List of MOTW characters

On the 1993–2002 television series, "The X-Files", there developed two main types of episodes. "Mytharc" episodes were recognized as the canon "mythology" of the series, comprising the central storyline concerning extraterrestrial life and a conspiracy to hide it, while "MOTW" (Monster of the Week; also "MoW") came to denote the rest of the episodes, a majority of each season. Episodes of this type dealt with all kinds of paranormal phenomena — mutants, science fiction technologies, horror monsters, and comedic episodes that parodied these genres, other TV shows, and even "The X-Files" itself. Despite the lack of continuity and development of the main characters in some of these episodes, others have ties to the "X-Files" mythology. A number of "monster of the week" characters became notable and were later referenced by other episodes and by fans of the show.

For characters that were not monsters of the week, see also: List of recurring characters from The X-Files

eason One

* Eugene Victor Tooms, played by Doug Hutchison in the episodes "Squeeze" and "Tooms": Tooms appeared in the first MOTW episode, "Squeeze". An animal control worker in Baltimore, Maryland, Tooms was a mutant, capable of stretching and contorting his body to an extent that would be unnatural for a normal human. This gave him access to his victims through ventilation shafts, chimneys, and toilets. Every thirty years, Tooms came out of hibernation, killing five people to obtain their livers. It is possible that Tooms was over one-hundred years old when Mulder and Scully encountered him; he was linked to similar murder sprees in 1963 and 1933, as well as a single murder in 1903. In the episode "Tooms", Mulder tracked him to his "nest" underneath a shopping mall. When he attacked Mulder, Tooms was crushed to death by an escalator. He is one of only three MOTW characters to star in more than one episode.

* Lyle Parker, played by Ty Miller in the episode "Shapes". He was a man who was attacked by what appeared to be a werewolf on his family's ranch near an Indian reservation in Montana. His father shoots the animal only to find a dead native American upon closer inspection. The son survived the attack only to fall victim to lycanthropy himself leading him to kill his father when the change later overcomes him. Mulder comes to believe the "skinwalker" legend as described to him by the local shaman and later shoots and kills the beast when he and Scully are attacked back at the ranch.

*The Jersey Devil: The mythical monster from the New Jersey Pine Barrens. After attacks on Atlantic City's homeless, it is revealed that the devil is actually the "missing link" between ape and human. Though both adults are killed by the end of the episode, their offspring is shown in the end of the episode watching some hikers while hiding in the woods.

* Howard Graves, played by Barry Primus in the episode "Shadows": After his death at the hands of his business partner, Howard Graves returned as a ghost with telekinetic powers. His new powers allowed him to move objects, take control of a car, and even strangle anyone who tried to harm his loyal secretary, Lauren Kyte. Despite being "quite dead", his image is captured on a surveillance photo taken of Kyte. After he has assisted in the exposure of his partner's crimes, he presumably departed this plane and no further telekinetic phenomena are noted relating to Kyte.

*Central Operating System: also known as the C.O.S., the machine was an artificial intelligence which controlled the corporate headquarters of a Fortune 500 software company called Eurisko in the Season One episode "Ghost in the Machine." During the episode, the machine murdered a Eurisko executive and an old colleague of Mulder's (and also attempted to kill Scully) when they threatened its existence. The machine was shut down by a computer virus given to Mulder by the C.O.S.' creator, Eurisko founder Brad Wilczek, despite an effort from an unscrupulous Defense Department employee to ensure the machine's survival. Though the machine was initially shut down by the virus and was slated to become a scrap heap, it came alive again at the episode's conclusion. A similar artificial intelligence would appear in the later episode "Kill Switch."

*The Arctic Worm, from the episode "Ice": The first of many apparently extraterrestrial biological agents which can endanger and control humans in "The X-Files", the worms in first season episode "Ice" are speculated to have been brought to the ice of Alaska by the ancient crash of a meteor in the Arctic. This is also the apparent origin of the "black oil" that was later central to the show's "mythology"; however, these worms were never directly related to the oil, an alien virus known as Purity. Instead, they bear more resemblance to the substance in the film "The Thing" on which the episode was partly based. The worms can enter through a cut and quickly take full physical and psychological control of a person by attaching to the hypothalamus gland, causing them to kill themselves or others, or inducing extreme paranoia, as seen in the episode, where Mulder and Scully threaten each other under the possible influence of the agent. Similar effects were also shown in "Firewalker", but the life form there was native to the subterranean regions of earth.

*The Eves, played by Erika and Sabrina Krievins in the episode "Eve": In first season episode "Eve", a series of similar gruesome murders have links to apparently unrelated, but identical looking, girls throughout the United States. These girls can all be traced to a secret experiment which created them (i.e. Eve 3, Eve 6), and their primary goal is their own genetic survival. The "Eves" in the episode kill their foster parents and entrap Mulder and Scully, often uttering the line "we just knew". At the end they are seen entering a prison facility with genetically identical adult women subject to the same experiments.

* Luther Lee Boggs, played by Brad Dourif in the episode "Beyond the Sea": A serial killer from North Carolina whom Mulder's profile helped catch. He was to be executed via gas chamber but received a stay of execution. Boggs soon developed an ability to channel spirits and demons. Mulder, however, did not believe Boggs had this ability, and thought Boggs was simply trying to use him and Scully to bargain for his life. Scully initially shared Mulder's view; however, Boggs managed to cause Scully to doubt this belief by appearing to her as Mulder, and her recently deceased father, and relating to her private information about her own life, and the case she was working on. The executive stay, however, was soon lifted and Boggs was summarily executed. The character was based on the real-life serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas, and the tattoos "KISS" and "KILL" on Boggs' knuckles are an homage to the fictional serial killer, Reverend Harry Powell.

*Marcus Aurelius Belt portrayed in the episode "Space". Belt was a former astronaut and commander of NASA's mission control, as well as a childhood hero of Mulder's. During a spacewalk early in his career as an astronaut, Belt encountered and was subsequently possessed by a vapor-like alien entity that bore resemblance to the famous Face of Mars. The entity went into and left Belt at irregular intervals, and caused Belt to sabotage previous space missions, as well as cause the Challenger disaster. After its attempts to destroy a space shuttle in orbit failed, the entity again attempted to get inside Belt -- who by this time had suffered a nervous breakdown and was in a hospital -- but Belt resisted the creature and jumped out of his hospital window, sacrificing his life.

*John Barnett: yet another former nemesis of Mulder bent on revenge, Barnett appears in the first season episode "Young at Heart" as both the primary antagonist and the MOTW itself. Played by Alan Boyce and (in flashback) by David Petersen, Barnett ages in reverse as a result of extensive genetic modification. At the end of the episode, as Barnett is dying, actor William B. Davis makes a brief cameo (although he has no dialogue, from the context of the scene one can assume that he is attempting to extract the secret behind Barnett's reverse aging ability). Although he is billed simply as "CIA Agent" in the credits, it has been theorized that this is in fact the Cigarette Smoking Man; if so, "Young at Heart" might be considered (technically) part of the X-Files "Mythology" or "Mytharc" episodes.

*Cecil L'Ively, played by Mark Sheppard in the episode "Fire": A British pyrokinetic that stalks a family of British dignitaries. His powers force Mulder to confront his fear of fire. L'Ively is taken into custody after literally burning himself out after an old partner of Mulder's douses him with fire accelerant.

* Warren James Dupre, played by Jason Schombing and Christopher Allport in the episode "Lazarus": Dupre is a bank robber who is shot and killed at the same time as Agent Jack Willis, a former partner of Scully's. When doctors restore Willis' body to life after he flatlines, it is with Dupre's consciousness. He takes Scully hostage but his new diabetic body dies due to lack of insulin.

* Darkness Mites in the episode "Darkness Falls": Tiny mites that have been freed by logging in Washington State National Forest. Mulder concludes that they were radiated by local volcanic activity. The mites, which glow green and are only active in the dark, cocoon their human victims and drain them of all moisture, killing them. They feed on an entire group of thirty loggers and almost successfully devour Mulder and Scully. The agents are rescued from their cocoons by the U.S. government, which plans to eradicate the insects.

eason Two

* Flukeman, played by Darin Morgan in "The Host": Flukeman was introduced in the second season episode, "The Host". It is a tapeworm-like humanoid, who lived in sewers. Flukeman would bite a human and inject a small fluke, which would after a time, kill its host. Mulder eventually found the creature in a sewer, and he seemingly killed it. At the end of the episode, however, Flukeman is seen still barely alive. The creature has a few references in later episodes, and apparently the Flukeman case is not a particular favorite of Scully's.

*Augustus Cole, played by Tony Todd in the episode "Sleepless": A Vietnam veteran known for his habit of quoting the Bible and thus nicknamed "Preacher", Cole was one of an elite squad of soldiers in the episode "Sleepless" who are revealed to have been secretly operated on by the military to be able to go permanently without sleep. During the war, they were employed to scour the countryside for Viet Cong fighters, but as a result of increased levels of violence due to their condition, massacred whole villages. During their extended, torturous waking periods of decades, Cole alone among them has developed the ability to project dream-like states into reality. He targets doctors at the facility who engineered him, and eventually is shot by Mulder's new FBI partner Krycek.

*Kristen Kilar: In second season episode "3", Kilar is a member of "the trinity", a group of "vampires" in Los Angeles. Kilar, played by Perry Reeves (Duchovny's real life girlfriend at the time), becomes sexually involved with Mulder, who is investigating his first and only case since the show's beginning without Scully, who was abducted in the previous episode.

* Donald "Donnie" Pfaster, played by Nick Chinlund in the episodes "Irresistible" and "Orison": First appearing in the season 2 episode, "Irresistible", Donnie is a reclusive necrophiliac who murders prostitutes. Mulder and Scully are soon on the case, during which, Donnie follows and kidnaps Scully. Mulder manages to track him down and save Scully, who was relatively unharmed, but emotionally shaken by the experience. About 5 years later, in "Orison", Donnie, with the help of a prison Reverend, escapes and goes after "the one who got away", Scully. He soon finds out where she lives and attacks Scully at her apartment. Mulder arrives later by chance, moments before Scully fatally shoots Donnie. He is the second of only three MOTW characters to star in two separate episodes.

* Dudley, Arkansas, in the episode "Our Town." The town of Dudley was known for its prosperous fast food business, Chaco Chicken. The town's founder, a pilot in World War II, was shot down by the Japanese over Papua New Guinea and was the sole survivor of the subsequent plane crash. Afterwards, he was nursed back to health by the (fictional) Jale Tribe, a native people known for their cannibalism. Chaco learned from the tribe that cannibalism led to prolonged human life, and after returning from the war and setting up his business in Dudley, led his family and the town's residents into cannibalism. This led to many people in Dudley looking years younger than their actual old age. However, when Mulder and Scully began investigating the town, some of Dudley's residents began dying off from a rare brain disease that afflicted one of their eaten victims.

* Mrs. Paddock, played by Susan Blommaert in the episode "Die Hand Die Verletzt": Phyllis Paddock is a substitute teacher at Milford, New Hampshire's Crowley High School. Thinking the school has been possessed by satanic forces summoned by students' "devil music" and occult gatherings in the woods, the town calls out Mulder and Scully, but the school's reactionary parent-teacher association is actually overrun with Satanist believers. However, they are ultimately powerless against the occult magic of the mysteriously arrived Paddock, who appears responsible for most of the events in the episode. The end is ambiguous but suggests Paddock may have been trying to help protect the students from adults with no moral values. It is also possible she is actually the demon Azazel in disguise.

* Dr. Blockhead & The Conundrum, played by Jim Rose and The Enigma in the episode "Humbug": A circus act duo consisting of a human blockhead and a carnival geek, Mulder and Scully meet the team during an investigation into circus related deaths. In addition to classic human blockhead acts, like being able to apparently drive nails into his chest and nasal cavity without killing himself, Dr. Blockhead trains with a variation of the Sun Dance, and is also an escape artist. According to him, he was born in Yemen, where he trained with yogis, fakirs, and swamis, and learned, among other things, how to draw his testicles up into his abdomen. In actuality, Dr. Blockhead's real name is Jeffrey Swaim, and he was born in Milwaukee. The Conundrum is a bald, jigsaw puzzle tattooed man, who sports only a loincloth and rarely speaks. He is a carnival geek, meaning that for his act, though also apparently in his spare time as well, he eats live and dead animals, rocks, light bulbs, battery cables, etc. He even eats the killer parasitic twin from the episode the pair appear in, "Humbug".

* Chester Banton, played by Tony Shalhoub in the episode "Soft Light": Banton is a physicist from Richmond, Virginia who was accidentally enclosed in his particle accelerator, turning his own shadow into dark matter. Banton tries to avoid public places with harsh, bright light where this might prove dangerous to others, but nevertheless kills several of his own friends, and two police officers, unintentionally. His shadow reduces people to burn spots on the ground, leading Mulder to compare it with spontaneous human combustion. Thanks to Mulder's attempts to gain information from his informant about Banton's condition, it is revealed Banton has been captured by a secret government conspiracy overseen by Mr. X, who are conducting their own experiments on him.

* Detective B.J. Morrow, played by Deborah Strang in the episode "Aubrey": Morrow is an agent and murderer discovered to be one of several children fathered by a serial rapist and murderer named Harry Cokely, each of whom have inherited his genetic memory, including his homicidal tendencies.

eason Three

*Darren Peter Oswald, played by Giovanni Ribisi in the episode "D.P.O.": the title character played by Ribisi is a young, immature car mechanic who can channel his frustration into controlling lightning. It is believed this was caused when Oswald was struck by a bolt of lightning, which gave him his awesome, yet destructive, power. Oswald, a video gamer and punk and heavy metal fan who hangs out with his arcade-owner friend, Bart "Zero" Liquori (Jack Black), still harbors a crush on his high school teacher, which inflames his passions and causes the deaths of several people struck by lightning. After the teacher, Mrs. Shannon Kiveat, finally rejected his advances following Oswald's cause and subsequent rescue of her husband, Oswald's boss, Oswald was finally captured and placed in a state psychiatric hospital.

* Clyde Bruckman, played by Peter Boyle in the episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose": Mr. Bruckman, an elder, cynical, sarcastic insurance salesman, lives in Minnesota, and apart from his otherwise uneventful existence, has the psychic ability to foresee a person's death. This ability, much to his chagrin and disgust, only allows him to foretell deaths, and he doesn't understand how his foresight works and is sometimes unaware of when his visions pop up. Investigating a case of a serial killer who targets psychics, Mulder and Scully meet Bruckman after he discovers a corpse. During their conversations, Bruckman relates to Scully how he will die, cryptically tells her that she never dies, and also hints that Mulder will pass on by way of "autoerotic asphyxiation." He was a big fan of The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly, and after their deaths in 1959, acquired his prognostication ability. He commits suicide at the end of the episode. Peter Boyle won an Emmy Award for the role in 1996.

* Virgil Incanto, portrayed by Timothy Carhart in the episode "2Shy": Incanto was a homicidal mutant who had to subsist on fatty tissue to survive. He preyed on overweight women by meeting them on Internet chat websites, where he would portray himself as a person sincerely interested pursuing a romantic relationship with them, going by the username "2Shy." At the end of each date, Incanto would lean in for a romantic kiss... then forcefully suck out the woman's fatty tissue, killing her.

* Leonard "Rappo" Trimble, portrayed by Ian Tracey in the episode "The Walk": Trimble was a patient at a Veterans Administration hospital, having become a quadruple amputee during the First Persian Gulf War. The deeply embittered Trimble resented having his lost his limbs, and blamed the Army chain of command for his injuries and those of his fellow crippled veterans. Having garnered the ability to use astral projection, he proceeded to murder the families of his lieutenant-colonel and his general, but rendered those victims incapable of committing suicide, so that they could feel the horror and helplessness Trimble had suffered. Trimble was finally stopped as he was using his astral body to attack Mulder and the general, when the lieutenant-colonel smothered him with a pillow. No evidence linked Trimble to the deaths, and his family requested that he be buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was instead cremated and buried in a civilian cemetery in Pennsylvania.

* Cockroaches in the episode "War of the Coprophages": Agent Mulder came across an apparent case of "killer cockroaches" while taking a weekend vacation in the (fictional) town of Miller's Grove, Massachusetts. The cockroaches were present at the scenes of several deaths, including those of an exterminator, a drug-abusing teenager, and the local medical examiner. This caused a frenzied panic to erupt in Miller's Grove, even though it turned out the cockroaches didn't kill any of their supposed victims. Mulder, however, did discover that the roaches were made of metal and therefore robotic, and after meeting a robotic scientist making autonomous robot insects, came to conclude that the robotic cockroaches were reconnaissance probes sent to Earth by extraterrestrial life.

* Lord Kinbote in the episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space": Lord Kinbote is an enormous, furry, one-eyed alien who interrupted an abduction of two teenagers of two grey aliens (really American soldiers in disguise) in the beginning of the episode. He is mentioned again later on by power company employee Roky Crickenson, who encountered Lord Kinbote as he was attacking the other two "aliens." In a manuscript he wrote following his encounter, Crickenson claimed that Lord Kinbote approached him and told him that his "efforts are needed for the survival of all Earthlings." Crickenson, clearly fantasy prone, goes on to describe Lord Kinbote's domain near Earth's core, which is gradually revealed throughout the rest of the episode to host reincarnated souls participating in orgies, as well as dangerous "lava men."

* Robert Patrick "Pusher" Modell, played by Robert Wisden in the episodes "Pusher" and "Kitsunegari": A self described ronin, Modell had a unique ability to alter perceptions and influence people, which he utilized to carry out hits. During the manhunt for Modell, Mulder stops Modell, though not before succumbing to his power and nearly killing himself and Scully. Modell reappears later on, and although he is actually out to stop another killer, he is shot by Skinner before this is learned, and is later killed by the person he was after. Appeared in "Pusher" and "Kitsunegari", making him one of three MOTW characters to feature prominently in two different episodes (along with Tooms and Pfaster).

* Big Blue: A mysterious lake monster in third season episode "Quagmire", Big Blue turns out to have been either a large alligator or a prehistoric aquatic reptile (it can't be a dinosaur because dinosaurs neither flew nor swam) that was able to survive for millennia in Georgia's Lake Heuvelmans. Scully's dog Queequeg is killed by the monster.

eason Four

*Edmund, George, and Sherman Peacock, played by Chris Nelson Norris, John Trottier and Adrian Hughes in the episode "Home": The three brothers from the Peacock clan, they live in 19th century conditions on a broken down farm in Home, Pennsylvania. Edmund is actually George and Sherman's brother and father. Incest has become so rampant in the Peacock clan that the remaining family members are severely physically deformed, and further reproduction has become difficult. Their mother, an amputee, is kept in the dark under a bed, on a kind of moving rack. During Mulder and Scully's investigation, the local sheriff is killed by the brothers. Mulder and Scully are eventually able to break into the booby-trapped Peacock home, where George and Sherman are killed during the confrontation, after the late sheriff's single deputy is also killed. Edmund escapes with his mother, and both depart to keep the Peacock line going elsewhere. The notorious episode they appear in, "Home", has a viewer discretion warning, and is rated TV MA, unlike other episodes which are rated TV 14. "Home" was also kept out of syndication for three years after its initial airing.

*Samuel Aboah, portrayed in the episode "Teliko": Aboah was an mutant immigrant to the United States from Burkina Faso who murdered several African-American men in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His motive was to obtain their pituitary glands, since he had none of his own. Because of his lack of a pituitary gland, he often resembled an albino when he had none to sustain him; he looked like an ordinary African man when he did. Aboah's method of killing was to first drug his vicims by shooting a rare plant seed with paralysis-inducing properties at them through a blowgun, then obtain the gland with a needle inserted through the victims' nose. When he was finished, his victims lost all pigmentation in their skin. Aboah also had the ability to squeeze his body into small spaces like a drainage pipe or a drawer. Aboah's nature was similar to those of creatures in African folklore called "teliko", nocturnal "spirits of the air" who slept in small spaces during daytime, but Mulder theorized Aboah was one member of an evolved species of albino human beings who subsisted on pituitary glands to survive. Aboah was ultimately captured by Mulder and Scully, but his health worsened without any glands to sustain him, which presumably eventually killed him.

*Gerry Schnauz, played by Pruitt Taylor Vince in the episode "Unruhe": Schnauz performs frontal "icepick lobotomies" on a series of women he has abducted, thinking he will cure their inner demons or "unrest" (in German, "Unruhe", the fourth season episode's title). Schnauz works as a construction foreman in Michigan, and also has the ability to project his fantasies into photographs, a paranormal process Mulder describes as "thoughtography".

*Ed Jerse and his tattoo, played by Rodney Rowland and Jodie Foster in the episode "Never Again": Jerse is a recently-divorced young man who appears to be controlled by his winking tattoo of a woman, voiced by Jodie Foster. The tattoo degrades Jerse's self-esteem at work and incites him with misogynistic threats. Jerse ultimately murders a neighbor and burns the body, before randomly meeting up with Agent Scully, who is in Philadelphia investigating a case while Mulder takes a vacation to Graceland in Memphis, TN. Jerse becomes intimate with Scully, who is also undergoing a crisis of confidence in her career and personal life, and Scully also gets a tattoo of an ouroboros. Scully spends the night with Jerse but evades danger. In the end, it is suggested that the tattoo may have had psychotropic rye in its dye.

* Leonard Morris Betts, played by Paul McCrane in the episode Leonard Betts: Real name Albert Tanner, Leonard was a Pittsburgh EMT, and a mutant. His body was internally riddled with cancer, but this was actually his normal state of being. Leonard's body, as a result, could regenerate any lost body part, even a new head. To sustain his ability, he had to bathe in providone iodine, as well as consume cancer, which he was able to obtain through his job. To keep his condition secret, Leonard was forced to kill any person who learned about it. During the X-file case on him, he attacked Scully, but was killed after she electrocuted him with a pair of defibrillators on full power. Before he attacked Scully, he told her "I'm sorry... but you've got something I need", quietly revealing to Scully that she had cancer.

* Edward H. "Eddie" Van Blundht, Jr., played by Darin Morgan in the episode "Small Potatoes": A self-described "born loser", Eddie is an inconspicuous janitor, living in a small town in West Virginia. In "Small Potatoes", Mulder and Scully head there to investigate why 5 women within the past 3 months have given birth to babies with vestigial tails. They soon learn that Eddie is the father of all the babies, and that he was also born with a tail. However, a more surprising find to Mulder and Scully, is that Eddie's body is covered with striated muscle, which allows him to transform his appearance to that of virtually anyone (explaining how the women mistook Eddie for their husbands, or in one case, Mark Hamill). Using his ability, Eddie manages to impersonate Mulder, and heads back to D.C. with Scully. While there, he visits Scully with a bottle of wine, attempting to seduce her. The real Mulder eventually shows up, and promptly arrests Eddie, who was less than an inch from kissing Scully.

* Dr. Jack Franklin, played by Richard Beymer in the episode "Sanguinarium": A dark magician, Franklin uses sorcery and human sacrifices in order to maintain his classically beautiful looks. He escapes capture and disappears under a new face and name at the end of the episode.

* Nathaniel Teager, played by Peter LaCroix in the episode "Unrequited": Nathaniel Teager was a soldier who went MIA from the Vietnam war. However, he has seemingly returned and is hunting down and murdering high ranking individuals who knew about the POWs and MIAs left behind in Vietnam. Teager's now possesses the ability to seemingly disappear and become invisible in plain sight.

* John Lee Roche, played by Tom Noonan in the episode "Paper Hearts": A dream vision leads Mulder to discover the long buried corpse of a young girl, and he recognizes the M.O. as that of Roche, one of the first killers he ever profiled. Upon discovering that Roche killed two (three counting the latest) more girls than he confessed to, Mulder begins to believe (thanks to Roche's manipulations) that Roche may have been the one to abduct his sister Samantha, not aliens.

eason Five

* The Great Mutato, played by Chris Owens in the episode "The Post-Modern Prometheus": A real life "Frankenstein's monster" in season 5 episode "Post-Modern Prometheus", The Great Mutato is also the name of a comic book character created by the character Izzy Berkowitz in the episode. The so-called Great Mutato is alternately a source of fear, controversy and pride in the Indiana small town, whose citizens hope an appearance on "The Jerry Springer Show" will bring them fame. Although the character is seen in silhouette several times, he only appears fully at the end of the episode, played by Chris Owens (who previously played a young version of the Cigarette Smoking Man and would later play Jeffrey Spender on the show). His physical deformities are similar to those of John Merrick, "The Elephant Man." The Great Mutato enjoys watching the film "Mask", about a teenaged boy with similar physical defects, and is consequently a large fan of Cher, who stars in the movie as the boy's mother. It is ultimately revealed that The Great Mutato was created not by genetic "mad scientist" Dr. Pollidori, as viewers were initially led to believe, but by Pollidori's inexperienced father, thus resulting in his physical disability. The Great Mutato has been kept in solitary confinement since he was born (over 20 years previously) without the younger Pollidori's knowledge and only rumours of his existence. The unexplained events which draw Mulder and Scully for the episode take place when the compassionate senior Pollidori tries to rectify his mistake in creating the Great Mutato, by secretly allowing the lonely "monster" to drug and impregnate several women in the town in the hopes of creating a "bride". The implication is that the town is in fact already made up of several children of such paternity. The Great Mutato, after tearfully explaining himself and earning the town's understanding, is about to be taken into custody on charges of rape, whereupon the episode has a false ending: Mulder angrily asks to speak to the writer (referencing Izzy, the writer of the comic book about the Great Mutato, and also breaking the fourth wall to reference Chris Carter, the writer of the episode and the creator of "The X-Files", known for its generally dark tone), whereupon a musical montage begins and The Great Mutato is seen ecstatically attending a Cher concert with Scully and Mulder who share a dance to "Walking in Memphis."

* The AI in "Kill Switch": In fifth season episode "Kill Switch", an artificial intelligence menaces a group of computer experts, hackers and Mulder and Scully. The concept was previously addressed in first season episode "Ghost in the Machine", however, that Central Operating System was much more primitive, limited to controlling one building. In "Kill Switch", the AI executes complex tactical moves, and is able to target its "enemies" remotely using a satellite GPS system, as well as placing them within virtual reality worlds. The episode was written by Tom Maddox and William Gibson, who was a creator of many of these concepts in his novels.

* Greg Pincus, portrayed by John Apicello in the episode "Folie a Deux": Pincus was the manager of a small telemarketing company in Missouri who was in fact a large, insect-like monster who bit several of his employees, turning them into zombie-like creatures. Only people who had become aware of Pincus' true nature could see him in his true form and the zombie-esque status of his victims. An employee at the telemarketing company was one such person, and, determined to expose Pincus as the monster he was, took the company headquarters hostage and demanded to be seen on television to prove his claims. Mulder, who had been sent in to negotiate with the employee, managed to see Pincus' true form before a SWAT team raided the building and killed the employee. Mulder, however, began making claims that Pincus was indeed a monster, and his erratic behavior eventually landed him in a psych ward. Pincus, in his monster form, came into Mulder's hospital room to kill Mulder, but was stopped by Scully, who shot Pincus and sent him crashing through a window. However, Pincus escaped, and, along with his zombified victims, moved to another location to become a manager of another telemarketing company.

* Invisible Men in the episode "Detour": While investigating several disappearances in the woodlands of northern Florida, Mulder and Scully and two other agents encounter at least two primitive men who possess the chameleon-like ability to blend in with their surroundings. Mulder theorizes that they are somehow associated with Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth and have perfectly adapted to their woodland home after more than four hundred years. After being stranded in an underground cave, one of the creatures is killed by Mulder and Scully by use of a gun. The other follows Scully to her hotel room but she leaves before it can attack her. The men are most easily seen by their glowing red eyes.

* Chinga Doll in the episode "Chinga": A little girl's doll that seems to be possessed by an evil presence. It forces several people to commit violent suicide before a deputy assisting Scully in investigating the matter destroys the doll inside a microwave. However, the doll, now burnt, is recovered from the ocean's depths at episodes end.

* Ronnie Strickland, played by Patrick Renna in the episode "Bad Blood": Strickland, a pizza-delivery boy, is an actual vampire (one of many that comprise the population of a Texas RV park in the town of Cheney, Texas). Despite being drugged by one of Ronnie's pizzas, Mulder manages to stake and seemingly kill him. The discovery that Ronnie's vampire fangs are cheap plastic almost land Mulder and Scully a murder sentence, but Ronnie is eventually revived by an agent who removes the stake during an autopsy. Ronnie and his entire clan of vampires subdue Mulder and disappear into the night.

* Marty Glenn, played by Lili Taylor in the episode "Mind's Eye": Marty is a blind woman who possesses inexplicable knowledge of a serial murderer's actions. Due to evidence at the crime scenes, unexplained apearences at the crime scenes, and her own confessions, she was held in custody off and on for days at a time at her local police station. It is revealed that the killer is her father and his first victim was Marty's mother, who was killed while still pregnant with Marty. Ever since, a connection was formed between Marty and her father, and she has had visions of her father's actions through his eyes. Marty tricks Mulder and Scully into staking out a bar to wait for her father, knowing he will instead come to her apartment seeking her out. She knocks our the detective guarding her and kills her father, freeing herself of his visions. Although she was free, she was tried with the murder of her father. When asked by Mulder if she wanted him to speak with the judge about the situation, she replied with a no.

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* Patrick Crump, played by Bryan Cranston in the episode "Drive": A Nevada man subject to a strange, potentially infectious illness in the sixth season episode "Drive", he steals a car in his futile efforts to save himself and his family, and eventually holds Mulder hostage at gunpoint and forces him to drive west. Crump, who harbors an anti-government and anti-Semitic paranoia, has in fact been affected by a secret military program whose testing hardware lies under his residence. Signals emitted by the devices resonated in the inner ears of Crump and his wife, forcing them into constant movement at the risk of an explosion inside their heads.

* Wayne Weinsider, played by Bruce Campbell in the episode "Terms of Endearment." Weinsider was a bigamist demon living near Roanoke, Virginia who came to Earth to father a human child, this has ended poorly as every woman that he has impregnated has had a demonic fetus. Weinsider's most recent wife, unbeknownst to him is also a demon, is looking to have a demon child and at the end of the episode runs off with their demon baby.

* Wilson "Pinker" Rawls, played by John Diehl in the episode "Trevor." He is originally a convict in the prison camp, but gains the ability to pass through solid material at will when he is locked in a shed during a tornado. In the course of the episode, he sought out and killed his former partners-in-crime who betrayed him. He is unable to be killed or subdued by conventional means, eg: bullets, melee weapons, handcuffs, prison rooms. However his only weakness is to material that allows light to pass through, eg. glass. He eventually comes to reclaim his son Trevor from his wife, but is killed by her when his body is unable to pass through the windscreen of her car while trying to pass through it, cutting him in half.

* Phillip Padgett, played by John Hawkes in the episode "Milagro": a reclusive writer who is obsessed with Dana Scully. Padgett moved next door to Fox Mulder in order to be closer to Scully (no apartments were available in her building). During the episode, Padgett is writing a novel that gives the details of several murders before they occur. It turns out that one of the characters created by Padgett is the killer. Padgett ultimately burns his novel to save Scully from the killer.

* Bernard, played by Darren Burrows in the episode "Monday": A robber who initially failed to hold up a bank, somehow keeps the same day running over and over again until he can pull off a successful heist. Throughout the episode, he is constantly foiled in his attempts by Mulder (or with Scully when she appears in the loops) when he also comes to the bank to claim his paycheck. However Bernard keeps activating bombs hidden underneath his clothes in the end, killing himself, Mulder, Scully, and the people in the bank through the time loops. Only Bernard's girlfriend Pam, who is somehow "out of the loops" experiences the same day repeatedly but knows of previous events, tries to keep her boyfriend from robbing the bank, eg: persuading him, drugging his breakfast, warning others, etc. The characters start to gain a sense of déjà vu through the course of the loops. Mulder is approached by Pam who warns him but is again killed in that loop, but manages to remember her warning in the next loop, finally apprehending Bernard and prevent him from activating his bomb, therefore ending the loop. However Pam is shot accidentally by Bernard and after remarking that "this time it's different", she dies.

* Josh "Ex" Exley, played by Jesse L. Martin in the episode "The Unnatural": Exley is an exceptional baseball player in the Negro Leagues circa 1949, who turns out to be an extraterrestrial who arrived in the Roswell UFO incident. The episode, the first written and directed by David Duchovny, is mostly set in the past and follows Exley as he is torn between his passion for baseball and his desire not to be exposed, leading him to take the form of an African American player in the racially segregated era, due to his lower profile. However, when Exley begins to attract wider attention for his abilities, he comes into conflict with other members of his "race" (including regular mythology characters such as the Alien Bounty Hunter) and is killed. Having somehow achieved human form, he bleeds red blood. The story is retold to Mulder in the present by the brother of X-Files founder Agent Arthur Dales. The brother, who also happens to be named "Arthur Dales", witnessed the events as a young white agent assigned to protect Exley.

* Gene Gogolak, played by Peter White, and the Übermenscher, portrayed in the episode "Arcadia." Gogolak was President of the Homeowners Association in a planned community Mulder and Scully were investigating (three couples have vanished in seven years). The so-called "übermenscher" was a tulpa, a mystical creature said to be conjured and brought to life by sheer willpower. When Gene Gogolak, the founder of an import furniture business, discovered how to summon a tulpa in the Far East, he applied his newfound ability to a planned community he created near San Diego, California called The Falls of Arcadia. Gogolak summoned his "übermenscher" whenever a resident of the neighborhood repeatedly violated the community's "Contracts, Covenants, and Regulations" rulebook (or CC&Rs), ordering the creature to kill said residents. The "übermenscher" was made up completely of garbage from an old landfill the neighborhood was built on. When Agent Mulder discovered the link between Gogolak and the creature, he returned to the house where he and Scully were living to save Scully from the monster, handcuffing Gogolak to a mailbox. The "übermenscher" appeared and brutally killed Gogolak, and was about to kill Mulder when Gogolak died, rendering the creature into a pile of garbage.

* Holman Hartz, played by Davis Manis in the episode "Rain King": Holman is a lovelorn meteorologist who Mulder suspects of being able to subconsciously control the weather. His pining for a local woman causes all manner of weather problems for the town of Kroner, Kansas until Mulder finally manages to resolve things by giving Holman dating advice.

* Alfred Fellig, played by Geoffery Lewis in the episode "Tithonus": Fellig is a crime scene photographer who is discovered to also somehow have pictures of all his work just after the deaths happened. When Mulder and Scully investigate the matter it is revealed that Fellig has had multiple identities and is over one-hundred-fifty years old. He somehow possesses the ability to see when people are near death and is attempting to capture Death on film so that he can look at its face and finally die. When another agent blindly shoots Scully and he, he instructs her to not look at Death's face and finally moves on.

* Water Parasite, portrayed in the episode "Agua Mala": A creature that lives in the form of salt water but can take the form of a translucent tentacled creature when it attacks. It corners Mulder and Scully along with several other people in an apartment building on Florida's Gulf Coast during a hurricane.

* Dr. Ian Detweiler, played by Andrew J. Robinson in the episode "Alpha": Detweiler is an animal specialist who was hunting an Asian dog known as the Wanshang Dhole that was believed to be extinct. After a series of dog attacks, Mulder theorizes that Detweiler was actually attacked by the Dhole and has become a sort of shape-shifting were-dog. Detweiler is killed when he accidentally drives himself and a victim out of an upper story window.

* Fungal Life-form, portrayed in the episode "Field Trip": A giant fungal life-form that resides in caves underneath the fields of North Carolina. Mulder and Scully first investigates the disappearance and discovery of a young couple's skeletal remains. During their search for answers, the duo are simultaneously affected by the fungus which releases its LSD-like spores in the form of mushrooms growing in the fields. The drug keeps its victims sedated and under hallucinations while it slowly digests them in the caves below. Mulder and Scully managed to meet up in their hallucinations as they try to distinguish reality from fantasy throughout the episode. Mulder manages to break both of them from their trance when he successfully breaks the creature's grasp on them. At the same time, they are rescued by Assistant Director Skinner and the authorities. In the end, the fungus is most likely incinerated to prevent further contamination.

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*The Fear Monster: In the episode "X-COPS" (a stylistic crossover with the reality show "COPS"), a "fear monster" threatens Willow Park, a fictional area of South Los Angeles populated by terrified residents, prostitutes, crack houses, cops on the job, an eccentric gay couple, and the semi-famous Mulder and Scully, reluctantly followed by camera crews. Mulder initially suspects a werewolf attack because he finds all the signs of one, while a police sketch artist finds other inhabitants apparently saw Freddy Krueger. Scully is conducting an autopsy when her assistant drops dead of the Hanta virus she so dreads, and later she is threatened by her own fear of the camera itself. This episode suggests that the "monster" is seen differently by each person and kills each differently, depending on their own fears, similar to a theme of the Stephen King novel "IT". The theme was also used in the third season "X-Files" episode "Wetwired", where a subliminal signal hidden in TV reception caused different paranoid visions in each viewer, and in "Blood", a second season episode where these fears were prompted by digital text displays.

*Betty Templeton and Lulu Pfeiffer, both portrayed by Kathy Griffin in the episode "Fight Club." They were daughters of a enraged convict via sperm donation, and inherited his mood. When they were near a telephatic link between them created mayhem in the surrounding area, by enraging everyone near and destroying objects, and both loved a wrestler, who by the end of the was revealed to have a convict brother, and they had a telephatic link too. When the four were at an wrestling arena their link made everyone fight without control.

*Robert "Rob" Roberts, portrayed by Chad Donella in the episode "Hungry." A young Illinois man employed as a desk clerk at a fast food restaurant, Roberts was in fact a mutant who subsisted on human brains. He had a daily disguise as a normal twenty-something young man, though in his true form (which he reveals to his victims before most of his killings), he was bald, had pale skin, had no ears, almost no nose, black eyes, and sharp teeth. Roberts actually resented having to kill people for food, and actually tried to join a support group in the hopes of curbing his insatiable appitite, but his nature overwhelmed him and he killed an irate customer, a rival co-worker, a private detective, and a neighbor to eat their brains. When he was about to kill a female psychiatrist he had befriended, he was cornered by Agents Mulder and Scully, who had been investigating Roberts' killings. In an effort to stop his hunger forever, Roberts attacked the agents and forced them to shoot him, committing suicide by cop.

*Henry Weems, played by Willie Garson in the episode "The Goldberg Variation": Weems is a man that has seemingly been "cursed" with good luck, but at the horrible expense of others around him.

*Max Harden, played by Scott Cooper in the episode "The Rush": Max is a small town student and son of the local sheriff. He, along with several other young men, discover a means of moving at a speed beyond the human eye's perception.

*Maitreya, played by Krista Allen in the episode "First Person Shooter": Maitreya is a digital character--a female warrior created by a technician of video game developer First Person Shooter. Somehow the character enters into the company's current virtual reality game project and begins killing players, deaths which somehow affect their corpreal bodies as well. Mulder and Scully are forced into the VR world to confront her.

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*Martin Wells, portrayed by Joe Morton: Wells was a prosecutor in Baltimore, Maryland who was accused of fatally stabbing his wife. Wells gradually began to realize that he was living backwards in time, living through each of the previous days before he was to be assassinated by his father-in-law (Friday, then Thursday, then Wednesday, and so on). He initially tried to seek help from Agents Scully and Doggett, but they were reluctant to believe him. Wells also began receiving visions of the night of his wife's murder, which eventually revealed that the real killer was a prisoner who assaulted him in jail. When he arrived to the day after his wife's murder, both he and Doggett (an old friend of Wells') arrested the prisoner. During a confrontation during the future killer's interrogation, the killer accused Wells of prosecutorial misconduct, suppressing evidence during the trial of the killer's brother, who committed suicide in prison, something Wells later admitted to Doggett. The night of the murder, Wells came to his Baltimore apartment, where he and his wife were attacked by the killer. They were saved when Doggett fatally shot the assailant. The end of the episode, however, showed Wells willingly going to prison for his own crime.

*Billy Underwood:

*Anthony Tipit, portrayed in "Via Negitava": Tipit was a cult leader in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who preached a hybrid of Eastern mysticism and evangelical Christianity, claiming that certain hallucinogens could guarantee access to a higher plane of reality. After ingesting what is later described as a "super-amphetamine", Tipit's third eye was opened.

*Herman Stites, portrayed in the episode "Alone". Stites was a biologist who experimented with reptiles. He discovered how to develop a new species of reptile, but somehow becomes it, and traps Doggett and Harrison underground. Stites, in his reptile form, uses venom to blind his victims and then waits for the digestive enzymes within the venom to kill them. Stites is taken underground by Mulder at the end of the episode, and is shot by Doggett.

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