. (TXF: "End Game")

On April 13, 1995, William Mulder was visited at home by the Cigarette Smoking Man. Mulder was initially surprised to see the CSM at his door and was curious to know why his visitor had come. Even though the CSM stated that he was there on some urgent business, Mulder began to remind him of their agreement regarding limited contact. However, he was interrupted by the visitor, who remarked that their agreement had been made a long time ago and that there had recently been some unforeseen events.

After the CSM entered Mulder's home, Mulder learned from his visitor that his own son had obtained the MJ documents. He took a seat at a table with the CSM, who poured the two men a drink. Mulder remarked that no-one had been meant to know that the files existed and complained that they should have been destroyed. Pondering the situation, Mulder wondered how it was certain that his son had the documents. When the CSM admitted that the man who had stolen the files had given himself up, Mulder exclaimed, "Oh, God." Mulder then responded to the CSM claiming that the Syndicate was maintaining plausible denial by arguing that his own name was included in the files. Changing the topic of conversation slightly, Mulder hoped in askance that the CSM would not harm Agent Mulder and – even though the CSM seemed satisfied with the FBI agent's present nature – William Mulder worried that his own son might learn of his involvement. The CSM regarded Mulder as always having been his own man but encouraged him to deny everything, if his son did indeed find out about his involvement, and left, remarking that it was good to see Mulder and that he looked well.

With another drink in his hand, William Mulder called his son's apartment that night and spoke to his son, urgently insisting that Fox Mulder come to his home as soon as possible. Shortly thereafter, William Mulder greeted his son at his front door with a hug and invited a slightly confused Fox Mulder inside. He closed his front door, locking it securely.

Later sitting with his son, William Mulder remarked that the choices that had needed to be made were now so clear and simple but had been complicated before, although Agent Mulder did not understand what choices the older Mulder was referencing. William Mulder complimented his son by saying that he was smarter than he himself had ever been and stood up to look out a window before turning back to his son. As Fox Mulder was also perplexed by the generalization of this comment, William Mulder clarified that Fox had his own politics and had never "thrown in." The older Mulder then made a comment that his son interpreted as meaning that he was recalling how, in the State Department, he had thrown in and the doctrines of his fellow workers had become his own, making him capable of being held responsible. He warned Fox that he would learn of things and that the words "the merchandise" would come to make sense to him. Admitting that he had been taking some medication, Mulder excused himself from his son's company and headed into his bathroom.

There, William Mulder looked at his own reflection in a mirror and removed a bottle of pills from a wall-mounted cabinet, unaware that Syndicate assassin Alex Krycek was watching him while standing directly behind him. Moments later, Agent Mulder heard a gunshot and jumped at the noise. He raced into the bathroom, to find his father alone, lying on the floor with a trickle of blood running from one corner of his mouth and from an injury on his forehead. A shocked Fox Mulder cradled his father's head in his hands and heard distant tires screech outside. In a hoarse whisper, William Mulder said to his son, "Forgive me". He then died and his upset son crouched over his body, embracing the dead man. (TXF: "Anasazi")

[edit] Aftermath & Legacy

Shortly after William Mulder's death, his son placed his deceased body on a sofa in his living room.

Agent Mulder then called Scully with news of his father's death. Even though he told her that "they" had shot his father (in response to an unrelated question), he also told her – when she asked him who his father had been shot by – that he did not know. Scully began to suspect that Mulder himself had shot his father; he realized this when Scully asked him if they had been arguing but he quickly corrected her and added that his father had been attempting to tell him something. Scully claimed that she now believed Mulder but she was worried that he would nevertheless be held accountable for having murdered his father, as he was unsure of who the real shooter had been and had recently been acting irrationally. Mulder argued that his father had been shot with someone else's weapon but an irritated Scully reminded him that, as an FBI agent, he had access to weapons other than his own. When the two agents then met, Scully was insistent that Mulder rest even though he was intent on searching for his father's killer.

Mulder woke, on the morning of April 14, to discover that Scully had taken his gun to FBI Ballistics. She had done so in an attempt to clear his name but Mulder suspected that she was working against him and had taken his weapon because she still thought he had shot his father. She continued trying to collect evidence to prove Mulder's innocence, however.

That night, Agent Mulder not only fought with Krycek – after finding him outside Mulder's apartment building – but also demanded to know whether he had killed William Mulder. Krycek was not forthcoming with an answer so Mulder brutalized him until Scully – who had discovered that Mulder was being influenced by a drug that was being secretly added to the water supply of his apartment building – approached the two combatants, attempting to convince Mulder to back away from Krycek despite Mulder's insistence that Krycek had killed his father.

Scully shot Mulder and he awoke on April 16, confused as to why she had shot him when it was Krycek who Mulder blamed for having killed William Mulder. Scully explained that – if Agent Mulder's theory was correct and he had shot Krycek – there would have been no way to clear his own name in the murder of his father. Scully also expressed that she was sorry about his father, commenting that she had not had a chance to tell Mulder that she was. She also clarified that she had not been certain that Krycek had shot William Mulder and suggested that the same men who had been adding the drug to Mulder's water supply may have been responsible for killing his father.

Shortly after Mulder was taken to a New Mexico quarry where there was rumored to be evidence of the Syndicate's activities, he received a phone call from the Cigarette Smoking Man, who advised an uncooperative Agent Mulder that his father may have told him things that the CSM warned him not to take at face value. When Mulder asked which things the CSM was referring to, the CSM claimed that Bill Mulder had never been an opponent of the Project and had, in fact, authorized it. The CSM implied that Bill Mulder had committed suicide due to his guilt over having authorized the Project but Agent Mulder instead accused the CSM of having sanctioned the murder, even though the CSM insisted that his group had not been involved in the death. Despite Mulder threatening to expose the Syndicate and their Project, the CSM warned Mulder that, if he exposed anything, he would only be exposing his own father. Mulder abruptly ended this call and was then taken to an area where he found many alien-looking bodies that had actually been human test subjects who were referred to, in the MJ documents, as "the merchandise." (TXF: "Anasazi") These bodies were actually those of test subjects experimented on as part of the Syndicate's struggle to create a human/alien hybrid. (TXF: "Paper Clip")

Mulder subsequently went missing and was presumed to be as dead as his father. (TXF: "Anasazi", "The Blessing Way") After Scully was suspended from the FBI due to having been absent from a meeting in AD Skinner's office, she privately insisted to Skinner that the people who had killed Mulder and his father were not meant to be found despite Skinner stating that the FBI would find the killers. Shortly thereafter, Mulder's body was found and Native American healer Albert Hosteen, who had taken Mulder to the quarry, performed an ancient healing ceremony (known as the Blessing Way) on him, although the healer feared that Mulder's spirit wished to join the spirit of his deceased father and did not want to return to the world of the living.

On the verge of death, Mulder hallucinated that several people whom he had known before they had died were surrounding his body and visiting him, including Deep Throat and his own father. The hallucinatory version of his father said to him;

"Hello, son. I did not dare hope to see you so soon nor ever again hope to broker fate with a life to which I gave life. The lies I told you were a pox and poison to my soul and now you are here because of them. Lies I thought might bury forever a truth I could not live with. I stand here, ashamed of the choices I made so long ago, when you were just a boy. You are the memory, Fox. It lives in you. If you were to die now, the truth will die. And only the lies survive us."

In response to Agent Mulder asking if his sister was with the gathered deceased, the hallucinatory William Mulder replied negatively and told Fox, "The thing that would destroy me, the truth I felt you must never learn, is the truth you will find if you are to go forward." This apparition then drifted out of Mulder's view.

After Scully acquired proof that Kenneth Soona (the same person who had given Mulder the MJ files) had been killed prior to Mulder's disappearance, she took the information to Skinner and, reminding him that he already had the ballistics data from Mulder's father on file, Scully asked Skinner to run that data against the ballistics from Soona's case to see if both men had been killed by the same weapon. If they had been, it would prove that Mulder had not killed his father. In addition, Scully hoped that it might also help the FBI to find the actual killer but Skinner refused her suggestion.

A funeral in William Mulder's memory was subsequently held in the Garden Of Reflection at Parkway Cemetery in Boston, Massachusetts. The attendees of this ceremony included Teena Mulder, Dana Scully and the Well-Manicured Man. During the funeral service, a minister declared;

"We are here to mourn the passing of William Mulder, to join in our grief for our loss but to share also the memories of a man whose life was rich and full and who made his family's and his friends' lives richer and fuller as well. Sadly, I've been informed today by the mother of William's children that his son, Fox, could not be here to join us in this time of sorrow."

Scully told Teena Mulder, at this event, that her son would be okay and, soon thereafter, Fox Mulder privately revealed to his mother that he was indeed still alive. He mentioned that he needed to know more about his father, showing her the Syndicate photograph in which William Mulder appeared. Reminding his mother that his father had repeatedly gone traveling while working in the State Department, Agent Mulder wondered where his father had gone to, on these journeys, but his mother claimed she did not remember and pleaded for him to stop quizzing her. Persisting, Fox Mulder presumed aloud that his father had talked with his mother about the work and the Syndicate members. He asked her if William Mulder had ever brought his workmates home, to which Teena Mulder replied positively but stated that she no longer remembered their names. (TXF: "The Blessing Way")

After Agent Mulder revealed to both Scully and Skinner that he was still alive and AD Skinner showed the two agents that he had a digital copy of the MJ documents, Agent Mulder told Skinner that his "cigarette-smoking friend" had killed William Mulder for the tape and had then killed Mulder himself; Agent Mulder explained that he had been a dead man but had returned. Privately, Scully recounted to Mulder that she had gone to his father's funeral and had told his mother that he was going to be okay.

Soon thereafter, Mulder showed the Syndicate photograph to the Lone Gunmen, pointing out his father. Langly and Byers identified the man standing next to William Mulder as Victor Klemper and Scully wondered why Klemper, a former Nazi scientist, would be in a photograph with Agent Mulder's father, but Mulder was also uncertain why this would be. The agents then visited Klemper at his greenhouse and he immediately recognized Mulder's surname, so Mulder explained that Klemper had known his father. After Klemper predicted that he – like his Jewish test subjects – would soon also die, Mulder admitted that his own father was likewise dead and had been killed by the Syndicate. Mulder suspected that Klemper knew why his father had been killed and Klemper confessed that he believed his own former Syndicate colleagues would kill anyone, if doing so would benefit their work. Mulder demanded to know both the details of this work, mentioning that his own father had been involved in it, and whether his father had also been a murderer, but Klemper was largely unforthcoming with any answers, merely directing the agents to the Strughold Mining Company. Following the agents' visit, Klemper called the Well-Manicured Man with news of the incident, describing Mulder as "the son of one of our old colleagues."

Upon entering the complex, Scully asked Mulder what he thought his father might have been doing there but he again claimed ignorance, recalling that his father had never come home wearing a miner's cap. Scully managed to unlock a large, black, high-tech door on a floor that contained a row of similar doors but, before opening this door, she reminded Mulder that his condition had prevented him from attending his father's funeral and expressed her concern that something behind the door might cast a negative light on his father.

After the agents found that the door led to a mountain vault that contained many medical records of abductees and met with Skinner, the agents argued with Skinner about whether to keep the digital copy of the MJ documents, as Mulder wanted to do, or use it to negotiate for the agents' reinstatement at the FBI and the continuance of their safety, a course of action that Skinner preferred. Mulder mentioned that one of the things he hoped to find in the files was an answer to why the Syndicate had killed his father.

The agents subsequently headed back to Klemper's greenhouse but found that he had already been killed by the Well-Manicured Man, who Mulder realized had known his father as they had been pictured together in the Syndicate photograph. The man confirmed that he had known William Mulder since they had both been young men. The Well-Manicured Man then began to reveal that William Mulder had unknowingly aided Operation Paper Clip. Additionally, the Well-Manicured Man not only asserted that the reason Samantha Mulder had been abducted was that her father had threatened to expose the Project but he also warned Mulder that his own life was in danger as he, like his father had done before him, threatened to expose the Project.

Agent Mulder returned to question his mother about the past and quizzed her, this time, on whether – prior to Samantha's abduction – their father had ever asked their mother if she had a favorite or made her make a choice. Despite initially trying to persuade Fox Mulder to relent, Teena Mulder eventually confessed that she had been unable to choose, that the choice had been made by William Mulder and that she hated him for it both then and now, even though he was now dead. (TXF: "Paper Clip")

After Agent Mulder took Jeraldine Kallenchuk into custody in Hong Kong but was confronted by a gun-wielding Krycek in Kallenchuk's Hong Kong office, Agent Mulder suggested that Krycek use his gun to shoot himself in the head, like he had done to William Mulder. With sarcastic enthusiasm, Kallenchuk likened the situation to "High Noon in Hong Kong."

Krycek managed to flee from Mulder on this occasion but Mulder later encountered Krycek at Hong Kong Airport and assaulted him several times while referring to each blow as a comeback for each of Krycek's victims. As Mulder pointed a gun at Krycek's gut and prepared to attack him with a blow that Mulder intended to be retaliation for his father's murder, Krycek insisted that he hadn't killed William Mulder. Krycek also alleged that he was unaware of the real killer but Mulder reminded him that, either way, he was a liar. (TXF: "Piper Maru")

Shortly thereafter, Mulder called the Syndicate's headquarters and spoke to the Well-Manicured Man, to whom Mulder described Krycek as the killer of his father. Mulder and the Well-Manicured Man then arranged a meeting at which the Well-Manicured Man realized aloud that Mulder was looking for Krycek to kill him in revenge and remarked that Mulder, certainly, had no doubt that everyone could be gotten to. (TXF: "Apocrypha")