Fox Mulder

Fox William "Spooky" Mulder (October 13, 1961) is a fictional character played by David Duchovny on the 1993-2002 television series The X-Files. FBI Special Agent Mulder believes in UFOs and a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of their existence.

He was born to William and Teena Mulder.

Mulder studied Psychology at Oxford University, graduating summa cum laude in 1986. From there he went on to the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia graduating with honors in 1986. Initially assigned to the Behavioral Science Unit, a section of the FBI which focuses on psychology and its applications in law enforcement, Mulder gained fame within the FBI for his 1990 psychological profile of Monty Props, which led to that killer's capture.

In 1991, however, Mulder gave up what seemed to be a rapidly rising career in Behavorial Sciences to examine the X-Files - cases that had been declared unsolved due to mysterious or unexplainable evidence or circumstances. His dedication to these cases earned him the derisive nickname "Spooky" and a basement office with only dusty skylight windows - the walls of which he has decorated with a flying saucer poster proclaiming "I Want to Believe", among other "spooky" artifacts.

Mulder's obsession with extraterrestrials began as a result of the alien abduction of his then-8-year-old sister Samantha Mulder when Mulder was 12. He pursues his cases with reckless abandon for the law, often finding himself suspended or under investigation for disorderly conduct in his quest for "The Truth."

Under the influence of agents of the government conspiracy, the FBI became suspicious of his activities and paired him with a medical doctor, Special Agent Dana Scully, to gain his trust and report on his activities. Scully quickly determined that Mulder does not match the profile given to her by her superiors, and she became his ally. A hard-bitten skeptic, Scully slowly becomes convinced of the truth of "the Conspiracy" only after working with Mulder for several years. When Mulder was duped by the Conspiracy into doubting its existence, Scully continued to work against its goals while trying to convince Mulder that he was playing into their hands. At the end of the seventh season, in Requiem (7x22), Mulder is abducted, and returned months later, dead, in This Is Not Happening (8x14), only to be brought back to life three months later in DeadAlive (8x15), having been biologically preserved by an alien virus that would otherwise have turned him into an alien-replaced Super Soldier if not for the quick work of Scully.

For most of their association, Mulder and Scully had an emotionally intimate but strictly platonic relationship (apart from some verbal flirting). Even after working side by side for years, they almost always address each other by their surnames. The two became romantically involved in the seventh season of the series, an unbreakable relationship based on absolute trust, intimate understanding and mutual respect. It is unclear if their relationship ever became sexual (though weakly implied), though Mulder is the father (possibly by in vitro fertilisation) of Scully's son William. Shortly after William's birth, Mulder goes into hiding and protecting a young boy named Gibson Praise, who can read minds. He resurfaces in the series finale, The Truth (9x20 and 9x21), where he is put on trial for the murder of a military officer who is an unkillable Super Soldier named Knowle Rohrer.

Mulder is also assisted in his investigations by numerous characters from the fringes of society, including a trio of conspiracy theorists who publish the tabloid newspaper, The Lone Gunman. These three oddball characters have become known as "The Lone Gunmen". They include Melvin Frohike, the dirty-old-man archetype with a unhidden crush on Scully; Richard "Ringo" Langly, a long-haired rock band enthusiast; and former government insider John Fitzgerald Byers.

Throughout the series, Mulder is antagonized by characters such as the Cigarette Smoking Man (one alias being C. G. B. Spender), and the Well-Manicured Man (real name unknown), both of whom are important figures within the conspiracy. We learn that the Cigarette Smoking Man is Mulder's real father in later seasons.

Mulder (only his parents, sister, and ex-girlfriends call him Fox) is mildly pyrophobic, has red-green color blindness and a semi-secret pornography collection. He rarely, if ever, dates on the show, has a distant relationship with his parents, and apparently has no close friends except Scully and the Lone Gunmen. His favorite snack is sunflower seeds and he's a basketball fan and player. His favorite NBA team seems to be the New York Knicks. He also follows baseball closely; in the episode The Unnatural (6x19), he gained the confidence of a potential source by correctly giving the number of home runs that Mickey Mantle hit from each side of the plate in his career. For most of the series, the bedroom in his apartment was used solely for storage and he slept on the couch. In Dreamland II (6x05), Morris Fletcher, a Man in Black who inadvertently switches bodies with Mulder, redecorates Mulder's room with a four-poster water bed with a mirrored ceiling. The bed springs a leak in Monday (6x15). Mulder also keeps a fish tank of goldfish, which Scully often feeds when he is away.