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70 free Hard the X-Files trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This hard The X-Files trivia quiz is for people who can tell Darin Morgan from Glen Morgan. It asks what preset sound became the theme's whistle, why Fox nearly rejected Gillian Anderson, what Scully's undergraduate thesis was called, which meal gave Chris Carter the idea for a liver-eating mutant, what the Cigarette Smoking Man's birth name turned out to be, which sitcom inspired "Bad Blood", what Mulder broke into to trigger his tribunal, and how much David Duchovny got from his lawsuit against Fox. There are questions on Krycek, Skinner, the Lone Gunmen, Doggett and Reyes, the Syndicate and the black oil, both films, the 2016 and 2018 revivals, the spin-offs Millennium and The Lone Gunmen, and the Ryan Coogler reboot. It is written for superfans and quiz hosts who need a properly tough round; the main X-Files trivia page has the gentler material about who plays whom and where the show was filmed. Expect nearly everything here at hard or expert level, with a handful of medium questions to warm up. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the series, its episodes, films and characters, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01What did Fox reportedly want in a Scully instead of the 24-year-old Gillian Anderson?
Taller, leggier, blonder and breastier
Carter insisted she had the no-nonsense integrity the role needed; she went on to win an Emmy, a Golden Globe and two SAG Awards for it.
Q 02Duchovny's Mulder was seen as a parallel to which Twin Peaks character?
Dale Cooper
Duchovny had himself appeared on Twin Peaks as a DEA agent, so the FBI-man comparison came easily.
Q 03Mark Snow's theme whistle came from a sound module preset called what?
Whistl'n Joe
It was a preset on a Proteus 2 rackmount module; Snow created the theme's echo effect by accident.
Q 04Which Smiths track inspired the whistle effect in the theme?
How Soon Is Now?
The song appeared on the US edition of the 1985 album Meat Is Murder.
Q 05The show's first Emmy, won in 1994, was in which category?
Graphic design and title sequences
The opening sequence made for season one stayed unchanged until Duchovny left, and the revival seasons brought it back.
Q 06Roughly how much did David Duchovny receive when he settled his lawsuit against 20th Century Fox?
$20 million
He claimed Fox had undersold the show's rights to its own affiliates; the case strained his professional relationships and he stopped being a full-time regular soon after.
Q 07Which episode, aired as the lead-out to Super Bowl XXXI, is the most-watched in the show's history?
Leonard Betts
It drew 29.1 million viewers, and its cancer-eating villain set up Scully's own cancer storyline later that season.
Q 08How many Golden Globe Awards did The X-Files win in total?
Five
That was from twelve nominations; the show also won a Peabody Award in 1996.
Q 09In the finale "The Truth", Mulder faces a military tribunal after breaking into which facility?
Mount Weather
He was there to view plans for the alien colonization of Earth, and ended up charged with the murder of a Super Soldier.
Q 10Which supposed murder is Mulder placed under military arrest for in "The Truth"?
Knowle Rohrer
Rohrer, played by Adam Baldwin, was Doggett's old Marine friend turned Super Soldier, which made the murder charge absurd since he could not be killed.
Q 11The foul-mouthed detective in "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" was named after which crew member?
Kim Manners
The character's habit of swearing was lifted directly from the director himself.
Q 12Darin Morgan first wanted which performer as Jose Chung, before Charles Nelson Reilly?
Rip Taylor
Reilly captivated the crew and gave everyone nicknames; the episode was Morgan's last for the show until the 2016 revival.
Q 13"Home" was partly inspired by a story about a disfigured man in whose autobiography?
Charlie Chaplin
The other real-life inspiration was the documentary Brother's Keeper about the Ward brothers, on whom the Peacock family was based.
Q 21Which cartoonist had already used the name Great Mutato for a Simpsons comic character?
Matt Groening
The two names were pronounced differently; the episode's Mutato was played under heavy makeup by Chris Owens.
Q 22The shipboard scenes in "Triangle" were shot aboard which retired ocean liner?
RMS Queen Mary
The ship is moored at Long Beach, California, as a hotel; the episode was designed to look like a handful of uninterrupted eleven-minute takes.
Q 23The split-screen effect late in "Triangle" was inspired by the video for which 1998 single?
Semisonic's "Closing Time"
Q 14Tucker Smallwood, the sheriff in "Home", was the first of many guests from which Morgan and Wong series?
Space: Above and Beyond
Morgan and Wong had left The X-Files after season two to make that show and returned for season four with "Home".
Q 15Vince Gilligan's 'Bad Blood' was inspired by which sitcom's episode where the leads retell a fight differently?
The Dick Van Dyke Show
Gilligan came up with the idea with Frank Spotnitz after an earlier concept fell through.
Q 16How did Vince Gilligan show the makeup artist what the "Bad Blood" vampire bite should look like?
Bit the back of his own hand
Luke Wilson was cast as the sheriff having just starred in Home Fries, a comedy Gilligan had scripted.
Q 17In "Bad Blood", what does Mulder scatter on the floor to stall the pizza-boy vampire?
Sunflower seeds
Ronnie compulsively starts picking them up, which buys Mulder time in his own version of the story.
Q 18"Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" was originally written with which comedian in mind for the title role?
Bob Newhart
Peter Boyle got the part instead and won the Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor; the character was based on Darin Morgan's own depressive father.
Q 19What is Clyde Bruckman's job?
Insurance salesman
He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and can foresee how people are going to die, which makes him a grimly appropriate underwriter.
Q 20Chris Carter wrote "The Post-Modern Prometheus" with which two performers specifically in mind?
Cher and Roseanne Barr
Neither was available; Cher later regretted passing and did authorise three of her tracks for the soundtrack.
Each side of the screen showed the same setting in a different time period; the ballroom fight music was modelled on John Williams's swing tune from 1941.
Q 24What did Chris Carter eat on a trip to France that gave him the idea for Eugene Tooms's diet?
Foie gras
Glen Morgan said the writers settled on livers because they were funnier than any other organ.
Q 25Mulder's polygraph questions in "Squeeze" link Tooms to murders dating as far back as which year?
1903
Tooms passes most of the test but fails exactly those questions, which Agent Colton dismisses before letting him go.
Q 26The Flukeman in "The Host" is described as the product of which disaster?
Chernobyl
Carter said the episode came from three things: his dog having worms, his reading on the disaster, and 1990s species extinctions.
Q 27Jerry Hardin was cast as Deep Throat on the strength of his role in which 1993 film?
The Firm
The character drew on the real Watergate source Mark Felt and on Donald Sutherland's X in Oliver Stone's JFK.
Q 28Fox Mulder graduated with first-class honours in psychology from which university in 1983?
Oxford
While there he dated Phoebe Green, who returned as a Scotland Yard investigator in the season-one episode "Fire".
Q 29What was the title of Dana Scully's undergraduate physics thesis?
Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation
Mulder had read it before they met, and teased her about it in their very first scene together.
Q 30Scully named her dog after which Moby-Dick character?
Queequeg
Moby-Dick was her childhood favourite; she and her navy-captain father called each other by names from the novel.