Mulder

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"On the net, Mulder, he can find out practically anything about you."
Scully in "Paper Hearts."

Facts and figures / Life before the X-Files / Character Traits

Facts and figures

Full Name: Fox William Mulder

Physical stuff: (Apart from the obvious) His file in "Unusual Suspects" puts his eye colour as green, his weight as 170 pounds, and his height as 6 foot. [In the computer game, Mulder's weight is given as 168 pounds, and his eyes as hazel, as most fanfics seem to agree on.]

Date of Birth: October 13, 1961 (date from "Paper Clip," replacing the earlier birth date).

Family:

Parents: Bill Mulder (died April 14th 1995) and Teena (This name is given in "Kitsunegari" for the very first time, after years of speculation. The spelling is confirmed in the computer game). Teena's maiden name was Kuipers, from Mulder's records in "Dreamland II. His parents divorced at some time after 1973.

Sister: Samantha Ann Mulder, born November 21, 1965. Disappeared from thefamily home November 27 1973, while Fox was baby-sitting. (She was called Samantha T. Mulder and given a different date of birth in "Conduit," but official word is that the name and date in "Paper Clip" replaces this, even though "The End" shows us that original file with the "T" in it.)

Marital status: When we see his personel file, he is shown as "single" in 1989 ("Unusual Suspects"), and "unmarried" in "Kill Switch," although he is seen wearing a wedding ring in both "Unusual Suspects" and "Travellers," set in 1990. Theories abound.

Childhood Address: Born and brought up in Chilmark, on Martha's Vineyard (his file in Dreamland II puts his place of birth as Chilmark, which must have been a home birth, given the lack of medical facilities in that tiny place. Anyway...) Address at time of Samantha's abduction given in "Conduit" as 2790 Vine Street, Chilmark Address given on Samantha's smallpox vaccination certificate ("Paper Clip") is 62 Greer Street, Martha's Vineyard. (Needless to say, neither of these addresses exist)

Current Address: Apartment 42, 2630 Hegal Place Alexandria, VA 23242 ("Small Potatoes" and "Monday").

Scully has a key to Mulder's apartment ("End Game," where we see that she has labelled it "Mulder" - and other episodes). He was living here back in 1990, too ("Travellers") [In the novel "Goblins" his house is stated to be close to the river.]

Phone number: (202) 555-9355. Also carries his cell phone as a constant companion, causing his partner to tell him he'd lapse into catatonic schizophrenia if he was parted from it. [In the computer game, his cellphone number is 202 555-0160]

Answering Machine message: Many and various, once even changing from one call to the next, despite the fact that he hadn't gone home in the interim ("Colony") Usually fairly laconic. "This is Fox Mulder. Please leave a message," and such like.

Badge Number: JTT047101111 ("F Emasculata")

Computer Password: TRUSTNO1 ("Little Green Men")

Social security number: (from Dreamland II) 123-32-1321

Pseudonyms: Wrote an article in "Omni" about the Gulf Breeze sighting, under the name M. F. Luder. When separated from Scully, used tocontact her under the name "George Hale." Jose Chung refers to him as "Reynard Muldrake," Reynard meaning Fox. In "3" he uses the name "Marty Mulder" when contacting the blood banks, and the name "Marty" is also used on the message from the phone sex line in "Small Potatoes." In "Pine Bluff Variant" he uses the name Mr. Kaplan when staying in a motel undercover.

Eye Color: Hazel, by general concensus and by close scutiny of photos (oh, what a chore!)

Life before the X-Files

Childhood:

His first words were "JFK" when aged 11 months. ("Musings...")

In "Home" he tells Scully about his memories of playing "all-day pick-up games" of baseball with his sister, as well as taking their bikes to the beach, and eating baloney sandwiches. The family also had a swing, as Samantha fell off it and broke her collar bone. Young Fox climbed trees and once came face to face with a praying mantis and had a "praying mantis epipheny" in which he screamed (not a girly scream) at the thought that something so horrible could exist, and has hated insects ever since, except when they come complete with a glamourous entomologist. The family also made home movies of the children playing, and "Dreamlad II" shows young Fox dressed up as Mr Spock from Star Trek, though suffering somewhat from ears that keep falling off.

The family also had a summer house in Quonochataug, where the children would play on the grass while Bill Mulder and CSM went water-skiing on the water below.

He played right-field in baseball ("Blood"), and was wearing a basketball jersey when his sister was abducted. At home, he played (and won) "Stratego" with his sister, and liked watching "The Magician."

He had at least one friend. When his friend's house burnt down, he helped guard it. (See the fear of fire section, below.

Childhood ambitions: In "Space," Mulder is very excited about the thought of meeting Colonel Belt, the space shuttle's project director and former astronaut. "You didn't want to be an astronaut when you were a kid?" he asks, when Scully wonders what he's doing. "I guess I missed that phase," she says. When they enter Belt's office, Mulder tells him he's a "big fan" and tells him it's an honor to meet him - that he stayed up all night when he was 14 and watched his space walk. Later, when they have watched the shuttle launch, she tells Scully, "I have to admit that fulfilled one of my boyhood fantasies."

Pre-X-Files life and career

After much wrestling with these facts, I've come to the conclusion that Mulder's pre-X-Files life is such a mess that it needs a complete section all to itself. Some of the facts we have are directly contradictory. I advise writers to pick and choose - use whatever fact supports the view you want to have of Mulder's background, and conveniently forget the rest.

From the evidence, I believe that the most likely timeline is as follows:

Oxford from 1983-1986:

• Supporting evidence:
  • These dates have been explicitly stated in episodes: In "Ususual Suspects," we see Mulder's file which says he was at Oxford between 1983 and 1986. The Official Guide (book) says this, too, as does the file in Dreamland II.

  • It also fits with real life, in that an Oxford undergraduate degree in psychology would take three years.

• Problems
  • What did he do before 1983? He was 22 in 1983, so presumably had left school several years earlier. In the "Pilot" he tells Scully that he went to Oxford as soon as he could leave home. Oxford has no age limits on entrance (a 12 year old was recently admitted), though, at that time, British students would normally start at Oxford in the September after they were 19 (a year older than other British universities). For Mulder this would be September 1981, though, as mentioned above, he could well have gone earlier - September 1980 or 1979.

    One solution would be for him to have done only a postgraduate degree or a second BA at Oxford, and have gone somewhere else before. One of the teenage novelisations of the episodes has him pursuing a previous degree in an American university (I forget which) before going to Oxford, but this doesn't show up on his education record in "Kill Switch."

  • Phoebe says "did you leave you sense of humor in Oxford ten years ago" implying he either left Oxford, or split up with Phoebe, around 1983- ish. However, "ten years" could be rather vague - an estimate.

  • Just to further complicate things, the Official Guide book, on the same page as saying that Mulder went to Oxford between 1983 and 1986, says he got an "AB in psychology" from Oxford in 1982 (impossible, actually. It's a BA in Oxford, though I'll let this one go.) and then graduated from the FBI Academy in 1984. Let's just ignore this one, shall we?

  • More real-life stuff: To reallywork at doing profiles, Mulder would have absolutely required a doctorate, according to John Douglas, of the FBI's Investigative Support Unit. In fact, if it wasn't for those annoying "1983-1986" dates that appear in the episodes, the theory that would make most sense would be for Mulder to have done an undergraduate degree from around 1980 to 1983, then done a doctorate until 1986 or so. (There is no Oxford masters degree.)(Editor's Note: Uh, yes there is, according to the Oxford site.) An Oxford doctorate is 100 percent research, and thus takes as long as you want it to take - 3 or 4 years is normal, but 5 isn't that unusual. (There is nothing at all like a year's residency, or working with patients.)

  In conclusion, we are stuck with these 1983-1986 facts from Mulder's record in various episodes, but they don't really make sense. They leave several years before 1983 unaccounted for, and leave Mulder without post-graduate qualifications in a field in which he would need it. My own feeling is that there are sufficient problems with the 1983-86 dates that they can be ignored, if a story requires something different.

Quantico (the FBI Academy) in 1986

• Supporting evidence: is the date given in Mulder's file in "Kill Switch" and "Unusual Suspects." (We also know that he graduated top of his class, and that Skinner and the other bosses were talking about him and expecting great things of him while he was there.)

  The Quantico course is four months long, by the way. In Dreamland II we see that Mulder joined the FBI on 24th October 1986. It's not clear if this is the date he graduated from Quantico, or the date he started his course.

• Problems: come from that pesky thing called real life again. In real life, FBI agents would not be recruited straight out of university, but would need a considerable amount of experience in a relevant field of work first.

The Behavioral Science Unit with Patterson, 1986-1988/9?

This is speculation only, and is not clear cut at all.

• Supporting evidence:
  • Mulder certainly worked under Patterson for some time in his career. However, there is no sign of Patterson in 1990 (Unusual Suspects), or in the Barnett case (1988 or 89). While profiling at the BSU, Mulder wouldn't have worked as a normal field agent with a partner, yet he did at some point have a partner - Jerry Lamanna. (John Douglas makes quite clear that profilers don't work cases like that. They profile dozens at a time, but don't go into the field with a partner.) This suggests that Mulder's pre-X-Files career was in two parts: some time with Patterson, profiling, and some time with Reggie Purdue and the others, doing cases.

  • Conversely, Mulder has a hole in his FBI career between 1986, and 1988, when did his first case as a field agent. His first case as a field agent was late 1988 or early 1989, but by May 1989 (Unusual Suspects) he has lots of commendations. Clearly he must have done something for the FBI. Having him working with Patterson in these years nicely fills the gap.

  • In "Tooms," Mulder says he worked profiling serial killers for three years.

  • In "Grotesque," set in early 1996, Scully says to Patterson "is this some payback for what happened eight years ago - because Mulder quit the ISU?" This would suggest that Mulder quit working for Patteron in 1988 or thereabouts. Okay, so this would mean that Mulder was only two years with Patterson, and not three, but dates are generally used rather vaguely. Maybe he left early in 1989, or something...

  • In "Pilot," Scully mentions the monograph Mulder wrote in 1988, which caught Monty Props. This could very easily be the work of a profiler with Patterson.

• Problems:
  • Real-life, again: Profilers would never be recruited straight out of the Academy. In reality, a newly trained agent would always spend their first two years on probation. in one of the field offices before being transferred to their first real post. Maybe Mulder was just a genius, though...

  • Mulder profiled Roche in 1990 (Paper Hearts), and, by this dating, he would have stopped doing profiles by now. Maybe everyone knew that he was good at profiles, though, so he tended to get called on to do them, even after he'd left Patterson.

Violent crimes with Reggie Purdue etc. 1988/9-1991/2

• Supporting evidence:
  • In "Young at Heart" Mulder says he worked on his first case - the Barnett case - "aged 28 - wet from the Academy." Aged 28, by the birth date as it stood in the first season, would be October 1988 - October 1989, but the revised birthdate would put it a year later. However, Barnett "died" in prison in September 1989, and was in prison long enough to make a close friend, so the Barnett case was probably late 1988 or early 1989.

    Now, the dates we have (that Mulder joined the FBI in 1986) mean that this can't really have been his first case. However, what if it's his first case as a normal field agent, as opposed to working for Patterson? In the context of the Barnett case, "wet from the Academy" could mean a newcomer to actually working in the field. (The ISU is located at the Academy anyway.)

  • In 1990 (Unusual Suspects) Mulder is still reporting to Patterson, and is doing normal cases, not profiles.

  • The Official Guide (book) has Mulder joining the FBI in 1986, and then has his joining Violent Crimes in 1988, sugesting that he did do something else between these two dates.
• Problems:
  • As mentioned above, Mulder profiled Roche in 1990 (Paper Hearts), and, by this dating, he would have stopped doing profiles by now. Maybe everyone knew that he was good at profiles, though, so he tended to get called on to do them, even after he'd left Patterson.

Whatever timeline you take, Mulder was an outstanding agent before the X-Files ("commendations out the ying yang" - Unusual Suspects. Commendations apparently include an "Award for Public Service" at some point.) "Kill Switch" reveals that he graduated from Quantico "with honors," having previously obtained his degree at Oxford "summa cum laude," which is also a good thing. Dreamland II goes further, saying he was top of his class in both Quantico and Oxford. In the Pilot episode Scully says she's heard he's "brilliant." In "Tooms," Skinner says he had been talked about even while at the Academy, and Reggie Purdue ("Young at Heart") says he was always "three jumps ahead" of everyone else. "It was scary, Mulder. Everybody said so," he says, telling Mulder everyone at the Bureau had really big plans for him. Even Patterson, who doesn't like Mulder, says he's a "cracked genius," while Scully has heard he was the "fair-haired boy" when he started working at the ISU.

Regarding his private life before he discovered the X- Files, Unusual Suspects reveals that, in 1990, he was already living in the apartment we see him in today, he was wearing a wedding ring (see below for a discussion on this) and he apparently smoked. In 1991, when he started the X-Files, he had a girlfriend, Diana Fowley, who worked with him on some cases. See below for more on her.

Starting the X-Files

In May 1989 (Unusual Suspects) Mulder was a normal FBI agent, until he was sprayed with an experimental drug that caused hallucinations and paranoia. He started raving about aliens. At this point he had never thought about conspiracies and things, hence his incredulous "what?" as Byers begins to tell his tale.

The following month he underwent hypnotic regression to find out what happened to Samantha, suggesting there is some relationship between the two. Did the gas make Mulder think about aliens for the first time - manufacture that image? Is the whole alien thing in Mulder's memory all based on this? Or did the gas cause hallucinations in general (more likely, I think, unless the gas is very clever) and Mulder's happened to be in the form of aliens because that image was somewhere in his subconsious anyway, though whether by real memory or by some earlier implanation by hypnosis as suggested in Gethsemene.

Anyway, the X-Files themselves seem not to have been opened until the end of 1991, suggesting that Mulder has a good 2 years as an agent in Violent Crimes, working on his paranormal theories in his spare time, and, perhaps, getting more and more impatient with his work and nagging on and on to be freed up to investiagate what he really wanted to.

("Kill Switch" says that Mulder started the X-Files in 1990, but this contradicts both "Musings..." (the opening of the X- Files is discussed as a new and recent problem at the end of 1991) and the Pilot episode itself when Scully is assigned in March 1992, with Mulder's obtaining of the X-Files again described as "recent.")

At the time he started the X-Files, in 1991, he had a girlfriend called Diana Fowley, who was an FBI agent with knowledge about, and belief in, parapsychology. They did a few cases together. She later went abroad after they split up.

Character Traits

In this section, I have tried to limit myself to things that are fairly objective - ie things that can be listed rather than things that require in depth character analyses. My aim is to provide the raw material with which people can use for their own analyses.

Samantha's abduction is of course central to Mulder's character. This can be found on the page about Mulder's family.

1. When has Mulder ditched Scully?
2. Does Mulder have nightmares?
3. Does Mulder suffer from insomnia?
4. Is Mulder always getting hurt and hospitalised?
5. Is Mulder scared of fire?
6. Does Mulder believe everything?
7. Is Mulder Jewish?
8. Does Mulder like pornography?
9. Does Mulder have a photographic memory?
10. Are Mulder's ties lurid and wacky?
11. Is Mulder color blind?
12. Does Mulder keep dropping his gun?
13. What does Mulder eat and drink?
14. Mulder's women
15. Does Mulder have a life?
16. What does Mulder like to be called?
17. Is Mulder ever suicidal?
18. Other stuff

The Answers

1. When has Mulder ditched Scully?

   This is a long section, so I have put it on a separate page.

2. Does Mulder have nightmares?

   Childhood dreams nightmares: In "Fire" he explains his fear of fire, and says that "for years" he used to have nightmares about being trapped in a burning building. It's spoken in the past tense, as if he no longer has the nightmares, but he clearly is still scared of fire, so it's possible to read it as him being defensive, not wanting to tell Scully he still has such nightmares.

   In "Aubrey" he tells Scully how he used to have nightmares and wake up in the middle of the night convinced he was the only person left alive in the world. Only the sound of his father crunching sunflower seeds told him it was only a dream.

   Adult dreams and nightmares

   He tells "Roland" about a dream he had "last night" in which he was swimming in a pool, trying to reach his father. Another man was there too, asking him questions he didn't want to answer. He wanted to find his father, but the water stung his eyes. In the original script it was his sister he was trying to reach, making this a fairly obvious Samantha abduction dream, with the "other man" being someone - his father, the police, the FBI or whatever - asking him about her disappearance. With the substitution of his father instead of his sister all sorts of possibilities open up. Is this a recurring childhood anxiety about losing Samantha, and his father not supporting him enough when he was asked questions about it? Why can't he find his father? Or is the whole thing made up, as he needed to confide a dream in order to win Roland's trust and get him to do the same?

   In "Little Green Men," Mulder relives his sister's abduction in a dream. He starts awake at the end, and buries his head in his hands. His face is damp, but it isn't clear if that's tears or sweat.

   In "Aubrey," Mulder says to BJ Morrow "I've often felt that dreams are answers to questions we haven't yet figured out how to ask." Scully repeats this line to him in "Paper Hearts."

   Mulder shows Scully a video in "Our Town," in which an insane man talks about being taken away by the fire demons. He says he saw it in college and it gave him nightmares. "I thought nothing gave you nightmares," Scully says. "I was young," Mulder replies.

   "Grotesque" shows a Mulder nightmare. Mulder is in Mostow's studio, in the darkness, surrounded by the gargoyle sculptures, just as he has been so often in his waking life. Suddenly he is knocked to the floor by the figure that chased him the previous night, and looks up to see Paterson and Nemhauser looking down at him dispassionately. Just as his face is slashed deeply with the craft knife, he wakes up, fully clothed and covered with sweat, on his couch.

   "Paper Hearts" is very much centred around Mulder's dreams. He dreams of a red light leading him towards the bodies of little girls. The suggestion is that these dreams are somehow being put into his head by Roche, the killer - but also that Roche has been able to see into Mulder's own existing nightmares, such as of Samantha's abduction. When he dreams of her abduction, he stands in the dream and repeats the lines of dialogue with a very weary air as if thinking "not again!," suggesting it is a recurring nightmare. He awakens screaming "Samantha!" Elsewhere in the same episode he dreams of finding a young Samantha, and hugs her, smiling with joy.

   Please note that the following is speculation only: A few people on the newsgroup have speculated that the whole of "Post-Modern Prometheus" was one of Mulder's dreams (thought not, apparently, much of a nightmare), thus explaining the rather curious way he can appeal to the writer at the end and get a happy ending put on the story.

   Also, the "Kill Switch" vision, while really an externally imposed virtual reality thing, can be said to be a dream, if you like, especially if we assume that the computer thing was somehow drawing on Mulder's subconscious in order to create the experience. Also, when Mulder sees the vision of the blonde busty nurses stroking his body, while he is strapped down to a bed, he calls it a "good dream." Hmm...

   "Triangle" is also (probably) a glimpse into Mulder's subconscious. While a few people wonder if the whole thing really did happen (reincarnation explaining why so many people in 1939 look just like Mulder's acquaintances) most take it as a dream. (At the end, Mulder has a bruise just where "Scully" hit him, in 1939, but it is to be assumed that he was floating around lots of wreckage. People often incorporate real noises and things into dreams, so maybe his dream took all the bruises and bashes he was suffering and turned them into beating from Germans, and from Scully.)

   As a dream, it can reveal interesting things about how Mulder sees the people around him. Spender and CSM as evil; Skinner looking like an enemy but turning out good in the end; Kersh as independent but out for himself; Scully as heroic, feisty and desirable.

   But did Mulder also dream the Scully scenes, set in 1998? Scully and the LGM did find Mulder, but did it happen as we saw it? Scully was very hyperactive, rushing around utterly focused on finding Mulder, acting unlike her normal restraint. This is rather like she was in Mulder's version of "Bad Blood" and the dream Scully in "Kill Switch." If Mulder dreamt this too, it shows he sees Scully as heroically saving him, brooking no opposition. It also shows that he sees CSM, Spender, Fowley and (maybe) Kersh as all in league against him - Mulder's paranoia showing itself again.

   On more sure ground, "Dreamland I" shows, once again, Mulder dreams about Scully. When stuck in a MIB's body, he falls asleep in front of soft porn, and calls out for Scully in his sleep.

3. Does Mulder suffer from insomnia?

   "Pilot" has him out jogging at some utterly unearthly hour of the morning. Scully is up too, working, though she tells him she's not losing any sleep over the case. Not insomnia, as such, but a severe case of being up and bouncing with energy at some ungodly hour.

   He is frequently up all night on cases, but that's not so much insomnia as hyperactivity, perhaps. However, in "3," when he doesn't bother checking into a hotel, he says he no longer sleeps at all - presumably a reaction to Scully's disappearance, and patently untrue anyway, as we see him asleep later in the same episode.

   In "War of the Coprophages," he called Scully complaining that he couldn't sleep, due to imagining cockroaches up his nose. This can be taken either as showing he isn't a good sleeper, or as showing that he usually can sleep. In "Clyde Bruckman" he doesn't sleep, due to Clyde's gruesome bedtime story, and looks pretty rough the next morning.

   This whole sleeping on the couch thing: I've been told by insomniacs that a good method they use to fall asleep in to slowly relax in front of the television, letting sleep slowly take them, rather than actually going to bed. Mulder is seen asleep, fully clothed, in front of the television several times. In "Tooms" we know that he spent the whole night there, right through to morning. He does the same, in "Dreamland I," when stuck in a MIB's body. He falls asleep in front of soft porn on the TV, calls out Scully's name, and is found by his "wife" in the morning, with the TV still on. (Of course, he could very well be sleeping on the couch to avoid having to get into bed with someone who is really another man's wife, even though she thnks Mulder is a her husband.)

   He apparently doesn't even have a bed. He is seen sleeping all night on the couch several times (Tooms is just one example) and there is an alarm clock beside the couch, on a small round table to its left (End Game). However, Mulder is seen in bed in "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," though much debate has centred on whether this is really his bed, or just Chung's imagining. I have read that Chris Carter has said this is really Mulder's bed (though I'm afraid I don't have the source.). Certainly the decor (cream walls, dark brown wooden strip) is the same as the rest of his apartment complex. However, if this was his real bedroom, he must have got rid of the bed and filled the room up with junk within the next year (as it is in "Dreamland II"), when Eddie Van Blundht muttered "where do I sleep?" after surveying Mulder's apartment.

   In season six, though, the person who assumes Mulder's body (in Dreamland) empties out the bedroom and puts in a waterbed, with pillars and canopies and a mirrored ceiling. At the end of the episode, everything goes back to normal, as if nothing in the episode ever happened, but the waterbed (somehow) survives. [Editor's Note: It appears to me that anything that happened out of the "line of fire" of the time warp, so to speak, wasn't there to get returned to normal, so it didn't change. The melded pennies, the bed, and gee, what about Skinner's secretary's romp with Mulder at his apartment? I bet she remembers that!] Although Mulder is pretty vague about how he got it ("it was a gift," he mumbles vaguely. So who does he think it was a gift from, eh?), he sleeps on it, up until "Monday," anyway, some months later, when he is made horribly late for a meeting by a waterbed leak. The following night he sleeps on the couch again.

4. Is Mulder always getting hurt and hospitalised?

   Here is a catalogue of Mulder's injuries. So this won't take all day, I've missed out all those occasions he's bopped on the head, falls over and bounces up again with no ill-effect:

   "Deep Throat": Strapped to a gurney, forcibly injected with drugs, has his memory drained.

   "Jersey Devil:" A beast woman tries to eat him. Ends up treated in the back of an ambulance.

   "Fallen Angel": Bopped over the head with a gun. From the fact that the screen goes black suddenly at the same time as the impact, I'd assume he's knocked unconscious. Then, at the end, he gets thrown across the room by an alien force and end up on crutches. Two bops for the price of one in this episode.

   "Fire": A little smoke inhalation, requiring him to be half-carried down stairs, oxygen mask clutched to his face, and pass out for the rest of the night.

   "Beyond the Sea:" A small matter of a bullet in the thigh, which, by the fact that the blood spurts onto the white cross above him, seems to go through an artery. It's enough for Scully to have a very real fear that he might die.

   "Darkness Falls": Mulder and Scully both end up in the hospital in a very serious condition. Scully is in a worse condition than Mulder in this one.

   "The Erlenmeyer Flask": An interesting encounter with green "blood" leads Mulder to suffer from painful-looking eyes, nose and mouth. When Scully gets him back, he's unconscious, or, at least, barely conscious.

   "Little Green Men": After seeing the aliens, Mulder is unconscious right through the night until Scully comes.

   "Blood": Slashed in the arm by a woman under the influence of a killer microwave oven.

   "Aubrey": Bopped on the head rather hard with a fire extinguisher, then nearly killed with a razor blade.

   "Colony" and "End Game:" Hit by a car, winded, and suffers serious damage to the cell phone. Then hospitalised for smoke inhalation, before getting released, then going off to get severe hypothermia and blood-thickening alien retroviruses. This is the big one. His heart even stops. Lovely!

   "Fearful Symmetry": Knocked unconscious by a combination of gorilla attack and close encounters with a UFO. Still unconscious the nest morning when Scully finds him, but runs off hale and hearty as soon as she calls for the paramedics.

   "Dod Kalm": Nearly dies again, looking about 110 years old. Once again, only just saved in the nick of time by Scully's research, as written in her log.

   "Anasazi" trilogy: Poisoned by his own water supply and ends up with a high fever. Shot in the shoulder by Scully. Nearly frazzled to death in a burning boxcar, then spends a day out in the desert. Life saved only by Navajo mysticism.

   "Clyde Bruckman": Cut in the hand by the killer. This is small fry indeed.

   "Nisei" and "731": Beaten into unconsciousness by Red-Haired Man, who also tries earlier to garotte him. Ends up in hospital, though we don't see that.

   "War of the Coprophages": Er... cuts his fingers. Does require medical attention, though.

   "Grotesque": Slashed on the face with a craft knife, and requires medical attention.

   "Piper Maru" and "Apocrypha": Hospitalised after crashing into a ditch and witnessing a bright light. Somewhat upstaged by Skinner here, though.

   [The computer game: Possessed by the black oil, and writhes in agony as if leaves him. He ends up unconcsious, covered in oil. Before that, he was kidnapped, tied up, and bundled into a car trunk for a long journey from Seattle to Alaska.]

   "Talitha Cumi" and "Herrenvolk:" Beaten up by X and the Alien Bounty Hunter, who drives a car at him then throws him hard against the car. Ends up muttering incoherently, in shock, though still on two feet.

   "Teliko": Felled by a poisoned dart in his neck, paralysed and dragged through dark passages. What fun!

   "Tunguska" and "Terma": Whipped into unconsciousness. Injected in the back of his neck into unconsciousness. Glooped by black stuff into unconsciousness. Crashes a car with lots of blood everywhere, then spends the night unconscious in the undergrowth. Blown up by an oil well. Still ends up with only one small scrape to show for this.

   "Gethsemene": Hmm..... He appears to have half his head blown away by a self-inflicted gunshot wound, which is, perhaps, taking the definition was "hurt and hospitalized" a little too far. But it's not him, not really, so that's okay.

   "Unusual Suspects" (set in 1989): Sprayed with an interesting gas, and ends up naked and raving. Confined to the hospital in five-point restraints, but those evil people at 1013 won't let us see this rather interesting sight and we just have to hear about it.

   "Detour": Attacked by a tree-like creature and cut in the face and shoulder/chest area. Later he is shivery and cold (in shock, Scully says) and she has to snuggle him close to keep him warm. Luckily (or unluckily, depending on your viewpoint), it doesn't rain sleeping bags. He gets medical treatment the next day, but doesn't need hospitalisation and is still on two feet at the end.

   "Kill Switch": Well.... After being shocked by a killer computer, he is hospitalised, described as a "crispy critter." His rather radical "treatment" involves chopping both his arms off..... Yes, it's not a real hospital, but a virtual simulation, designed to torture him into revealing information. In reality, though, he does receive the shocks, so it presumably hurt in some way in real life too

   "Pine Bluff Variant": Broken finger. When it's broken, he yells and cries out, but later in the same episode he is very stoical when facing death. Scully deals with his finger, taping it up, so he doesn't go to the hospital.

   "Folie a Deux": Hospitalized, but it's in the psychiatric ward, after his "delusion."

   The Movie: Hospitalized after a gunshot to the head, though it only grazes him. It's a Scully special - that graze to the left temple that she always gets. It does, though, put him on an nasal cannula for oxygen, and he loses consciousness the second he's shot. Much later, after escaping hosptial and running around and hanging off things, he faints. About time too, perhaps.

   "Triangle": He starts the episode floating upside-down in the sea, and ends up in hospital, with an IV, though able to sit up in bed. In the dream sequence, he gets quite a lot of beatings - perhaps his subconscious's attempts to explain away the bruises from wreckage hitting him.

   "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" - Shot in the chest - but it's not real.

   "Agua Mala": attacked by sea monster, almost suffocated, and ends up with weals on neck.

   "Monday": shot in the chest, but, once again, it's not real.

   Digression: Mulder's attitude to hospitals: Fanfic frequently shows Mulder as being a bad patient, refusing to take his medication and always desperate to leap out of bed against medical advice. Is there any basis in the show for this?

   Well, we have little data, but several hints.

   "Jersey Devil" and "Fearful Symmetry" both show him running away from paramedics in order to react to a pressing lead on a case.

   "Grotesque" shows him utterly unresponsive to a paramedic's advice on how to deal with his injury, and stomping off the second the paramedic has done the bare minumun necessary. But then he was not supposed to be acting normally in this episode.

   At the end of "Darkness Falls," he is out of bed, still attached to machines and things, and asking about Scully. (As in all the fanfics where the less hurt one gets out of bed, against medical advice, in order to go to the bedside of the more hurt one....)

   "Kill Switch," though.... Now, if it is derived from Mulder's subconscious, then the nice little hospital scene the computer put Mulder into is quite revealing (Note: At the DC Expo, Rob Bowman, who directed this episode, talked as if this whole scene definately came out of Mulder's mind). The doctors and nurses are evil, pretending to comfort him but trying to chop him up. The only doctor he wants is Scully - "my doctor, Dr Scully." (I've always loved that little scene in "Anasazi" when Scully patches him up and looks after him, and he says, in a little voice, "thank you for looking after me.") Thus speaks a thousand fanfics, when a hurt Mulder refuses hosptial on the grounds that Scully is all the doctor he needs.

   But it is perhaps to be assumed that, even if he was okay with hosptals before "Kill Switch," this experience will make him rather less happy with them in the future.

   In "Folie a Deux," though, when he is in a psychiatric ward under what he is sure are false pretences, he is very placid even when he is restrained, and when being injected with some drug.

   Interestingly, people with medical experience have debated what was on Mulder's wrist at the end of "Triangle." Some have speculated that it's a sort of wandering tag, which works on a radio frequency and sets off an alarm when the patient wanders over a set point. They use them for old wandering patients, and patients known to get out of bed before they're supposed to. Given Mulder's sneaking out of hospital in the movie (for very good reasons, of course, since he had to get Scully back) it would be a lovely touch if they'd fitted a tag to stop him wandering.

5. Is Mulder scared of fire?

   In "Fire" he says, "I hate fire - hate it - scared to death of it." He explains how when he was a child his best friend's house burnt down and he had to spend the night in the wreckage to help guard it from looters. For years afterwards he had nightmares about being trapped in a burning building.

   Does he face and overcome his fear in "Fire"? He certainly intends to ("sooner or later a man's got to face his demons"), but freezes in terror the first time he encounters the flames, even though he believes the safety of two boys depends on him carrying on. Later, when things start bursting into flames around them in the room, he seems to panic, lashing madly at the flames while everyone else.... well, stands uselessly doing nothing. He does manage to walk through fire to save the children in the end, though, so that's okay.

   What about later episodes? In "Firewalker" he walks into a volcano without looking particularly terrified, and in "Hell Money" he looks without shuddering at the bodies of people burnt alive in crematoria ovens. And as for "Anasazi," being about to die trapped underground in a pile of dead aliens must be a rather traumatic experience by itself, even without the addition of fire, yet we are shown nothing at all about his feelings after the boxcar started burning.

   So, is Mulder still scared of fire? It's up to you. David Duchovny has said that he has no idea whether Mulder successfully overcame his fear in "Fire." It doesn't seem to be shown or mentioned in any other episode apart from "Fire," but that's "The X-Files" for you - forever hinting at character development that then gets ignored. Some people assume that he faced his fear then and has more or less overcome it. Others assume it's still there, even though the show's writers have chosen not to deal with it any more.

   Still, it's a nice little tragic touch to have fire end up being the nemesis of the X-Files in the end.

6. Does Mulder believe everything?

   Well, it does seem so, sometimes. As Scully says in "Post- Modern Prometheus," "is there anything you don't believe?" But, "I have the same doubts you do," he says, in the Pilot, and his poster says "I want to believe," not, as Blane has in "Jose Chung," "I believe." After all, the whole basis of the X-Files is finding proof for his ideas - confirmation for his belief.

   He has a problem with religion, especially Scully's religion in "Revelations" and "All Souls." He is openly skeptical of what he calls fanaticism, saying they use the name of religion to support their wild ideas, and give people like him a bad name. "Religion masquerading as the paranormal has hidden some of the most heinous acts in history" he says in "All Souls," when he also questions whether God would let bad things happen to good people.

   He also isn't so much the blind believer that he believes everything. As he explains in "Beyond the Sea," he doesn't believe that Boggs has psychic powers, even though he believes that psychic powers such as he describes do exist. In other words, we can show Mulder as being the sceptic about individual cases even as he is still the believer in general.

   In "Gethsemene," though, when he is told that aliens don't exist and that he's been manipulated, his world collapses. He seems to genuinely consider suicide at this point. He emerges from the other side convinced that what he's been told is the truth, and aliens are made-up by the government. The irony is that he asserts these views at the same time as Scully, and even Skinner, believe that the evidence makes his new lack of faith even more insane and stupid that they ever thought his belief was in the first place.

   This lack of faith in aliens, though, doesn't stop him from believing in vampires and such like. He is still the believer in MOTW episodes.

   By the end of "The Red and the Black," he seems to be reassessing again. (See also "Patient X," the episode that precedes it, for more on Mulder's loss of faith.) By "The Beginning" he is firmly a believer again. Sigh...

7. Is Mulder Jewish?

   Mary Ruth Keller has written an article that discusses this issue. Please bear in mind that this is an opinion article and please do not not flame her for expressing an opinion on what is, sadly, a controversial issue. Click here to read it.

   Since she wrote this essay, there have been one or two more hints. In "Drive," Crump, the man holding Mulder hostage, says angrily that the name "Mulder" sounds Jewish. Mulder refuses to answer this. (I have heard, from various sources, that he actually admitted that it was true, in one version of the script. However, I do't know how true this is.) Later, after Crump has raved about the Jewish-FBI-Government conspiracy, Mulder says "on behalf of the International Jewish Conspiracy, I just need to inform you that we're almost out of gas." Irony? Really, nothing is answered. What a surprise!

   But then "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas" shows that Mulder does hang up a stocking, watch Christmas movies, give Christmas gifts, and that Scully expects him to be finding someone to be with, to celebrate Christmas with. However, the ghost Lyda does say to Mulder, "It's not like you'll be eating a Christmas ham." It is said in the context of him having a lonely life, not having people to celebrate with, but could be taken as implying that he's Jewish. Make of it what you will.

8. Does Mulder like pornography?

   "Jersey Devil": Scully walks into the office to find Mulder staring intently at the centrefold of a magazine called "Hanky Panky." "Working hard?" she asks, unfazed. He tells her that the centrefold claims to have been abducted by aliens and held in an anti-gravity chamber for three days. "Anti-gravity's right," she says. Well, I guess this could just be UFO research.

   "Beyond the Sea": Scully finds Mulder poring over a file. Although her father's just died, she tries to joke, saying "last time I saw you that engrossed you were reading Adult Video News."

   "Blood": Mulder says that he never has time to read the "The Lone Gunman" magazine because his subscription to "Celebrity Skin" always arrives at the same time. May be a joke, of course...

   "One Breath": Controversial, this, but it certainly sounds like a pornographic video that Mulder's watching as he lies on the couch, pictures of Scully's abduction strewn over his lap.

   "Excelsis Dei": Mulder comes into the office to find Scully watching a video. "Whatever tape you found in that VCR, it isn't mine," he says. "Good," she replies, "because I put it back in that drawer with all those other videos that aren't yours."

   "Paper Clip": Not really a pornography reference, but, in light of the above, one can only wander what the video collection is that Mulder says Frohike has to wait a little longer before getting his hands on.

   "DPO": In Darin's bedroom, Mulder picks up a magazine, turning it round to look at the centre-fold. "I'm surprised you haven't already read that issue," Scully comments. Mulder says he has, but his copy didn't have a photo stuck between Miss April and Women of the Ivy League.

   "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose": Not pornography, per se, but I'll put it in anyway, as its another sexual thing: Clyde Bruckman can see how people will die. When Mulder annoys him by pestering him with questions, Clyde says, looking at Mulder, that he can see no worse way of dying that auto- erotic asphyxiation. Mulder asks him why Clyde's telling him that, and Clyde says "forget I mentioned it." (Auto-erotic asphyxiation, by the way, is a practice of depriving yourself of oxygen at the moment of orgasm, believing it heightens the experience. Sometimes it goes wrong, and the person ends up hanging himself or strangling someone by mistake.) Opinion varies on this scene. Some think that Clyde made it up to get back at Mulder for all his questions - it was said as a casual observation without naming names, but might be enough to make Mulder go silent, thinking about it. However, Mulder's reaction can be seen as defensive, from which some people believe that Clyde's comment hits rather close to home.

   "Nisei": Mulder is looking at the alien autopsy video, and Scully says, slyly, that it's not his usual brand of video entertainment.

   "Pusher": Wired up to transmit sounds and pictures from his trip into the hospital to find Modell, Mulder jokingly asks if it receives Playboy channel (another ad-lib: it was the Discovery channel in the script.)

   "Jose Chung": The sly one, here. Many people have wondered just what Mulder was doing in bed at the end of this episode, but the possibly dirty video he was watching turns out to be a video of Big Foot.

   "Small Potatoes": Mulder's answer phone has a message from a woman named Chantal who says she's missing Mulder's (he goes by the name Marty) sexy voice. Her new rates are down to $.49 a minute

   "Chinga": Mulder is seen in his office, watching television. Moans can be heard coming from the.... thing he is watching. An open video box reads "Alien Probe" (hmm... best not ask). When Scully phones him and asks what he's watching, he says it's "The World's Deadliest Swarms" (well, it could be) and reaches hastily for the remote to mute it, or pause it. A glimpse of the tv screen does indeed seem to show deadly swarms - after he's pressed whatever button he pressed.

   "Kill Switch" (perhaps): If the VR vision thing did derive in some way from Mulder's subconsious, then those buxom nurses are presumably straight off one of his videos. Also, being tied down to a hospital bed and having blonde busty nurses rubbing his body counts as a "good dream."

   "All Souls": Mulder is seen going into a cinema that is showing "A Decade of Dirty Delinquents."

   "The End": "What's wrong with Baywatch?" Mulder asks the psychic little boy. "You have a dirty mind," the boy replies.

   "Dreamland I": Mulder, while in the MIB's body, falls asleep while watching soft porn on TV.

   "Dreamland II": Morris, in Mulder's body, finds Mulder's bedroom full of junk - lots and lots of files, fuzzy dice, and "PlayPen" magazines.

   "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas": Okay, okay. While people have speculated that the Christmas gift Scully gave Mulder was a video, there is no proof of this. [Editor's note: Nor is the box the right size for a video.] There is even less proof that it was a pornographic video. Come now.

   "The Unnatural": Mulder jokingly mentions his "obscenely overdue triple-X bill."

9. Does Mulder have a photographic memory?

   Another one that comes from "Fire." His old flame Phoebe, playing with his mind, asks him to remember certain things about their ten- year old relationship. "I'm cursed with a photographic memory," Mulder tells her, saying he can't forget what happened.

   This line was actually ad-libbed by David Duchovny. The original line read "I'm blessed with a good memory." Of course, the fact that it was ad-libbed needn't make it any less valid. More important is the discussion of whether Mulder meant this statement literally or just meant it as a way to show Phoebe how much she'd hurt him and how he couldn't forget.

   Whatever you decide to make of that, he does seem to have a good memory. He's constantly able to go straight to the right X-File or book to find exactly what he needs to show Scully at any particular time. (But of course, five minutes rifling through filing cabinets is not fun television.) There are occasions when this memory seems particularly visual, if not photographic - such as in "Genderbender" when he glances at some old photographs then, hours later, can recognise people from these pictures, or in "731" when he can say instantly that the book of Japanese found at the end of the episode is not the one he saw earlier. Also, in "Synchrony," he is able to quote verbatim passages from Scully's thesis, despite the fact that there is no reason for him to have read it just recently before coming on the case.

   Then, in "The Unnatural," Arthur Dales won't let Mulder in until he's answered a question about the number of home runs hit by Mickey Mantle. Mulder gets this look on his face like he's trying to recall something he's read..."like he's sifting through all the data in his head" (in the words of my... informant) Then he rattles off the statistics. Evidence of a very very good memory, or just of in intense interest in baseball?

   On the other hand, in "Folie a Deux," the phrase "hiding in the light" rang a bell with him, but he was unable to remember the context, having to ask Scully to look it up for him. He didn't remember anything particularly visual, like knowing it was on the top right corner of a page, or anything.

   And does the fact that, in "Monday," when stuck in a time loop in which the same day keeps repeating over and over, he seems to remember more than Scully does about the previous occurences of the events have something to do with his better memory, or just due to his greater sensitivity to the paranormal, and his greater willingness to believe?

   Anyway, I have no doubt that our friends at 1013 have utterly forgotten that this line was ever uttered. Still, what difference need that make to us? Like so much of this, we can take from the ambiguity whatever we like.

   (On a side note, I like the poster on the wall in the (real) FBI tour: "G-Men never forget.")

10. Are Mulder's ties lurid and wacky?

    "Humbug": Mr Nutt, angered by Mulder assuming that he's working in the circus, tells him, "I've taken in your all-American features, your dour demeanor, your unimaginative neckwear design, and concluded that you work for the government - an FBI agent."

    "Wetwired": Mulder tells the Lone Gunmen that's he's color blind, offering his tie was confirmation.

    Plus we get the external thing of David Duchovny's own interesting relationship with neckwear, that seems to have crept in and colored the treatment of Mulder's ties in fanfic (not that that's a bad thing, I hasten to add.) Allegedly, he turned up to audition for the role of Mulder while wearing a tie with pink pigs on it.

11. Is Mulder color blind?

    The source for this is "Wetwired." Mulder is unaffected by the television signals that have driven various people to murder and Scully to disappear, convinced Mulder is trying to kill her. The Lone Gunmen, having worked out the cause for people's strange behavior, are trying to work out why Mulder wasn't affected. "I'm red-green color blind," Mulder says, holding up his tie as if in confirmation.

    Of course, there are other reasons why Mulder could have evaded the effects of the television signals. He watched far fewer tapes than Scully did, for a start. Also, how can we tell he really watched the tapes, rather than some more.... er.... interesting videos in his collection, assuming he'd carried them with him to the motel. (Although Mulder is not normally one to neglect work on a case.) Anyhow, it's all beside the point, really. Why would he say he's color blind if he isn't?

    Now, in real life, all FBI agents have to have pretty rigorous vision tests before being allowed to join the FBI. No-one who is color blind is allowed to be an agent. The only way round this one is to assume that Mulder was so brilliant that they were prepared to bend the rules to let him in. After all, as Skinner says in "Tooms," they were all talking about him even while he was in the Academy, and was rather exceptional right from the start - the "fair-haired boy," as Scully says in "Grotesque."

    Even within the X-Files universe there are problems. In "Roland," he grabs the correct shirt out of Roland's closet when Roland tells Mulder he wants to wear the green shirt; in "Nisei," Mulder points to the fluid issuing from the alien body on the video, correctly identifying it as green, and in "Paper Hearts" he has no trouble with identifying a red light.

    Now, for a bit of real-life stuff (thanks to Eve Dutton for this): Red-green color-blindness could mean one of two things: the inability to percieve either red or green (seeing them both in shades of blue, the third color factor) or the inability to distinguish between red and green (seeing both as the same color but distinct and separate from other colors). It would be conceivable that Mulder had the second one, since there have been documented cases of people leading normal lives, completely unaware of the defect. Over time the brain naturally compensates by learning to distinguish subtle shades and to identify them, with a fair amount of accuracy, as either red or green, the same way we might learn degrees of light grey and dark grey. This way, he would probably have been able to bluff his way past any standard FBI screening...

12. Does Mulder keep dropping his gun?

    A fanfic staple here, of course, and one which is supported by the series - sort of. I will not even attempt to list all the times it happens. To his credit, though, he doesn't usually just let it fall out of his hands. He gets it kicked out of his hands during fights - Nisei, for example - or lets it fly from his hands as he is knocked over by baddies - e.g., Grotesque, when we see him desperately groping for his gun while Patterson is on top of him. He gets it stolen while he is asleep in "Paper Hearts," while sometimes he voluntarily puts it down to show that he wants to talk to the baddy he has cornered, not kill him - e.g., Sleepless.

    "Nisei" shows that Mulder has finally noticed his problems with keeping hold of guns. When he loses one, he reaches down to an ankle holster and pulls out another gun, saying "I got tired of losing my gun." He still has this ankle holster in "Paper Hearts," by the way, when we see him surrendering it in order to get into the prison to see Roche. In "Folie a Deux," though, when he had his gun taken from him, he acted as if that was it, making no move to his ankle holster, implying that he wasn't carrying it at that point (though maybe he didn't bother, since he had no way of knowing he was going into a dangerous situation)

    (In real-life, remember, for a law enforcement officer to lose a gun is a huge offense, especially if the gun later ends up in the hands of a criminal and is used in a crime. According to Jack Douglas in "Mindhunter," who lost his gun in his first month as an agent, losing your gun means an instant letter of censure and has to be reported to the Director's Office. Losing his gun was serious enough that he feared it would permanently damage his promotion prospects, especially it that gun eventually turned up at a crime.)

    However, when he does manage to keep ahold of it, he isn't a bad shot. We see him shooting on the range in "Pusher," and his shots are all very close to the centre of the target. We seldom see him miss what he was aiming it, except in "Detour," when no-one seems to be able to hit those transparent creatures. In "Soft Light," he shoots out the lights without any problems, while, in the dark in "Shapes," he hits the stuffed bear right in the middle of the head.

13. What does Mulder eat and drink?

    Alcohol:Mulder seldom drinks alcohol. While he does drink, in Syzygy - (gin and concentrated orange juice) - the whole point of that scene is to show that Mulder and Scully, like everyone else, are behaving out of character. Mulder tells Detective White that he seldom drinks. [In the computer game, he has also been drinking gin and orange.]

    He does drink in War of the Coprophages. When the Professor has seen the fantastic robot insects he drains a bottle of whisky, or something. Mulder has a glass, which he does empty, though he is clearly drinking in a social way as he soon gets up and leaves the Professor to his bottle.

    In Deep Throat, Mulder and Scully meet in a bar at lunchtime, and it is Scully that expresses her disapproval of drinking at lunch time. Neither of them appear to drink alcohol, though.

    His adventure in the drunk tank "Jersey Devil" has nothing to do with being drunk, just with looking like it.

    It is to be assumed, therefore, that his drinking in the movie is rather uncharacteristic. After a bad day, he does get pretty drunk, then - though perhaps not as much as the bar tender thinks. He tells her the entire background of the conspiracy. Not surprisingly, she thinks this is the ravings of a very drunken man, and throws him out. He seems sober enough when talking to Kurtzweil, though Scully, some hours later, can still detect that he has been drinking. (Although, when she asks "are you drunk?" it's possible to deduce that he has made a habit of this before, and that this is why she asks, not because she can smell it).

    It's not clear what he was drinking in the movie, though the novelization says it's tequila.

    His father, on the other hand, is seldom seen without a glass of whisky, which could explain Mulder's reluctance to drink himself.

    Other drink: "If there's an iced tea in that bag, it could be love." ("Tooms") Mulder likes iced tea, but drinks root beer if he has to. He buys orange juice and keeps it in his refrigerator, but doesn't necessarily drink it on time. ("Chinga")

    Food: Mulder is an incessant muncher on sunflower seeds, right from the first episode. In "Aubrey" he tells Scully that his father used to eat them to, and theorizes that his own taste could be some sort of genetic memory. In "Anasazi" he asks for seeds while in his fever.

    Fanfic often shows him as a fan of junk food. There's really little data to go on here. In "Jersey Devil" he tucks in to a huge meal, but he has been in the drunk tank all weekend. In "Red Museum" both Mulder and Scully have a large meal. Intense scrutiny of the sandwiches bought in "Ghost in the Machine" reveals that Mulder and Scully both have white bread, but that Scully, but not Mulder, also has a plate of salad. [In the novel "Whirlwind," Mulder eats buger and fries in a luncheonette two blocks from the FBI HQ. It's a narrow low corner shop, with a long counter and 6 window booths, and is decorated in blues and whites. He's eating burger and fries. Scully thinks he shouldn't eat what he does, and says his "arteries must be a scientific wonder." ]

    In "Dreamland II," Frohike has been cooking huevos rancheros, and says he would have made more salsa is he'd known Mulder was coming.

    In "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space," he reportedly eats slice after slice of sweet potato pie, although it's likely that the person recounting this has had false memories planted in his head. [In the computer game, Mulder has a leaflet from the Everett Diner, which does salmon burgers, pizza, shakes and curly fries, but specializes in sweet potato pie - "Pies so good you'll swear they come from another planet.]

    [More novel foods: In "Goblins" he has toast, bacon, two eggs over medium, coffee, orange juice and blueberry jam for brakfast. In "Whirlwind" he is nervous about the thought of a jalapeno pepper, while Scully relishes it. In "Ground Zero," though, he is enthusiastic about a cheese and green pepper burger in a seedy diner. In "Ruins," in a Mexican hotel, Mulder has chicken cooked with bananas, and a side dish of lime and chile pepper soup, and drinks a margarita.

    The great Chinese take-out debate: Many people have asked why Mulder and Scully always seem to eat Chinese food in fanfic, although this is not in the show. Well, it is in the novel "Ground Zero" [Mulder orders steamed rice, kung pao chicken, and dry-fried string beans with pork. The kumg pao chicken is for Scully, since he's found out it's her favourite, even though they've never had Chinese food together before. When they've finished, he dumps all the left-overs in one dish and says he'll have them for breakfast when he gets back, mixed with scrambled eggs. Scully thinks this is "spooky." ]

    What he is not, though, is a gourmet chef. In "Chinga" he goes to his refrigerator and opens it, finding no food at all in there, not even old cold slices of pizza or anything. There is, however, a carton of orange juice that is several months past its sell-by date.

    [While it doesn't crop up much in the episodes themselves, the novels seem to have started the fanfic trend for having Mulder love seedy diners, and for having an unerring habit of choosing awful motels, which no-one but he loves. In the novel "Ground Zero" he loves a seedy brash diner he finds in New mexico, and in "Antibodies" he takes Scully to the Khe Sanh Khoffee Shoppe, run by Koreans, but emulating medioce American food with a vengeance. Scully dislikes it; Mulder likes it because of the styrofoam cups. It's close to the FBI HQ, so Mulder takes Scully there to discuss a case.]

14. Mulder's women

    Firstly, was Mulder ever married?

    Mulder was wearing a wedding ring in "Unusual Suspects," set in 1989, even though his personel file was seen as his marital status was shown as "single." We just assumed it was an oversight and that, as Mulder was in so few scenes, DD forgot to take it off.

    But, then, in "Travellers," set in 1990, he had that ring on again, and went to great pains to show us.

    Hmm....

    It can't be an oversight on behalf of DD, and the crew - not twice. Mulder's been in episodes in only a few scenes before ("Chinga," for example) and didn't forget to take his ring off then. And it can't really be coincidence that the ring appears only in those episodes which are set pre-X- Files. (Maybe it was an accident in "Unusual Suspects," but, rather than trying to forget it, they decided to go with it, either as a future plot, or just to tease us. Apparently, a Vancouver radio DJ phoned DD, and he said it was actually his idea to have Mulder smoking and wearing a wedding ring. He said he wanted to give Mulder a mystery of a wife that he never ever would talk about. He said that it might provide some stories later on for "X-Files : The Next Generation". Eek!)

    But, if you decide to write about a past Mulder marriage, there's very little time to play with. No wife in March 1992, when the Pilot episode was shown. No wife in 1988 or so, when we see Mulder at Barnett's trial. If he was married at the time of "Unusual Suspects," hence the ring, his file hadn't yet been updated, making it very very recent. Oh dear....

    Despite Morris, in Dreamland II, saying that Mulder "hasn't been laid in ten years," other women do definitely exist, include:

    Inspector Phoebe Green is seen in "Fire," where he introduces her as an "old friend." He admits that he got in too deep with her and paid the price. Clearly she hurt him in the past, though it's not made clear quite how, and she continues to hurt him. "Sooner or later a man's got to face his demons," seems to refer as much to Phoebe as to his fear of fire, after she turns up bringing a case she knows will disturb him. Yet just the next day he's looking at a double-bed, telling Scully not to come up as he anticipates having his "hands full," and then kissing Phoebe. He seems utterly shocked to find her in the arms of another man. We don't know much about what they did in their relationship, apart from their rather unconventional sexual encounter atop Arthur Conan Doyle's tomb in Windlesham (which is itself rather interesting, since Doyle's tomb is in the form of a cross, which looks mighty difficult to do anything atop of except for stand precariously on tiptoe on one foot. It is also, in fact, in Minstead in the New Forest, rather than in Windlesham. Oh well. Presumably the encounter was exciting enough to forget such details.)

    Diana Fowley was first seen in "The End," and is written about in more detail elsewhere. She worked on the X-Files for the first half of season six, and, while she claims to be helping Mulder, many fans - and Scully - doubt this. Sadly, Mulder seems pretty slow to accept the evidence against her.

    Kristen Kilar is a vampire wannabe from "3" with whom Mulder has a one night stand. He seems to be attracted to her as soon as he sees her, but, from conversation, it seems as if his later interest derives mainly from a desire to protect her. From the frequent references to Scully's cross, which Mulder's wearing, you don't have to be a 'shipper to see that quite a lot of his attraction to her derives from his loneliness in Scully's absence. Anyway, she kills herself in a logic-defying attempt to become a vampire, as this is the only way she feels she can destroy the pesky vampires who are troubling her.

    Detective Angela White is an attraction based on the rather odd planetary alignments, or, if you prefer, on the influence of alcohol. Her cat is missing, presumed dead, and he gives her a comfort hug, which turns into a neck nuzzle and perfume sniff. She then starts to strip off, at which he looks truly terrified, and then jumps on him. He struggles, but it doesn't look like it to Scully when she enters.

    Bambi Berembaum: Pure animal attraction here. From the moment he first sees her he's open-mouthed with lust, and behaves towards her in a way that can only be described as Bimbo-esque. "Ooh, you are clever. How fascinating!" he coos, primping his curls. Okay, not quite like that, but pretty much so. She disappears into the sunset with a quadroplegic professor.

    Melissa Ephesian: Allegedly his soulmate in past lifetimes. As this is central to the whole episode, see the summary of "The Field where I Died."

    Marita Corruvubias: is not his woman. In "Tunguska," when she looks as if she's going all out to seduce him, he kindly shows us his watch so we know he was only in there for under three minutes after she purrs "how long do you have?" while dressed in her bathrobe.

    Kersh's secretary: is not Mulder's woman. However, since she sleeps with the MIB who is inhabiting Mulder's body (Dreamland I) it is to be assumed that she thinks she is. Will she start following him round the FBI, demanding to know why he's so cold to her, and attacking him to sleeping with her then not calling her afterwards?

    Plus, in "Little Green Men" there is a female voice on his answering machine complaining that, after ages of asking her out, he has stood her up on a lunch date.

15. Does Mulder have a life?

    "Jersey Devil:" Scully: "Unlike you, Mulder, I want to have a life." Mulder: "I have a life."

    Mulder's work is his life. "Nothing else matters to me," he says in the "Pilot" and in "Never Again," he tells Scully the X-Files are his life. The occasions when he arrives at the office after Scully are few and far between. So many episodes start with Scully arriving in the morning to find Mulder already there. Episodes like "Jersey Devil" show him still working in the late evening, and the "Erlenmeyer Flask" shows him lounging on the couch at home, X-Files on his lap. Even as late as "The End," he is still saying that the X-Files are everthing to him. He tells Skinner that his whole future is the X-Files, and tells Diana that they are his life, though he wryly adds that he doesn't really have a life.

    A sad twist is given to it in "How the Ghosts stole Christmas," when the male ghost says Mulder is "a lonely man. Chasing paramastabatory illusions that you believe give your life meaning and significance, which your pathetic social maladjustment makes impossible for you to find elsewhere.

    In "Never Again" we learn that Mulder hasn't taken a day's vacation in four years. When he is forced to, he only takes a day or two before he is back. His choice of vacation? A pilgrimage to Graceland.

    Scully phones him in "Christmas Carol" on December 23rd. While she has gone to stay with her family, he is still at home, alone, and has been out running. No sign on him going home to his mother, then. "Emily" doesn't start until December 28th, though, so that still leaves several days unaccounted for in which he could have done anything. However, the following year he is at home, alone, watching TV on Christmas morning, and looking depressed.

    In "Chinga," he tries so hard to have a weekend off without work, but seems bored stiff (and also rather embarrassed at the thought of Scully finding this fact out.) He stays in the office and watches dodgy videos and tries to insinuate himself into the case she's found for herself. He bounces a ball. He throws pencils at the ceiling (really!). Although he pretends to Scully that he had a wonderful time getting on with work without distractions, no-one, least of all Scully, is taken in.

    However, in "Dreamland," he says that the sort of life he has (always driving on dark roads following tenuous leads) is a normal life. He certainly seems more suited to it than the family-from-hell life he's landed with when he swaps with the Morris. Even when given the chance to live as a MIB, finding out the truth from the inside, he never once wants to take it. He only wants to get back to his normal life, suggesting that he does have a life, and it's more important to him than getting the truth at the sacrifice of his identity.

    Does he have friends? The Lone Gunmen, perhaps, though we have no idea if he sees them socially, apart from discussing conspiracy theory over cheese steaks. ("Geeks for friends") Reggie Purdue, his old ASAC, was close enough for Mulder to be the only person Purdue wanted to read his unfinished novel. His old partner, Jerry Lamanna, embraces him, but Mulder seems rather uncomfortable with this. [In the novel "Goblins," Mulder has a friend called Carl Barelli, a womanising sports reporter who is chasing Scully. He dies during this case, though, so isn't good for return appearances in fanfic.]

    But then, given how he runs away when Scully comes into his room with wine in "Detour," and how Scully seems surprised (in "Small Potatoes") at the thought that Mulder would want to talk to her about anything other than a case, it is questionable whether even those friends he does have are really friends - I mean, whether he talks about anything that resembles "normal" topics of conversation with them.

    His interests include sport. He's a runner ("Pilot," "Deep Throat," "Blood," "Humbug" etc) and also swims ("Duane Barry"). He likes to watch football ("Irresistible," when his main reason for taking a case was for its proximity to a football match) and laments with Deep Throat that they could never catch a game together. Judging from the fact that he appears to use football tickets as currency ("Conduit"), one wonders if he ever actually gets to a match. He supports New York Knicks in basketball (As David Duchovny does. Mulder actually tears up that t- shirt for Boggs) and Washington Redskins in football ("Irresistible") He knows about football from when he was quite young, discussing the 1968 Superbowl with Colonel Budahas in "Deep Throat." When bored, or waiting for informants, he likes bouncing a ball in his apartment.

    He watches old science fiction movies - or, rather, sleeps in front of them. He fell asleep in front of the original The Fly in "Tooms" and The Journey to the Center of the Earth in "The Erlenmeyer Flask" and in "Little Green Men" the young Mulder wanted to watch the 1970s series The Magician.

    He has never been seen to read a fiction book (unlike Scully, seen reading "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in "War of the Coprophages"), though he can at least quote from "Moby Dick" ("Quagmire"), refer obliquely to TS Eliot ("Pusher" - "not with a whimper but a bang" and "DPO" - "April is the cruellest month") and more or less quote Browning ("The Field where I Died"). [In the computer game, Jose Chung's "From outer Space" is beside his bed, but maybe this is an exception, since he's mentioned in the book. In "Ground Zero" he is reading a Philip Dick novel.]

    He seems to like classic rock. When testing Boggs's skills, he asked him to "channel" Jimi Hendrix, and in another episode he mentioned playing "Dark Side Of The Moon" by Pink Floyd just to annoy the neighbors. We never hear him listening to music at other times, though he does seem to enjoy the music on the tape the teenagers gave him in "Deep Throat."

    He is a great fan of Elvis, judging from his pilgrimage to Graceland in "Never Again." Earlier, in "Home," he expressed great horror at the discovery of the newspaper announcing Elvis's death.

    [ In "Goblins," the novel by Charles Grant, Mulder's regular bar is Ripley's, on Diamond Street in Alexandria, close to the river. A dress shop is on one side of it; a grocery on the other. There are no windows or signs on the streets, since it's a regulars only sort of bar. There are old film posters inside - Mulder covets the autographed "Thing from another world" poster - but no juke box or tv. There is quiet background music, and, when Mulder comes in, it switches to something alien-like. One of the bar staff, Trudy, a law student at Georgetown, has dated him a few times, though it's nothing serious - (so is that where he got that Georgetown university t-shirt he wears?)]

16. What does Mulder like to be called?

    In "Tooms," he stops Scully from calling him "Fox" by saying "I even made my parents call me Mulder." Not true, actually. His parents both call him "Fox" ("Colony," "Anasazi" etc) Skinner calls him "Fox" in "Tooms," though this is the only time he does so. Senator Matheson, his "connection in Congress" calls him Fox in "Little Green Men." Perhaps he's shy of correcting his elders about his name. In "One Breath," he corrects Scully's sister Melissa but not Scully's mother.

    However, Bambi also calls him "Fox," and his old flame Diana Fowley does too.

    Mulder also introduces himself as "Fox" when talking to children. When trying to put the girl at ease in "Paper Hearts" he says his name is "Fox," but maybe that was because Roche, the kidnapper, had used Mulder's name and already told the girl that he was "Agent Mulder." In "The End," though, he tells the boy, Gibson, that he is "Fox," and that the women with him are "Dana" and "Diana."

    (By the way, those porno nurses in "Kill Switch" call him "Fox." If the vision is purely external, given by the computer, then this is a natural assumption on the comptuer's part, not knowing Mulder's unusual aversion to his first name. If, though, it comes from his subconscious.... Well, well.... A busty nurse holding him to her ample bosom and holding his face and calling him "Fox".... Make of that what you will.)

    As for "Spooky": In the "Pilot" Scully says that's his nickname at the Academy. Whether this is from his interest in the paranormal or from his ability to be "three jumps ahead" on every case, which Purdue says was "scary" ("Young at Heart") is never explained. This nickname is used derogatively by Tom Colton in "Squeeze" (where Scully is also called Mrs Spooky), by Reggie Purdue, saying he's heard the rumours about Mulder's paranoia. The nickname is widely known - enough for the nasty man in "Blood" to do a little research and hear of it.

    Not content with nasty nicknames from other people, he bitterly calls himself "Monster Boy," in "Folie a Deux," when complaining about how he's seen as the person to look into any old boring vaguely weird case.

    He seems to have a thing about first names. He only calls Scully "Dana" a very small number of times, usually when he's trying to establish some personal connection with her, or comfort her. ("Lazarus," "Beyond the Sea," "The Field Where I Died"), even calling her "Scully" to her own family. But then he does call Reggie Purdue "Reggie" and Jerry Lamana "Jerry." He even calls Krycek "Alex" once or twice, such as in "Ascension," when asking to borrow his car.

17. Is Mulder ever suicidal?

    "Gethsemene," of course, asked us to believe that Mulder had killed himself, shooting himself in the head after learning that his whole life was a lie and that he had caused Scully's cancer.

    "Redux" quickly showed us that he hadn't, after all. However, the fact that Mulder and Scully, when faking the death, chose suicide as a cause of death shows that it was not seen as being out of character. No-one, not even the sceptical Skinner, ever said anything along the lines of "Mulder? Killing himself? Never!" Moreover, "Redux" suggests that he was really considering suicide. Although we only see him with the gun to his head in the trailers, not the show itself, his voice-over, heard while he is loading his gun and crying, speaks thus: "My folly revealed by facts which illuminate both my arrogance and self-deception. If only the tragedy had been mine alone. It might have been easier tonight to bring this journey to its end."

    Journey to its end.... Hmm....

    We have no other evidence that Mulder has considered suicide, though he has certainly got very depressed. He blames himself for his sister's disappearance, and "One Breath" shows how he also blames himself for what happened to Scully. When he wanted to resign, gives up the chance of revenge, and then has reason to believe that Scully would die, he collapses in tears, then sits on the couch staring at nothing, a look of dead despair on his face. Later, when Scully is dying of cancer and her brother blames Mulder, Mulder accepts the blame, adding also that his sister and father were also casualties to his quest.

    "Little Green Men" is his other lowest ebb, when the X- Files are closed down and he loses faith in himself and wonders if his whole life was about nothing more than illusionary "elves" - or "little green men."

18. Other stuff

    Sense of direction:This is not one I've seen much in fanfic, but there are several times when Mulder seems fairly incompetent on the direction front.

    In "Genderbender" he wrestles with a map, holding it upside down then turning it around anxiously. He later gets so utterly lost that he scrumples the map up and throws it away. (Scully catches it deftly) In "Roland" he starts to go the wrong way in the research building, and Scully corrects him. "Syzygy" starts with Mulder and Scully arguing over directions, and the opening scenes of "Quagmire" are based around the fact that Mulder has got lost and has to stop and ask for directions, thus meeting various locals who will play a part in the drama. Also in "Quagmire," Mulder seems to be rather out of place in the country, commenting on how dark it seems after the city, suggesting he's not a rugged outdoor sort of man. He repeats this sentiment in "Detour." Despite saying that he and his father were "Indian guides" back in the woods at home (hey! Something normal and father-son-like in the Mulder family? Surely not!), he gets attacked, offers no helpful suggestions when Scully can't get a fire to light, and says that he's convinced that the whole of nature is out to get us.

    Squeamishness: In "Ice," Mulder seems very unhappy with the operation to take the worm out of Bear's neck. He rushes off as if he is going to be sick, but presumably doesn't since he just brings a jar to put the worm in. In other episodes, however, he attends Scully's autopsies without any sign of being disturbed. Maybe he's got used to such things.

    Then we have "Irresistible," when Mulder is quite untroubled by things that Scully finds horrible. This is perhaps the sort of thing Scully means when she says, in "Our Town," that she thought nothing gave him nightmares.

    However, even in the fourth season, he's still more squeamish than Scully. In Leonard Betts, he appears rather unhappy (making faces and shifting from foot to foot) when Scully digs through the human waste disposal unit, looking for Betts' head, and downright appalled when she says she needs him to do it, as his arms are longer.

    (Strangely, though, Scully seems more bothered by eau de corpse than Mulder does. There are several episodes when she covers her nose and Mulder doesn't - such as in the Pilot episode when the coffin opens up.

    Smoking: In "Dreamland," the MIB inhabiting Mulder's body asks Scully to buy him cigarettes - Morleys. "Since when did you smoke?" she asks, showing that Mulder has never smoked while she knew him. However, in "travellers, set in 1990, Mulder apparently was smoking.

    Psychology stuff: A few fragments we learn from the episodes are that he seems to disapprove of the use of drugs when treating psychological disorders ("Born Again"), preferring hypnotic regression. He tells Clyde Bruckman that he is not a Freudian.

    Writing reports: Mulder is fond of writing reports long hand, while Scully seems to prefer the computer. In "Folie a Deux" he is seen profiling, writing in pen on a yellow note pad.

    Seasick: Mulder gets seasick ("Dod Kalm") However, he doesn't appear to get sea-sick in "Triangle," when he chartered a boat to sail alone to the Bermuda Triangle. Well, maybe he was horribly sea-sick in that little boat, since we don't see him in it. Maybe sea-sick people don't get sea-sick in dreams (or time-slips, or whatever.)

    Languages: Mulder can't speak Spanish at all well. ("Little Green Men"). He took French at high school, but wishes he could read Japanese ("731")

    Going by the book: His tendency to break every rule going perhaps dates back to his first case when a fellow agent, Steve Wallenberg, died because Mulder went by the book. ("Young at Heart")

    Cooking: He is seen cooking in "Deep Throat," though it only seems to be bacon or something like that. In "Tooms" he seems to have had a pizza the night Tooms crept into his apartment - certainly something that was delivered in a box. In "Chinga" we see into his fridge, and it's a scary site, containing absolutely nothing at all except some very old and bad orange juice.

    Wealth: Much has been said by fans about Mulder's habit of wearing clothes that seem rather more expensive that would have been expected for someone on his income. His family seems to have been rather well off, living on Martha's Vineyard and owning a summer house in Rhode Island. Did Mulder inherit a nice large amount from his father?

    However, the prospect of not being paid for a few weeks makes him take a vacation ("Never Again"), saying that he needs to pay for food and rent. In "Monday," he is sufficiently scared of running out of money, and having his rent cheque bounce, that he is desperate to get his pay cheque into the bank as soon as he gets it.

    Tipping: Possible wealth notwithstanding, Mulder is a bad tipper. In "Bad Blood," paying for a pizza, he gives the delivery boy $13.00 for a $12.98 pizza and graciously tells him to keep the change. In the movie, after his large drinking session in the bar, he hands over his money, and the bartender looks rather put out when she counts the money. Then, in "Dreamland I," (when in Morris's body) he tells the gas station attendant to keep the 11 cents, and looks quite pleased with himself.

    Favourite places to think: "Little Green Men" has his, twice, sitting on a bench down by the Potomac, sitting and thinking. Fanfic has thoroughly pounced on this, making that bench the traditional one for Mulder and Scully to meet. [From the novels: Mulder's favorite place to go to think is in the quiet of the tidal basin, by the Jefferson memorial ("Goblins") and he also likes to go to see the display case with all the confiscated objects, like a giant bear and a Harley-Davidson, that is in the FBI, on the public tour route ("Antibodies").]

    Choice of motels: [Fanfic frequently states that Mulder has a knack for choosing awful motels. While this may be based on observations of the places they stay in the episodes, the only place I've found any actual mention of it is in the novels - "Goblins" to be exact. Mulder has a talent for choosing awful motels, though Scully calls it a curse.]

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