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Finally, a guide to cryptic episode names of The X-Files.
Season 1 || Season 2 II Season 3 II Season 4 II Season 5 II Season 6
"Deep Throat" - Named after the character in the episode who warns Mulder not to take the case.
"Squeeze" - The mutant monster in the episode, Eugene Tooms, was capable of squeezing into tiny spaces.
"Conduit" - A link or connection. Kevin Morris, the brother of the abducted sister, was acting as a conduit by receiving classified defense satellite transmissions through his television set.
"The Jersey Devil" - Named for the mythical creature seen in the episode, which took place in New Jersey.
"Shadows" - The character came back from the dead, and avenged his death by killing "from the shadows".
"Ghost in the Machine" - refers to the artificial intelligence ("ghost") in the computer ("machine").
"Ice" - Episode took place in Alaska, a place known for being very icy.
"Space" - The "Space" Shuttle was being sabotaged. Also part of the episode was set in space.
"Fallen Angel" - The military used the code name "fallen angel" to refer to the downed UFO in the episode.
"Eve" - Named after the identical girls in the episode, who were named after Eve, the first woman according to the Bible.
"Fire" - The villain in the episode could start fires at will.
"Beyond The Sea" - The name of the song which had played at Scully's father's funeral.
"Genderbender" - The killer in the episode could change sex.
"Lazarus" - Named after the character from the Bible who was raised from the dead by Jesus Christ.
"Young At Heart" - Vaguely refers to Barnett reversing his aging.
"E.B.E" - Stands for "Extraterrestrial Biological Entity" which was transported to America in the episode.
"Miracle Man" - The nickname of the young man named Samuel who could heal with miracles.
"Shapes" - The Manitou in the episode could change shape from human to wolf.
"Darkness Falls" - In the episode, the green insects who cacooned humans came out when darkness fell on the forest.
"Tooms" - Refers to Eugene Victor Tooms, who came back to commit more murders in the episode.
"Born Again" - A murdered policeman was reincarnated as a young girl in the episode.
"Roland" - The name of the retarded janitor in the episode.
"The Erlenmeyer Flask" - The flask in Dr. Berube's lab which said "Purity Control" is more technically referred to as an Erlenmeyer flask.
"The Host" - The Flukeman was a parasite, and parasites need "hosts".
"Blood" - Refers to the violent nature of the murders in the suburban community in the episode.
"Sleepless" - Refers to a Vietnam-era experiment in which soldiers were conditioned not to need sleep.
"Duane Barry" - The name of the man who abducted Scully in the episode.
"Ascension" - Refers to when Christ rose to heaven after his resurrection. Scully rose in a similar fashion when she was abducted.
"3" - Unclear, supposedly because there were 3 vampires.
"One Breath" - Comes from William Scully's speech in Scully's near death experience.
"Firewalker" - The name of the machine which went into the volcano.
"Red Museum" - Part of the name of the cult in the episode, "The Church of The Red Museum."
"Excelsius Dei" - The name of the nursing home in the episode.
"Aubrey" - The name of the town the story took place in.
"Irresistible" - Refers to how serial death fetishist Donnie Pfaster considered his female victims.
"Die Hand Die Verletzt" - Part of the Satanic chant recited by the PTA in the episode, translated, "His is the hand that wounds."
"Fresh Bones" - The bodies of the dead soldiers rise again so they are "fresh" as if they have just risen from deep sleep.
"Colony" - Means a territory on a separate region which is under control of mother country, which was metaphorically what Russian scientists were seeking by having cloned Gregors in different parts of the US.
"End Game" - Means the final stage of a game, usually chess, where only a few pieces are left on the board. Refers to the part of the episode where Mulder confronted the Alien Bounty Hunter in the Arctic.
"Fearful Symmetry" - A small part of a poem called "The Tyger" which was written by William Blake :
"Dod Kalm" - "Dead Calm" in Norwegian.
"Humbug" - Means fake or imposter. The character Hepcat Helm made a reference to it while talking to Mulder.
"The Calusari" - The name of the group of Holy Romanian men in the episode.
"F. Emasculata" - A shortened version of Faciphaga Emasculata, which was the name of the insect which carried the parasite which the episode focused on.
"Soft Light" - The scientist in the episode needed diffused or "soft" light so his lethal shadow wouldn't appear.
"Our Town" - The opinion of the people who live there regarding outsiders, they think "this is OUR town" and they can do whatever they want.
"Anasazi" - The name of an ancient tribe Navajo tribe which presumibly disappeared without a trace. The character Albert Hosteen referred to the tribe in the episode while talking to Agent Mulder.
"Paper Clip" - The code name for the operation which had Axis scientists being given amnesty and being allowed to continue their experiments in the US.
"D.P.O" - The initials of Darin Peter Oswald, which was shown in a video game he had played in the arcade.
"Clyde Bruckman's Finale Repose" - Repose means "to lay at rest" or "final resting place" so it refers to where Clyde Bruckman was when he died.
"The List" - Refers to the list of five names who Neech Manley killed when he was resurrected as a fly.
"2Shy" - Refers the nick name Virgil Incanto used while chatting with his victims online.
"The Walk" - In the military, "taking the walk" mean being killed, which is ironic because the villain, St. Rappo, was a quadriplegic and had no arms or legs.
"Oubliette" - Means "hidden dungeon with an entrance only by trap door" which was where the two victims were kept in.
"Nisei" - Means a person who was born to parents who had immigrated from Japan. The scientists referred to in the episode were Japanese.
"731" - Refers to the unit of the World War 2 Japanese military who were ordered to perform inhumane experiments on P.O.W.'s.
"Revelations" - The name of the last book of the Bible. The episode was focused on a religious phenomenon, stigmata ("wounds of Christ")
"War Of The Coprophages" - The word coprophage means "a beetle which eats dung." The cockroach invasion in the episode was spurred by a factory which housed dung.
"Syzygy" - Means an alignment of planets or the Moon and the Sun. The two girls in the episode were given powers by the force of a planetary alignment.
"Piper Maru" - This episode was named after Gillian's daughter.
"Apocrypha" - This is the name of an old, forgotten book of the Bible which means "hidden writings" in Latin.
"Pusher" - The nick name of Robert Modell, the man who could make people do whatever he wanted by simply talking to them.
"Teso Dos Bitchos" - Means "burial mound of small animals" in archaic Portuguese.
"Hell Money" - Specially printed paper money which is burned to ward of spirits during the Chinese New Year or Festival of The Hungry Ghosts. The 3 people who appeared near the crematorium were dressed as ghosts. Detective Chao scratched out the word "ghost" at the end of the episode while he was trapped in the crematorium.
"Jose Chung's From Outer Space" - The name of the book Jose Chung was writing when he interviewed Agent Scully was called "From Outer Space".
"Avatar" - In Hindu, this word means the incarnation of a deity.
Skinner had an experience with a spirit during his days as a Marine.
"Quagmire" - A term for bog or swamp.
"Wetwired" - Unclear, though "wired" can refer to electronics, such as the television mind control device Mulder discovered in the episode.
"Talitha Cumi" - In Aramaic, this phrase means, "Arise, Maiden."
"Unruhe" - German for "unrest" which Schnauz believed he was relieving his victims from when he lobotimized them.
"Home" - The episode took place in a town named Home, in which a family had been inbreeding and had become horribly deformed and violent.
"Teliko" - In African myth, Teliko means evil spirits of the air who emerge at night to take away the life and colour of their victims.
"The Field Where I Died" - In this episode Mulder discovered the battlefield in which he had died in a previous life.
"Sanguinarium" - "Sanguinary" means delighting in bloodshed or slaughter. A Sanguinarium could perhaps be the cosmetic surgery unit in which the story occured.
"Musings Of A Cigarette-Smoking Man" - This episode was all about the Cigarette-Smoking Man, and in one part of the episode he muses about how life is similar to a cheap, tasteless box of chocolates.
"Paper Hearts" - In this episode serial killer Roche cut pieces of fabric out of his victims' clothes in the shape of hearts.
"Tunguska" - Refers to an area of northern Russia (Siberia) where the Tungusk tribe lived.
"Terma" - A buried tablet referred to in the Tibetan Book of The Dead.
"El Mundo Gira" - This perhaps means Spanish for "the world turns." The Mexican immigrants in the episode spoke Spanish.
"Kaddish" - The Jewish prayer of mourning. Mourners of a murdered Jewish man gathered at a cemetary in Brooklyn in the episode.
"Never Again" - Ed Jerse's tattoo had the words "Never Again" printed on it.
"Leonard Betts" - The name of the man who was made of cancer and consumed cancer to survive.
"Memento Mori" - Translated in Latin: "Remember, you must die." Dana Scully thought that she would have to die because there was no treatment for her cancer.
"Unrequited" - A deed which has not been avenged, such as in a bad deed, or rewarded, as in a good deed. The military had done a bad deed which had gone "unrequited", so Teager was going to avenge their abandonment of P.O.W's in the Vietnam War.
"Tempus Fugit" - Latin for "Time Flies." This is significant because in most alien abductions time is lost so it seems like time went by extremely fast, or "flew".
"Max" - Named after Max Fenig, the alien abductee who was killed in the plane crash.
"Synchrony" - The word "synchronous" means to happen at the same time. In the episode, Jason Nichols and his older self from the future were in the same place at the same time.
"Small Potatoes" - This is slang for things that are insignificant. The impact of the episode was pretty insignificant compared to the whole picture of the X-Files, and the babies born with the tails seemed relatively fine so the tails were insignificant, they could just be cut off.
"Zero Sum" - A sum, or total, or gain, of nothing. Skinner's cover-up of the bee attack didn't gain anything.
"Elegy" - A song lamenting the dead. Spirits of the dead appeared to people before they died.
"Demons" - Means evil spirits or devils which possess a person. Mulder was apparently "possessed" by a powerful hallucinogen which which made him lose memory and almost kill Scully.
"Gethsemane" - Pronounced "geth-seh-mah-NEE" Refers to the biblical Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed to the Lord before he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, and crucified. (Perhaps could refer to Mulder being betrayed by Scully at some point)
"Redux II" - The significance of this can be assigned to it being basically a second part to Redux or that it can mean that in this episode "brought back" can be linked to Scully's cancer going into remission. (Thank you to Mike Colpitts (FoxMulder101361@juno.com) for submitting to me the info on the meanings of "Redux" and "Redux II")
"Unusual Suspects" - This refers to The Lone Gunmen, the strange trio who were arrested in the episode by the police after they had been involved in trying to stop a government experiment. Also, it is a semi-parody of the 1995 movie "The Usual Suspects". Thanks to Annie (Pixieyre@aol.com) for this info.
"Detour" - Refers to when a roadblock was set up while Mulder and Scully were going to an FBI convention. They had to take a detour.
"Post Modern Prometheus" - Prometheus was the son of Iapetus and Clymene, fabled by poets to have surpassed all humankind in knowledge, and to have formed men from clay and gave them life by stealing fire from heaven. Jupiter, angry at this, had Prometheus tied to Mount Caucasus, where a vulture preyed on his liver. The modern version of Prometheus in this episode was Dr. Pollidori, who created the two-faced mutated boy in the episode.
"Christmas Carol" - This episode took place around Christmas time.
"Emily" - This was the name of the girl who was apparently Scully's daughter in the episode.
"Kitsunegari" - In Japanese, this word means "foxhunt", which was apparently the kind of game Pusher had been playing on his victims. Also of significance is that Mulder's first name is Fox.
"Shizogeny" - The significance of this title is unclear, possibly simply made up by the writer.
"Chinga" - This was the doll's name but it was edited out of the episode during rewrites.
"Kill Switch" - This was the name of the program which could destroy the AI (the computer which had been targeting Mulder and Scully).
"Bad Blood" - This was a vampire episode, so the significance is obvious.
"Patient X" - This was how the MIT lecturers referred to the wheelchair-bound female alien abductee in the episode, named Cassandra Spender.
"The Red and the Black" - Translated into French, this was the title of a novel written by the Frenchman Henri Beyle. The main character was a man named Julien Sorel, who was poor and angry at the rich and noble classes who didn't accept him.
"Travelers" - This was an old term for Communists. In the flashback, the men who were going after Skur (the victim of the experiment) were supposedly going after Communists.
"Mind's Eye" - The "blind" woman in the episode could see through her father's eyes, so she had some sort of telepathic or psychic connection to her father that let her mind see things her blind eyes could not.
"All Souls" - The four girls in the episode that were killed were angels from an old religious text, and the man that was killing them was trying to save their souls.
"The Pine Bluff Variant" - The biotoxin in the episode had been worked on by a project codenamed the Pine Bluff Variant.
"Folie a Deux" - At the end of the episode, when Scully had to report to Skinner about why she and Mulder had both believed that the "monster" was real, she summarized it as "folie a deux", or "madness of two."
"The End" - At the end of the episode, the X-Files office was completely burned down, marking the end of the X-Files project.
Thanks to Kiwi-Phile for this interpretation!
"Tyger, tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"
Additional info: The alternate title of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' was 'Modern Prometheus'
This information was brought to you by Angèle Morgan.
This information was brought to you by Angèle Morgan.
