Bizarre Things That Happened On The Set Of The X-Files

While there are now dozens, maybe hundreds, of TV shows, movies, books, and even video games featuring government agents investigating paranormal phenomena, in the 90s, there was only one: The X-Files. (Okay, there was Twin Peaks, too, but that one was super weird and it's not even clear if the word "paranormal" covers everything going on in that show.) On The X-Files, FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) investigated the strange stuff that the rest of the FBI wouldn't touch, the show's titular X-Files. Decades of these files were piled up by the government, then given over to the duo. But later the feds spend a lot of time trying to shut the X-Files down, so why did they bother in the first place? It's complicated!

Anyway, across 11 television seasons, two feature films, books, comics, and who knows what else, Mulder and Scully have sought the truth behind aliens, monsters, and basically anything you could even remotely classify as unusual. There's a deep, sprawling mythology, memorable characters, and mountains of monster-of-the-week episodes that you thankfully didn't have to watch any of the other 217 episodes to understand. And since the show basically invented the concept of internet fandoms, every single detail is recorded right here on the web.

So, with hundreds of hours of content and endless fan documentation, is it all that surprising that, on top of the weirdness happening on-screen, some very unusual things also happened behind the scenes of The X-Files?

The Cigarette Smoking Man was the nameless (unless you count his numerous aliases) primary antagonist of Mulder and Scully. That's strange in and of itself, because the actor, William B. Davis, was just meant to be a menacing extra only appearing in the show's pilot. He looked sinister enough that they brought him back for more episodes, eventually gave him a few lines, and, according to the show's creators, once they learned that Davis was an acting coach and a talented performer in his own right, slowly turned him into a main character.

There's just one problem — he's not called the Cigarette Smoking Man because he likes lollipops. The character smokes like a freight train and is almost never seen without a lit cigarette from his favorite brand, the fictitious Morleys. The Cigarette Smoking Man was never meant to be the character's name, fans started referring to him as that because he was constantly puffing away on them.

Unfortunately, Davis was an ex-smoker, according to the Palm Beach Post. The crew had no idea, so for his first several appearances on the show, he was smoking actual cigarettes. This was pretty horrifying for him, but he went along with it for the job. He did later admit that it very nearly caused him to start back up. Later, after the crew found out he had quit the habit, Davis was instead allowed to smoke herbal cigarettes, which were easier for him to resist because they apparently tasted absolutely awful.

Movie and TV sets can be very dangerous places. Just like any other places that deal with construction and building, there are countless safety regulations that need to be observed when working with dangerous equipment. Even following all the rules, though, accidents do happen, and they can sometimes have extremely tragic outcomes. Unfortunately, The X-Files is no exception.

On July 31, 2000, during pre-production of "Within," the eighth season premiere (and first appearance of Mulder's kinda-sorta replacement, John Doggett), the crew was setting up for filming on a staircase in the rain, according to the BBC. While standing on some metal scaffolding, crew member Jim Engh was killed and five others injured when a high-tension power line carrying 4,800 volts touched the metal of the scaffolding and electrocuted them. Engh went into cardiac arrest on the scene and was pronounced dead at the hospital. A sixth person was also injured on the ground.

Five of the injured were treated and quickly released. One was admitted to UCLA Medical Center in critical condition, and since there were no followup reports about the incident, they hopefully made it through okay. Production shut down for several days, and the studio conducted an investigation, but things apparently got back on track and the episode premiered on November 5, 2000.

While being on the set of a sci-fi/horror show would probably require doing a lot of stuff that would make you uncomfortable, one thing in particular the show liked to do was put its vegetarian actors very difficult situations. Duchovny and Anderson were both vegetarians at the time, yet for the episode "Red Museum", they not only had to spend time on a slaughterhouse set with hanging meat and blood everywhere, they even had to film a scene where they eat ribs. There's no word on whether the ribs were real or not, but it must have been at least somewhat awkward.

One particularly bizarre moment happened on the set of the episode "Humbug" in a scene where Scully uses sleight of hand to pretend to eat a live cricket in front of Mulder and a few sideshow performers. In real life, the crew made a fake cricket out of candy for her, at the last minute, Gillian Anderson decided to actually pop a real cricket into her mouth after seeing Enigma, a real-life sideshow performer, eat several for real in various takes, according to People. There's even video of the incident. She later admitted in a Reddit AMA that she didn't eat the cricket, spitting it out after the director called cut.

And Doug Hutchinson, who played creepy contortionist Victor Eugene Tooms in two episodes of the series' first season, was a vegetarian who got cast as someone who literally ate human flesh, though he apparently enjoyed the role otherwise according to The X-Files: The Official Collection.