Fox Mulder
From X-Files Wiki
- Mulder redirects here. For other people of the same last name see Mulder (disambiguation).
| Fox Mulder | |
| |
| Gender: | Male |
| Born: | 13 October 1961 |
| Father1: | William Mulder (legal, Deceased: 1995) |
| Cigarette Smoking Man (biological, Deceased: 2002) | |
| Mother: | Teena Mulder (Deceased: 2000) |
| Children: | William Scully III |
| Actor: | David Duchovny |
| |
Fox William Mulder was a highly skilled FBI Special Agent who brought his often-criticized method of formulating unconventional theories to the X-files. (TXF: "Pilot", et al.) He was dismissed from the FBI in 2001 and, in 2002, he went on the run from the law with his former partner, Dana Scully. (TXF: "Vienen", "The Truth")
He was raised as the son of William and Teena Mulder, and brother of Samantha Mulder.
- William and Teena Mulder first appeared in TXF: "Colony", but Teena was not named until "Kitsunegari". His sister was first seen in "Conduit", but only appeared in two photographs from her youth.
[edit] Childhood & Teenage Years
Fox Mulder was born on Friday, October 13, 1961, in Chilmark, Martha's Vineyard. (TXF: "Paper Clip", "Dreamland II")
His first words were "JFK", when aged 11 months. (TXF: "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man") He was four years old when his sister, Samantha, was born. (TXF: "Paper Clip")
The Mulders had a summer house in Quonochontaug, Rhode Island, where the children would play on the grass while William Mulder, Fox's father, would go water-skiing with C.G.B. Spender on the water nearby. (TXF: "Demons", "Talitha Cumi") The Mulders had a rope swing out in their backyard but didn't have a modem, fax machine or a cell phone. (TXF: "Paper Hearts", "Home")
- It can probably be assumed that the family didn't have those devices because the technology hadn't been invented yet. However, this assumption is not established nor disproved by episode information.
From early in his youth, Fox wanted a peg leg. He gave the idea a lot of thought and eventually came to the belief that, if he had a peg leg or hooks for hands, other people might not expect him to achieve anything more than to simply keep on living, braving facing life with his disability. Fox never grew out of his boyhood desire for a peg leg and, in 1996, he still suspected it would have its advantages. (TXF: "Quagmire")
Young Fox Mulder had several nightmares from which he awakened in the middle of the night, thinking he was the only person left in the world. The loud crunching from his father eating sunflower seeds in the family's study reassured Fox that he was not alone. (TXF: "Aubrey")
In Fox's childhood, he and his father were Indian Guides. (TXF: "Detour")
One day when he was climbing a tree, Fox had an up-close encounter with a praying mantis. Although he initially thought the mantis was a leaf, he screamed when he realized the insect's true nature. He later remembered that his scream wasn't a "girlie" one, but of a person being "confronted by some before unknown monster that had no right existing on the same planet [he] inhabited". He was repulsed by the mantis and has hated insects ever since. (TXF: "War of the Coprophages")
Once in his youth, Fox dressed up as the fictional character Spock and his father recorded a home movie of him playing with his sister, Samantha. Fox made silly faces at the camera and was irritated when his fake ear fell off. (TXF: "Dreamland II")
He and Samantha would play all-day pick-up games of baseball out on the vineyard, ride their bikes to the beach and eat bologna sandwiches. The only regular responsibility that they had was getting home in time for dinner. (TXF: "Home")
Fox once posed, half-naked, for a photograph with his sister, while she wore a swimming costume. (TXF: "Conduit")
Fox played right-field in baseball and owned a New York Nets replica basketball jersey. (TXF: "Blood", "Little Green Men") At home, he enjoyed watching The Magician, a series that starred Bill Bixby. (TXF: "Little Green Men", "Paper Hearts") He also liked playing Stratego with Samantha. (TXF: "Little Green Men", "Colony", "Paper Hearts")
- Fox and his sister are seen playing Stratego before Samantha's abduction in the episodes "Little Green Men" and "Paper Hearts", but those sequences may not be historically accurate. When Samantha is supposedly returned in the episode, "Colony," she asks Mulder if it's too late for a game of Stratego, supporting the theory that they used to play it as children.
Once, his best friend's house burnt down and he spent the night in the wreckage to guard it from looters. For several years after the incident, Fox had nightmares about being trapped in a burning building. In 1993, he still had an extreme hate of fire. (TXF: "Fire")
- Mulder's phobia of fire, established in the episode "Fire", was never referred to again. Some fans speculate that Mulder may have overcome his phobia in the establishing episode, yet others believe that Mulder's fear remains but was just never dealt with.
Fox chose to study French in high school. (TXF: "731")
His ambition was to become an astronaut and his hero was NASA Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Aurelius Belt. Aged 14, Fox stayed up all night to watch Belt's space walk. (TXF: "Space")
[edit] Sister's Disappearance
Fox's parents loved him, he got all his flu shots and pretty much led a normal life until his sister disappeared. (TXF: "Dreamland II")
On the evening of November 27th, 1973, Fox was twelve when he was babysitting for his eight-year old sister in 2790 Vine Street, Martha's Vineyard. (TXF: "Little Green Men", "Pilot", "Conduit")
- 2790 Vine Street was once the address of The X-Files production office in Vancouver.
By an unknown force that Fox later came to believe was alien, Samantha was taken from the house without explanation. (TXF: "Colony") As Fox's father, Bill Mulder, worked at high level in government, an unusually large search operation was conducted and even the FBI's Treasury Department became involved, but nothing was found. (TXF: "Closure") The incident tore the Mulder family apart as there were no facts or evidence to offer any hope and no one would talk about it. (TXF: "Pilot")
As a child, Mulder had a ritual of closing his eyes before walking into his room as he believed that one day when he opened them, his sister would be there, lying in bed like nothing had ever happened. He later initiated an X-file concerning his sister's unexplained disappearance, with the case number X-40253. (TXF: "Conduit") According to Mulder, his belief that aliens had abducted his sister "sustained [him], fueling a quest for truths that were elusive as the memory itself". (TXF: "Colony")
- For information on Mulder's efforts to recover his sister, see the Relationships - Samantha Mulder section. For differences in his recollections of her disappearance, see Questionable Information - Memories of Sister's Disappearance.
[edit] Education and Early FBI Career
[edit] Oxford
After the disappearance of his sister and the divorce of his parents, Mulder attended Oxford University from 1983 until 1986. (TXF: "Pilot", "Unusual Suspects") While there, Mulder watched a documentary about an insane asylum. In one section of the programme, a patient named Creighton Jones claimed to have been abducted by "fire demons". The documentary gave Mulder nightmares. (TXF: "Our Town") Despite his negative reaction to the video, he graduated summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology. (TXF: "Dreamland II")
- The ten years between his sister's abduction and his enrolment at Oxford University are largely unaccounted for. Mulder's credentials are also unspecific about which precise Oxford program he participated in.
- Mulder was probably affected by the "fire demon" documentary due to his fear of fire and because he imagined what might have happened to Samantha if she had been abducted the same way as Creighton Jones claimed to have been.
- In "Pilot", Mulder is described as having written a monograph on serial killers and the occult that helped to catch a murderer in 1988. Although there is insufficient evidence to establish exactly when Mulder wrote this monograph (prior to 1988), it is likely that he wrote it while studying at Oxford, as there is no evidence to suggest he participated in such an intense academic period before the murderer's capture and, in the episode, Mulder's time at Oxford is mentioned directly before and in the same sentence as the description of him having written the monograph. Similarly, Mulder mentions, in "Little Green Men", that he took music appreciation with Professor Ganz, where he learned that the famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach had a genius for polyphony. Like the writing of his monograph, there is not adequate evidence to determine whether Mulder studied music appreciation at college.
[edit] FBI Training and Early Career
After graduating from university at the top of his class, Mulder studied at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia in 1986. (TXF: "Kill Switch", "Unusual Suspects") On his first day at the Academy, he learned that every fingerprint is unique. (TXF: "Squeeze") Later that year, Mulder graduated with honors. (TXF: "Dreamland II")
In 1988, the FBI successfully captured murderer Monty Props with help from a monograph on serial killers and the occult that Mulder had previously written. (TXF: "Pilot")
In the same year, Mulder was studying at the Investigative Support Unit, based in Quantico and run by William Patterson, the leading authority on behavioural science, when Mulder quit the unit. As Patterson's student, Mulder had learned that to know an artist, you must first look at his art - a lesson he interpreted as meaning that if you want to catch a monster, you have to become one yourself. (TXF: "Grotesque")
- It is unclear when Mulder began his assignment to the ISU, but it may explain the missing two years between his next assignment and his graduation from the FBI Academy that are otherwise unaccounted for.
Also in 1988, Mulder was assigned to the FBI's Violent Crimes Section. (TXF: "Unusual Suspects") There, he saw "the worst of humanity" and wondered how the violent suspects and killers he encountered had become evil. Although Mulder realized that there were psychological explanations, that the men were victims of their parents or their environments, the scientific explanations never truly satisfied him and he began to think of evil as a contagious disease that could spread "from man to man or age to age". (TXF: "Empedocles") During this period, Mulder was also witness to several graves that had been unearthed. (TXF: "Irresistible") His partner was Jerry Lamana and his supervisor was ASAC Reggie Purdue. (TXF: "Ghost in the Machine", "Young at Heart")
[edit] First FBI Case
Mulder's first case at the FBI as a field agent was in 1989. He investigated a series of armed robberies in Washington, D.C. in which the thief, a criminal named John Barnett, had killed seven people. While working on the case, Mulder was a member of a large task force. He had an unlikely suspicion that Barnett had an inside connection to an employee at the armored car company, who was providing the criminal with information about large shipments of cash. Barnett started sending taunting notes to Mulder as he continued working on the case.
Eventually, the task force had a customs warehouse at an airport staked-out in the hope of capturing Barnett's informer. However, Barnett was actually inside the vehicle himself when it arrived. Sensing that something was wrong, Barnett took the driver of the vehicle - his own accomplice - hostage. The FBI task force surrounded the criminal, ordering him to surrender his hostage and his weapon. Mulder took up a position directly behind Barnett with a clear shot at the criminal, but obeyed FBI regulations that prohibit agents from unnecessarily endangering the life of a hostage. Mulder suspected that Barnett would surrender as he had no means of escape, but the killer shot his hostage at point-blank range and then fired his gun at Agent Steve Wallenberg's face. Although Mulder shot Barnett twice, in the shoulder and hand, he was convinced that he could have saved Agent Wallenberg's life and never forgave himself for the deaths.
Mulder later attended Barnett's trial and presented a testimony in court. He recalled the events of the shoot-out and angrily insulted Barnett while the judge ordered him to step down from the witness stand. After Mulder eventually complied with the instruction, Barnett threatened him, "I'll get you". (TXF: "Young at Heart")
[edit] The Gunmen Incident
In May 1989, Mulder was assigned to conduct a search for Susanne Modeski, who was suspected of murdering four employees at the Army Advanced Weapons Facility at Whitestone, New Mexico. When Mulder found Modeski in a warehouse at 204 Fells Point Road, she was being helped by a group of three unarmed men. Mulder consequently attempted to arrest all four individuals but was prevented from doing so by two armed men who told Modeski to accompany them, refused to identify themselves to Mulder and eventually opened fire on him. Mulder attempted to hide behind a stack of boxes but was unaware they contained an ergotamine-histomine gas that could cause anxiety and paranoia in small doses.
The shots from his attackers' weapons released the gas into the air and Mulder was consequently affected, coughing and groaning as his body writhed around on the ground. As his attackers were about to kill him, Susanne Modeski shot the men with a gun of her own before fleeing the scene in Mulder's car. The warehouse was soon sanitized by a group of men led by an individual who Mulder would later know as X. In his drugged state, Mulder thought the group were actually aliens, having seen, earlier in his search for Modeski, a product display where a recorded voice had repeatedly announced, "They're here. Alien invaders are among us. Detect their presence with high-tech modern products."
Nearly immediately after the sanitizing group left the warehouse, a SWAT team found Mulder under a large piece of cardboard that was leaning against a crate. He was nonresponsive to questions and continually repeated the words, "They're here". Mulder had recovered by the next morning but discovered that, although Susanne Modeski was still missing, she was no longer wanted by the FBI and the case had suddenly closed. (TXF: "Unusual Suspects") Left with lingering ideas that he characterized as "weird" and able to remember only a little of the night before, Mulder began to consult Modeski's three former accomplices, who he would ultimately come to know as "the Lone Gunmen". (TXF: "Unusual Suspects", "First Person Shooter")
- Although the Lone Gunmen first appear in Season 1's "E.B.E.", Mulder doesn't mention their collective name until the Season 7 episode, "First Person Shooter".
[edit] The BSU & "Paper Hearts"
According to Mulder, he worked at the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit for three years, profiling serial killers. (TXF: "Tooms")
- The exact dates of Mulder's assignment to the BSU are unknown although "Travelers" establishes that he was assigned to the unit in November, 1990. The "three years" that he mentions in "Tooms" may have been a rough estimate, but he did mention that duration in a court of law.
By 1990, the bodies of ten young girls had been found scattered across the eastern seaboard, the earliest discovered in 1979. The killer had abducted each of his victims from their homes and would take cloth heart trophies from each victim, a routine that influenced ViCAP to name the case "paper hearts". Mulder's ASAC, Reggie Purdue, brought him onto the case, believing that Mulder would be able to get inside the killer's head. He concluded that the murderer was probably a salesman, most likely someone who seemed ordinary, could gain people's confidence and traveled around a lot.
The case proved difficult and the killer was extremely hard to catch. Ultimately, however, Mulder's profile was instrumental in the capture of the killer, a vacuum cleaner salesman named John Lee Roche. By the time he was caught, a total of thirteen victims had been found, ranging from eight to ten years of age. Roche admitted he had killed precisely thirteen girls and a polygraph test established that he was telling the truth. However, the cloth hearts that Roche had taken from his victims were never found, a fact that would irritate Mulder for the next six years. He always wanted to find the hearts and count them to see if they really added up to thirteen. (TXF: "Paper Hearts")
By November 1990, Mulder had moved address to Apartment 42 of 2630 Hegal Place, Alexandria, Virginia. (TXF: "Travelers", "Small Potatoes", "Dreamland II")
- Mulder's address - Apartment 42, 2630 Hegal Place, Alexandria, Virginia - was first given in "Small Potatoes" and appeared again near the start of "Dreamland II", in an X-file labeled X-71009. "Travelers" establishes that he was living there in 1990. Apartment 42 is a reference to "the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything", from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels by Douglas Adams.
[edit] Work on the X-Files
[edit] Finding the X-Files
Mulder's success at applying behavioural models to criminal cases allowed him a certain freedom to pursue his own interests and he found the X-files in 1990. (TXF: "Pilot", "Travelers")
- The script of "Conduit" states that the X-file initiated by Mulder that was concerned with his sister's abduction was opened on January 14, 1989. The CD-ROM The X-Files: Unauthorized Access reveals that paperwork showing this date was created for filming of the episode, but the date cannot be seen clearly in the final version of the episode.
Initially, the files seemed to him like "a garbage dump for UFO sightings, alien abduction reports, the kind of stuff that most people laugh at as being ridiculous". Mulder, however, was fascinated by the files and read hundreds of them, including all the cases he was allowed access to. He read everything he could about paranormal phenomena and the occult. (TXF: "Pilot")
He found many X-files that recorded accounts of alien abductees who had suffered intense radiation burns. (TXF: "Fallen Angel") He also discovered file X-649176 and the first X-file, initiated by J. Edgar Hoover in 1946. Both files contained reports of men who had been able to physically transform into wild animals. (TXF: "Shapes") Another file Mulder saw dated back to 1952 and concerned something that had killed livestock and terrorized people living in Point Pleasant, West Virginia for over a year. After witnesses had described seeing primitive looking men with red piercing eyes, the culprits had become known as "moth men". (TXF: "Detour")
Although the X-files constituted a project outside the Bureau mainstream, Mulder pursued the files because witnessing his sister's abduction continued to haunt him. (TXF: "Pilot", "The Truth") He was assigned to the cases in 1990. (TXF: "Kill Switch")
One of the first X-files Mulder investigated himself involved a killer named Edward Skur. In November 1990, Mulder met Arthur Dales, a former Special Agent with the FBI who, in 1952, had opened an X-file on Skur labeled X-525652. Dales revealed William Mulder's involvement in experiments that had been conducted involving xenotransplantation. (TXF: "Travelers")
After joining the FBI in 1991, Diana Fowley, an FBI agent with a background in para-science and Mulder's girlfriend since his graduation from the FBI Academy, helped him investigate a few of the X-files. While working on the cases, Mulder and Fowley spent some time in psychiatric hospitals where they suspected that some patients serving criminal sentences had been misdiagnosed. Additionally, a few patients showed impressively accurate clairvoyant and telepathic abilities. Mulder learned that Fowley had run brain scans and psych evaluations. After the Berlin Wall was dismantled, Fowley accepted a counter-terrorism legate assignment in Berlin, Europe, simultaneously ending her tenure on the X-files and her relationship with Mulder. (TXF: "The End")
- It is unclear how many and which psychiatric patients Mulder and Fowley felt had been misdiagnosed, whether those patients also showed telepathic abilities and, if so, how many. It is uncertain whether Mulder witnessed the patients exhibit telepathic abilities, only that Diana Fowley did so. It is also unclear if Mulder, having graduated from the FBI Academy before Diana Fowley, showed her how to run brain scans and psych evaluations or if she learned how to conduct those procedures herself. Logically, she may have either learned how to perform such tasks prior to investigating the relevant case, which might or might not have involved the psychiatric patients, or during the case. Historically, the dismantling of the Berlin Wall ended in November 1991 but this date has not been established in The X-Files Universe, only that "the Wall came down".
[edit] Office & Initial Stint with Scully
By March 1992, Mulder's office was in the basement of the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington, D.C., where the X-files were also stored. (TXF: "Pilot") The office had only dusty skylight windows and Mulder had decorated the walls with artifacts related to the paranormal, including a UFO poster proclaiming "I Want to Believe" that he had obtained from a head shop on M Street shortly before March 6. (TXF: "Pilot", "Chinga")
- The origins of the "I Want to Believe" poster are revealed in "Chinga", in which Mulder reveals that he got it "about five years ago". The episode is set in early 1998 but the poster is seen as early as "Pilot", set in early 1992, meaning that he must have obtained the poster six years before. This does not clash with the "about five years ago" statement Mulder makes in "Chinga" because the date he provides is only approximate.
Division Chief Scott Blevins, Mulder's superior, believed he had developed a consuming devotion to the X-files. (TXF: "Pilot") As a result, Blevins assigned Special Agent Dana Scully, a medical doctor with a background in hard science, to assist Mulder on the X-files and provide an analytical perspective on the cases, including field reports and observations on the validity of their work. (TXF: "Pilot", "Gethsemane")
When Mulder first met Scully, he told her that his memories of the abduction of his sister had marked him so deeply that nothing else mattered. (TXF: "Pilot", "The Red and the Black") On their first assignment together, Mulder and his new FBI partner investigated mysterious deaths of high school students in Oregon. Mulder was thrilled to experience several phenomena commonly associated with alien abductions, such as time loss and witnessing an extremely bright light gradually engulf an area he was in. (TXF:"Pilot") Mulder would continue to have many strange experiences during his tenure on the X-files. (The X-Files)
In 1994, Mulder somehow realized that the FBI intended to shut down the X-files and had a hunch that something was about to change for himself and Scully. (TXF: "Tooms") Shortly thereafter, he was called into FBI Headquarters and was told by Assistant Director Walter Skinner, who had replaced Section Chief Blevins as the agents' superior, that he and Scully would no longer be investigating the X-files and would instead be assigned to other sections of the FBI. Mulder relayed the news to Scully and vowed that he wouldn't give up. (TXF: "The Erlenmeyer Flask")
[edit] After the X-Files Closed
- See also: Fox Mulder's work off the X-files (1994)
Mulder was tasked with routine general assignment duties following the X-files' closure, but had several random encounters with the paranormal, including an experience of a possible alien visitation and the discovery of a being that he initially believed to be a "giant bloodsucking worm". (TXF: "Little Green Men", "The Host") Mulder considered leaving the FBI at this point but, soon after, he was temporarily reassigned to the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit, where he returned to his previous assignment as a behavioural profiler. (TXF: "The Host", "Blood") Shortly following this reassignment, Mulder was partnered with Special Agent Alex Krycek and worked on two cases with him. (TXF: "Sleepless", "Ascension")
[edit] Continuation of the X-Files
After discovering evidence that Krycek had been complicit in the recent abduction of Agent Scully, the X-files were reopened and Mulder alone was reassigned to investigate the cases. (TXF: "Sleepless", "Ascension") Mulder later recalled that he had "worked [his] ass off to get the files reopened". (TXF: "Never Again") Krycek did not return to working for the FBI but Mulder would have many encounters with him in the future. (TXF: "Ascension", et al.) As Scully was found shortly after Mulder investigated a single case alone, he subsequently continued to investigate the X-files with her. (TXF: "One Breath", "3", "Firewalker")
Mulder remained on the X-files with Scully for the next four years but fears over the continuation of the files were voiced in 1998 by two of their associates in the FBI, after Mulder suggested that a shooter, whose target had been Gibson Praise, be given immunity from prosecution in exchange for information about Praise. Mulder nevertheless interviewed the shooter, who was killed soon after.
Mulder was soon informed of talks that were being held on the issue of reassignment for himself and Scully that included instructions from the Justice Department to close down the X-files. Although Mulder believed that the situation he and Scully now found themselves in had all been planned without his knowledge, Scully told him that it might no longer matter what he believed as the forces against them seemed to have won. Later, Mulder received news of a fire within his basement office. He and Scully returned to the FBI's Headquarters, where they saw that the office containing the X-files had been severely incinerated in the fire. All information pertaining to the cases had apparently been destroyed and lost forever. (TXF: "The End")
[edit] Aftermath
Ironically, Mulder continued to learn more about the aliens and plans for their upcoming colonization of the Earth, after the destruction of the X-files. With Scully, he was initially assigned to investigate a bomb threat under the supervision of SAC Darius Michaud but Mulder and his FBI partner found that the bomb was linked to plans for the colonization after he discovered the bomb and it exploded, killing SAC Michaud. (The X-Files Movie) The X-files were re-opened shortly thereafter, but with two of Mulder's associates within the FBI assigned to investigate the files, rather than himself and Scully. (The X-Files Movie, TXF: "The Beginning") Mulder simultaneously made an attempt to technologically restore the incinerated remains of burnt X-files, an effort he momentarily continued after he and Scully were placed under the supervision of stern Assistant Director Alvin Kersh. (TXF: "The Beginning")
Together with Scully, Mulder was subsequently assigned to investigate possible cases of domestic terrorism. Mulder found these routine checks extremely boring and suspected that their superiors meant to humiliate Scully and himself by assigning them such tedious work. (TXF: "Drive") He therefore chose to involve himself in several cases outside those he had been assigned to, including a high-speed police chase that had made news headlines and his search for the SS Queen Anne - a ship that had reportedly gone missing in the Bermuda Triangle in 1939. (TXF: "Drive", "Triangle")
In early 1999, Mulder remotely provided information on a case that Scully investigated while she was temporarily partnered with Agent Peyton Ritter. Shortly before this case, Mulder had revealed to Scully that he was not ready to quit the FBI as doing so would "make way too many people way too happy". (TXF: "Tithonus") Soon after, he found that Assistant Director Skinner had been assaulted so, with Scully's assistance, he tried to determine the attacker's identity but the agents were inhibited from continuing their investigation by Skinner himself, who reminded them that they were to perform their duties "as directed by AD Kersh and only AD Kersh". (TXF: "S.R. 819")
Subsequently, Mulder again learned more about the aliens and their human conspirators, known as the Syndicate, but both he and Scully were indefinately suspended by the FBI when Agent Jeffrey Spender, one of the agents assigned to the X-files who was unwittingly working for the Syndicate, found that Mulder and Scully had been using the X-files office to aid in their inquiries. (TXF: "Two Fathers")
[edit] Return to the X-Files
After virtually all members of the Syndicate were killed by a rebel group of aliens, Mulder was reassigned to the X-files with Scully due to a strong recommendation to AD Kersh by Agent Spender, who had realized he had been mistaken in his allegiance. (TXF: "One Son")
Mulder was once again assigned to operate under Assistant Director Skinner's guidance, as was Scully. (TXF: "Arcadia") The agents returned to the X-files office and, even though Mulder's "I Want to Believe" poster had burned in the fire, he managed to obtain a new one from one of his on-line correspondants, Karin Berquist, after she died while involved in a case he was investigating. (TXF: "Alpha")
It was later but during the same stint on the X-files that Mulder finally learned the truth of his sister's fate. (TXF: "Closure")
[edit] Abduction & Recovery
- See also: Fox Mulder's abduction
In 2000, Mulder disregarded the advice of an FBI auditor, specifically to reduce the resources he used on investigating the X-files, by choosing to work with Scully on a case involving recent disappearances of several multiple abductees from the Oregon town where the agents had investigated their first case together. It was only after he returned to Washington, D.C. with Scully that Mulder and his associates learned of a downed UFO hidden in the Oregon woods where the abductees had been taken by aliens intent on covering up evidence of the abductions. Characteristically curious, Mulder headed to the location of the crashed spacecraft with AD Skinner but was abducted himself, taken aboard the craft with the other abductees and at least six alien bounty hunters. (TXF: "Requiem", "Without")
Aboard the ship, Mulder was bound to metallic apparatus and endured painful medical procedures, including the drilling of his teeth and the cracking of his chest. (TXF: "Within") In less than a week after his abduction, Mulder traveled aboard the craft to the Arizona desert, where the aliens made an unsuccessful attempt to abduct Gibson Praise. (TXF: "Within", "Without") The following year, the ship carrying Mulder visited Helena, Montana, where the aliens disposed of at least two of the abductees, seemingly either dead or barely alive and with injuries similar to those Mulder sustained aboard the craft. Mulder's body was abandoned outside a farm compound where abductees had been taken and healed of their wounds; he was found by FBI agents searching for him there. (TXF: "This is Not Happening") At the time his body was discovered, he seemed to have been dead for days.
Mulder was consequently buried in Raleigh, North Carolina following a funeral held there in his honor. He was actually infected with an alien virus, however, that kept the body just alive enough to take it through a transformation into an alien. After Billy Miles - an abductee who had been taken aboard the same alien craft as Mulder - was found deceased and floating in the Atlantic Ocean but later regained consciousness, Mulder's grave was unearthed three days after his burial and his body was hospitalized. Billy Miles' transformation into an alien supersoldier informed Mulder's treatment and he was soon nursed back to health, regaining consciousness without encountering the same development as Billy Miles. (TXF: "DeadAlive")
- During Mulder's abduction, he is shown in flashbacks in the episodes "The Gift" and "Per Manum" but these are not directly related to his abduction. In the last scene of "The Gift", Doggett also has a momentary vision of Mulder while in the X-files office. Scully later has a similar vision in "This is Not Happening". Scenes of Mulder's abduction shown previously in the series appear in "Three Words", an episode set after his return.
[edit] Exclusion
After Mulder returned home to his apartment, an application was submitted to the FBI for his reinstatement to the X-files but this was declined by Kersh, who had been promoted to Deputy Director in charge of the X-files shortly after Mulder had been abducted. (TXF: "Three Words", "Within") Mulder learned that Agent John Doggett had been assigned to the X-files with Scully, but she was pregnant and was soon to go on maternity leave. (TXF: "Three Words") Subsequently, Mulder returned to his former basement office and continued to place himself in danger by investigating two X-files that allowed him to use his knowledge of the aliens and their conspiracy. (TXF: "Three Words", "Vienen")
A case Mulder worked on between these two investigations involved the possibility that the unfortunate conclusion to a search for Doggett's son conducted years ago was connected to several recent murders and the case was brought to Mulder by Special Agent Monica Reyes, who had witnessed the discovery of both his deceased body and that of Doggett's son. (TXF: "Empedocles")
Mulder was soon dismissed from the FBI, however, and passed responsibility of the X-files office to Agent Doggett. (TXF: "Vienen") Shortly thereafter, Mulder unofficially aided a search for Doggett and Leyla Harrison, an agent Doggett was temporarily partnered with. Mulder alone succeeded in finding the agents and was indirectly responsible for the killing of a shape-changing creature that had imprisoned them. (TXF: "Alone")
Near the end of this period, Mulder notified Doggett of a news report that related to Scully's pregnancy, events that had transpired during Mulder's absence, a group that had been attempting to create alien babies and the destructive alien supersoldier Billy Miles. Mulder was instrumental in helping Scully flee from Billy Miles and the threat of other alien supersoldiers. (TXF: "Essence") After he came to the realization that the supersoldiers had infiltrated the FBI and knew where Scully was, he managed to bring both her and her newborn baby son, William, to a hospital. (TXF: "Existence")
[edit] Further Disappearances & Trial
Mulder was persuaded to go into hiding after both Kersh and then Scully expressed concerns that he would be killed by the supersoldiers if he stayed. (TXF: "Nothing Important Happened Today II") The details of Mulder's return, including the place and mode of transport, were arranged before he left. (TXF: "Trust No 1") Two days after he brought Scully and baby William home, Mulder took a shower in Scully's apartment before leaving in secret; neither Doggett, Scully, AD Skinner nor Monica Reyes, who had recently been assigned to the X-files, was informed of his destination and no record of his journey was logged with movers, airlines or car rental agencies. Mulder's apartment was completely emptied on or shortly before the same morning he left. (TXF: "Nothing Important Happened Today")
Mulder traveled to New Mexico, where he continued his search for "the truth" and hid in the desert with Gibson Praise. (TXF: "The Truth") He still had access to e-mail but resisted using it until January 7th, 2002, when he sent a personal e-mail in which he remarked, "some unexpected dimensions of my new life are eating away at any resolve I have left". He also admitted that he was lonely, wanted to come home to Scully and baby William, and was uncertain of his ability to continue living the way in which he was. This mode of communication was being monitored by at least one supersoldier, however.
Soon after, Mulder boarded a train that was scheduled to arrive at a station where he would meet Scully, Doggett and Reyes but, due to an incident in which two men - one of whom was the supersoldier who had been monitoring Mulder's e-mails - were shot and the supersoldier fell on the tracks, the train passed the station without stopping. It was believed that Mulder jumped off the train shortly after it passed the station. (TXF: "Trust No 1")
Later that year, Mulder crept into the Mount Weather Complex in Bluemont, Virginia where he managed to access a classified file that contained information regarding colonization including the date set for that event - December 22, 2012. After he electrocuted supersoldier Knowle Rohrer in retaliation for Rohrer assaulting him, Mulder was captured, imprisoned and subjected to an unsuccessful brainwashing attempt in his cell. He was reunited with Scully, Skinner, Doggett and Reyes while imprisoned and learned that baby William had been given up for adoption.
As he was falsely accused of having killied Knowle Rohrer, Mulder was placed on trial. The proceeding was held in a courtroom under the jurisdication of the US Marine Corps, with Skinner acting as Mulder's defense, Special Agent Kallenbrunner as the prosecutor and judges who were also members of the FBI, including Kersh. Many of Mulder's associates each provided a testimony at the trial but Mulder refused to present a testimony himself. After irrefutable proof that Knowle Rohrer had not been killed was presented at the trial, the evidence was dismissed and Mulder was pronounced as guilty, sentenced to death by lethal injection. Skinner, Doggett, Reyes and even Kersh helped Mulder escape with Scully and he fled back to New Mexico with his former FBI partner. (TXF: "The Truth")
[edit] After Trial
Mulder and Scully went on the run after his trial. Sometime between then and 2008 he and Scully purchased a home somewhere in Virginia. Scully got a job at Our Lady of Sorrows hospital as a surgeon. Mulder remained in their home, isolated, because he was wanted by the FBI. He spent his days cutting newspaper articles about paranormal activity and tacking it up on his office wall. Sometime in 2008, Scully was contacted by the FBI. They told her they would drop the charges against Mulder if he came to help them on a case. At first Mulder was reluctant, but later agreed. Mulder became deeply obsessed with solving the case, which involved missing women. Scully became concerned for Mulder, telling him that chasing monsters wasn't their job anymore. Mulder told Scully that it was who he was and he missed his old life. Ultimately Mulder solved the case and he told Scully they would try to escape the darkness that had surrounded them for so long. (The X-Files: I Want to Believe)
[edit] Possible Late Life
For much of his life, Mulder considered taking a cruise somewhere once he got older. (TXF: "Død Kalm") He once commented that his work with the FBI demanded that he live in a big city but that, if he ever had to settle down and build a home, he would choose to live in a small town. (TXF: "Home")
For most of his adult life, however, Mulder was almost unable to consider a future without the X-files. In 1998, when asked if he had any future plans, Mulder implied that he planned to continue investigating the files. He was unsure of what he was seeking, but believed that whatever he ultimately hoped to find was in the X-files and suspected that he might know what he was searching for when he finally found it. (TXF: "The End")
However, once, a man who Mulder believed was actually a ghost commented that obsessive compulsiveness, workaholism and antisocial behaviour - which the man believed Mulder was prone to - were "fertile fields for the descent into total wacko breakdown". (TXF: "How the Ghosts Stole Christmas")
Scully once revealed that she believed Mulder would become insanely obsessed with hoping to catch a glimpse of the truth about paranormal phenomena, listening only to himself on a quest that no-one else could understand. She also suspected that Mulder's obsessive search for the truth would inevitably result in his death and that those who he took with him would also ultimately die. (TXF: "Quagmire")
In 1995, psychic Clyde Bruckman suggested that Mulder would die by autoerotic asphyxiation. (TXF: "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose")
In 1996, Mulder implied that he would like to be buried and wished a curse on anyone who might dig his skeletal remains up in a thousand years. (TXF: "Teso Dos Bichos")
[edit] Career History
- 1983-1986 Oxford University student
- 1986- FBI Academy student
- 1988-? Violent Crimes Unit, partner Special Agent Jerry Lamana, supervisor Section Chief Reggie Purdue
- Unspecified 3 years, including 1990- Behavioral Sciences Unit, no partner
- 1990- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section
- 1991- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Agent Diana Fowley
- 1992-1994 FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Division Chief Scott Blevins
- 1994- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 1994- FBI General Assignment Agent, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 1994- Behavioral Science Unit, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 1994-1998 FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 1998- FBI Special Agent, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Special Agent-in-Charge Darius Michaud
- 1998-1999- FBI Special Agent, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Alvin Kersh
- 1999-2000- FBI Special Agent, X-Files Section, partner Special Agent Dana Scully, supervisor Assistant Director Walter Skinner
- 2001- FBI General Assignment Agent
- 2002- Civilian; leaves FBI
[edit] Relationships
[edit] Family:
[edit] Father
Main articles: William Mulder and Cigarette Smoking Man
In early 1961, the Cigarette Smoking Man had an affair with Teena Mulder, and would father Fox. (TXF: "The Truth") Although the CSM kept a close eye on Mulder over the years, Fox was raised to believe his father was William Mulder. His mother never told him his true parentage and would lie when confronted about the truth. (TXF: "Demons")
- For Fox Mulder's relationship with the Cigarette Smoking Man, see his section below.
[edit] Mother
Main article: Teena Mulder
[edit] Sister
Main article: Samantha Mulder
Years after his sister disappeared, Mulder was continuing to search for her in the belief that she was still alive. (TXF: "Pilot", et al.)
During deep hypnotic regression conducted by Doctor Heitz Werber in 1989, Mulder was apparently able to access repressed memories of his sister's abduction. He supposedly recalled a bright light outside and a presence in the room. However, he apparently remembered that he had been paralyzed and unable to respond to his sister's repeated calls for help. (TXF: "Pilot", "Conduit", "Closure")
- Mulder told Scully that he had undergone hypnosis in "Pilot". She later listened to recordings of his regression in "Conduit" and watched a video of the process in "Closure".
- Some of Mulder's supposedly recovered memories contradict the version of events seen in "Little Green Men", as writers Glen Morgan and James Wong wrote that episode without having seen "Conduit". For more information, see "Questionable Information" below.
Mulder discovered the X-files in late 1990. (TXF: "Kill Switch") His investigations into the paranormal phenomenon reported in the files were fueled by his belief that his sister had been abducted by aliens. (TXF: "Gethsemane")
In 1993, Agent Scully suspected that the supposed abduction of Mulder's sister had influenced him to request an assignment involving the abduction of a female teenager who had a young brother. After the teenager was located and the agents' investigation ended, Scully listened to an audio tape of one of Mulder's hypnosis sessions while he sat alone in a church and cried over a picture of his sister. (TXF: "Conduit")
In 2000, Special Agent Lewis Schoniger believed that Mulder's memories were actually a typical alien abduction fantasy compensating for the sense of guilt or fear that was preventing him from remembering the truth. The FBI expert explained that Mulder's delusion played into his unconscious hope that his sister was still alive, providing him with a reason to pursue her.
With the help of police psychic Harold Piller, Mulder eventually discovered his sister's fate in 2000. After her abduction, Samantha had lived on April Air Force Base in California, apparently with Jeffrey Spender and his father,C.G.B. Spender. According to a diary Mulder found on April Base, doctors had conducted brutal experiments on her in 1979, when she was fourteen years old. Samantha could vaguely recall an older brother but seemed to think that the doctors performing tests on her had stolen her memories. Mulder noted that in her final entry, she expressed an intense desire to run away.
He found a sergeant's blotter that confirmed that Samantha had escaped from the hospital where she had been held hostage and had been picked up by police as a runaway. She had then been taken to Dominic Savio Memorial Hospital, where she had seemed to be exhibiting signs of paranoia and had given no name to the police or nurses, explaining why Mulder had found it so hard to learn what had happened to her. The hospital medical staff had found scars on her knees, wrists and chest that they had considered to be the result of self-inflicted abuse. Samantha had allowed no-one except an ER nurse named Arbutus Ray to touch her. As Samantha slept, Nurse Ray had seen a brief vision of Samantha dead in her bed, but the vision quickly passed and Samantha was unharmed. Late that night, a group of men arrived to take Samantha, but Nurse Ray found that she had disappeared from a locked hospital room, never to be seen again.
When Mulder visited Ray's home with Scully and Harold Piller in 2000, he apparently met with an apparition of his sister and accepted Piller's theory that Samantha was with "walk-ins", old souls lurking in starlight who protect other souls from violent fates that are not meant to be. (TXF: "Closure")
By 2000, the Mulder family cemetery marker in Raleigh, North Carolina, was labeled with Samantha Mulder's name. The dates of her short lifespan were noted as "1965 - 1979". (TXF: "Within")
In 2002, Jeffrey Spender confirmed that Mulder had indeed witnessed his sister being abducted by aliens. However, she had been returned and was sent to California where she and Spender had been raised together. She was taken many more times and suffered horrible tests, eventually dying in 1987. (TXF: "The Truth")
[edit] Half-Brother
It has been suggested that Jeffrey Spender is Mulder's half brother (TXF: "William"), sharing as a biological father Cigarette Smoking Man. This is seen when CSM write a letter, signed "Father", and places it in a red envelope. The red envelope is later seen delivered to Jeffrey Spender, and then seen again with CSM labeled "Return to Sender".
Jeffrey Spender and Young CSM are also played by the same actor.
[edit] Wife
see below under Romantic Interests
- There is some indirect evidence that Mulder may once have been married, but this is never explicitly proven.
[edit] Children
It has been suggested that Mulder is the biological father of Scully's child, William, whom she named in honor of Mulder's father (TXF: "Existence"). Questions of actual paternity aside, Mulder considers William to be his son (TXF: "The Truth").
[edit] Grandfather
In 1995, Mulder incorrectly recalled that his grandfather would take