As the seasons have progressed, the titles of the episodes have become more and more obscure. In season one we had simple, one-word titles such as "Fire" and "Ice", only to be followed in later seasons by titles in other languages ("Die Hand Die Verletzt", "Talitha Cumi") and long phrases ("Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'", "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"). It has become a game, the episode titles a mystery for the X-Files fans to solve. What follows is a list of each episode title, along with an explanation of that title. As always, suggestions, corrections, and wild guesses are welcome! This list is based on Laura Witte's In-Jokes list - X-Files titles explained.

1X79 Pilot
No explanation necessary -- this is the pilot episode of the X-Files.

1X01 Deep Throat
Code name of Mulder's informant -- although the words "Deep Throat" are never mentioned in this episode, the first "Deep Throat" was the infamous Watergate informant.

1X02 Squeeze
Description of Tooms' special ability.

1X03 Conduit
"a means of transmitting or distributing" -- the boy was a conduit through which aliens were attempting to communicate.

1X04 The Jersey Devil
The name is lifted from the myth of the 'Jersey Devil' that has haunted New Jersey for centuries.

1X05 Shadows
The title is descriptive of the ghost-like qualities of one of the main characters.

1X06 Ghost in the Machine
A phrase coined by Descartes as a way to explain consciousness. The ghost is our soul, the machine our bodies.

1X07 Ice
This episode is located in the Arctic.

1X08 Space
Named for where some of this episode took place.

1X09 Fallen Angel
The title is the code words for a crashed UFO.

1X10 Eve
Named for the monsterettes-of-the-week, who were named for after the Biblical first woman.

1X11 Fire
No further explanation necessary.

1X12 Beyond the Sea
Named for the song that played during Scully's parent's wedding, and the song that played at her father's funeral.

1X13 GenderBender
Descriptive of what the monsters-of-the-week can do.

1X14 Lazarus
Named for the biblical character Lazarus, who was resurrected by Jesus Christ (an act which was paralleled by the 'resurrection' of Willis on the operating table).

1X15 Young at Heart
Named because of the disease that Dr. Ridley dealt with. The disease is called Progeria and it causes the people who suffer from it to show advanced signs of aging (arthritis, osteoporosis, physical appearance). Most people are born with it and do not usually live past the age of 15.

1X16 E.B.E.
An acronym for "Extra-Terrestrial Biological Entity".

1X17 Miracle Man
Description of the main-guest character.

1X18 Shapes
Another pretty basic title.

1X19 Darkness Falls
Probably named so because the 'flies' came when darkness fell.

1X20 Tooms
Named for the 'Monster of the Week'.

1X21 Born Again
Usually used to describe someone who has found religion, this episode title relates to the reincarnation of the main guest-character.

1X22 Roland
Named for the main guest-character.

1X23 The Erlenmeyer Flask
A common laboratory container -- in this episode Scully was afraid it contained "monkey pee".

2X01 Little Green Men
Commonly used slang term for an alien from outer space.

2X02 The Host
Descriptive of what the monster-of-the-week was looking for.

2X03 Blood
Another very basic title.

2X04 Sleepless
Descriptive of the main character.

2X05 Duane Barry
Named for the main guest-character.

2X06 Ascension
Named for Scully's "Ascending to the Stars".

2X07 3
Named for the vampire characters, representing the father, the son, and the holy spirit. They needed 3 members to be strong.

2X08 One Breath
Named for a phrase used when Scully's father is speaking to her.

2X09 Firewalker
Named for the robot used to film inside the volcano.

2X10 Red Museum
Name of the cult in this episode.

2X11 Excelsius Dei
Latin for "Glory of God", it is also the name of the retirement home.

2X12 Aubrey
Location where this episode took place.

2X13 Irresistible
I know that there are deep and meaningful interpretations of this title -- but basically the monster-of-the-week found some women irresistible.

2X14 Die Hand Die Verletzt
German for "The Hand that Wounds" -- a phrase uttered during the 'prayer' in the teaser.

2X15 Fresh Bones
Bones were what was used in voodoo rituals. And fresh bones are paid better.

2X16 Colony
Descriptive of what the aliens are starting to form on this planet.

2X17 End Game
This is the title of a Samuel Beckett book, and that it is a chess term. Perhaps it was used because Samantha is like a pawn to both the consortium and the aliens? It is also worth noting that much like the chess game with multiple pawns, there are multiple Samanthas. Also, the pawns are usually sacrificed to protect the other, more valuable pieces.

2X18 Fearful Symmetry
Named for a phrase from William Blake's poem "The Tyger".

2X19 Dod Kalm
Norwegian for "Dead Calm".

2X20 Humbug
A humbug is a deception, a hoax, or one who attempts to trick or deceive.

2X21 The Calusari
Named for the Romanian priests in this episode.

2X22 F. Emasculata
Genus/Species name for the bug that caused the problems in this episode. Mulder & Scully would be H. Sapiens. F. stands for Faciphaga.

2X23 Soft Light
The type of light that Dr. Banton needed, so that he wouldn't cast a shadow

2X24 Our Town
Named for Thornton Wilder's play of the same name, although the towns in question certainly are different.

2X25 Anasazi
Named for an Indian tribe that disappeared 'without a trace'. Ancestors of Navajo.

3X01 The Blessing Way
Named for the Indian healing ritual performed on Agent Mulder.

3X02 Paper Clip
As explained in the episode, 'Paper Clip' was the code name for the project to bring Axis power scientists to America after World War II.

3X03 D.P.O.
Named for the antagonist, Darren Peter Oswald, whose initials on the video game led Mulder & Scully to him.

3X04 Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose
Refers to Clyde's own death. Repose - "to lie, or lay, as in rest, or dying".

3X05 The List
The main focus of this episode.

3X06 2Shy
Internet nickname of the 'bad guy'.

3X07 The Walk
Named for one thing that the antagonist couldn't normally do.

3X08 Oubliette
"medieval dungeon having a trap door in the ceiling as its only means of entry or exit". It is derived from the French word 'oublier', to forget.

3X09 Nisei
'Nisei' is the Japanese word for a person born in America or Canada to Japanese parents (who were born in Japan). Translated literally, it means 'second generation'.

3X10 731
Camp 731 was a germ warfare research station in Manchuko (Japanese occupied Manchuria) by General Shiro Ishii (the Japanese Mengele). Hideous experiments were performed there on P.O.W.'s, including Americans. After the war, Ishii and his crew were recruited into the American bio-war research establishment.

3X11 Revelations
Refers to the American religious tradition of receiving 'revelations' or visions of God, often through stigmata (wounds on the hands and feet resembling those of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ).

3X12 War of the Coprophages
A play on the title "War of the Worlds", it is literally "War of the Dung Eaters".

3X13 Syzygy
As explained in the episode, a configuration of planets in a straight line.

3X14 Grotesque
The title is pretty descriptive of the actions taking place and of the drawings in this episode -- also, gargoyles that do not serve as drains are known as 'grotesques'.

3X15 Piper Maru
Named for the first and middle names of Gillian Anderson's daughter, Piper Maru. The middle name 'Maru' was particularly fitting for this episode, since it means 'ship' in Japanese (and it means 'flower' in Polynesian -- no, Gillian didn't name her daughter after a boat).

3X16 Apocrypha
"Writings of dubious authenticity". 'Apocrypha' are also books of the bible excluded from the Jewish and Protestant canons of the Old Testament.

3X17 Pusher
Refers to Modell's ability to push people, and control their minds through telepathy.

3X18 Teso Dos Bichos
"Teso" is Portuguese for "burial ground". "Bichos" means "small animals"

3X19 Hell Money
As described in the episode, Hell money is used to pay off ghosts in the Chinese Festival of the Hungary Ghosts.

3X20 Jose Chung's From Outer Space
This title represents the book written by the interviewer, Jose Chung, in this episode.

3X21 Avatar
An "avatar" is the human incarnation of a deity. The word has also been popularized more recently as a computer term for a person's on-line graphical representation (first used in Neal Stephenson's book "Snow Crash").

3X22 Quagmire
A quagmire is land with a soft, yielding surface, or a difficult, irksome, precarious, or entrapping situation.

3X23 Wetwired
It has been suggested that the term "Wetwired" comes from the short story "Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson. In the story, Johnny's brain is "wetwired" to a computer hard drive. The term is being popularized as referring to a brain consisting of living and mechanical parts.

3X24 Talitha Cumi
Aramaic for "little girl arise" -- words supposedly spoken (Mark 5:41) by Jesus after healing the dead daughter of a Jewish leader.

4X01 Herrenvolk
Nazi/German word for "master race", which was Hitler's plan for creating a race of perfect, blue-eyed blonde people.

4X02 Unruhe
German for unrest.

4X03 Home
There could be multiple meanings for this title. This is writing team Morgan & Wong's first episode after returning to the show (which would make it their "home-coming" episode). Then again, maybe it is just a reference to the home of the people at the center of this story.

4X04 Teliko
The spirits of the air (African legend).

4X05 The Field Where I Died
Petty self-explanatory -- the title is spoken from Mulder's point-of-view.

4X06 Sanguinarium
"Sanguinary" means carnage, bloodthirsty, consisting of blood. "Sanguinaria" means bloodroot. Sanguinarium is Latin for 'place of blood'.

4X07 Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man
The title is a straightforward analysis of what happens in this episode.

4X08 Paper Hearts
What the killer kept.

4X09 Tunguska
The location in Siberia where an object (asteroid? UFO?) struck the earth in 1908. The blast leveled over a half million acres and was hundreds of times stronger than the blast of an atomic bomb.

4X10 Terma
"Tyurma" (pronounced Terma) is Russian for prison or jail. It has also been suggested that the title refers to the Tibetan Buddhist term "Terma", meaning hidden or buried truth. In the episode, it is a city Terma in North Dakota.

4X11 El Mundo Gira
"The World Rotates" in Spanish -- possibly a play on the soap opera title "As the World Turns", since Scully described this episode as a "Mexican soap opera".

4X12 Kaddish
A Kaddish is a prayer recited by mourners after the death of a close relative.

4X13 Never Again
Rumored to be titled for the likelihood that the writing team of Glen Morgan and James Wong will ever come back to the X-Files again (this was their final episode as they are leaving to create a new show titled "The Notorious"), the phrase was also uttered by 'Betty' the tattoo.

4X14 Leonard Betts
Name of this episode's antagonist.

4X15 Memento Mori
Latin for "A reminder of death".

4X16 Unrequited
Means "not avenged".

4X17 Tempus Fugit
'Time flies' in Latin -- probably refers to the 9 minutes that keep getting lost in various ways on this show.

4X18 Max
Named for the character Max Fenig, who first appeared in season one's 'Fallen Angel'.

4X19 Synchrony
A synchronous occurrence -- probably refers to the elder and younger Jason running into each other a few times.

4X20 Small Potatoes
A phrase meaning 'not a big deal, not overly important' -- it is how Eddie thought of himself (and possibly how his father described him).

4X21 Zero Sum
Describes a game where someone wins by someone else's loss (for example, we start with 10 dollars each, every time you win I have to give you one of my dollars, and you win the game when I lose all 10 of my dollars).

4X22 Elegy
An elegy is a poem expressing grief for someone who is dead.

Tulpa
In Tibetian mystic practice, a ghostly manifestation of a "thought-form" produced by the mind.

Revenant
"Revenant" is one that comes back following an absence or one who returns after death.

4X23 Demons
A secondary definition for 'Demon' is "a persistently tormenting passion" -- Mulder said that he wanted to exorcise his demons.

4X24 Gethsemane
The place where Jesus was betrayed by Judas -- probably a reference to Scully's (apparent) betrayal of Mulder.

5X01 Unusual Suspects
A play on the phrase 'Usual Suspects', which is also the title of a movie containing unreliable narratives.

5X02 Redux
Means brought back, as following retirement, illness, or long inactivity; resurgent.

5X03 Redux II
Same as the definition of episode 5X02.

5X04 Detour
A detour is a road used temporarily instead of the main route, or a deviation from the direct course of action.

5X05 Christmas Carol
Named for the popular Dickens classic, there are rumors that this episode may follow a storyline quite similar to its namesake.

5X06 The Post-Modern Prometheus
The title is probably in homage to Mary Shelley's famous book 'Frankenstein' -- which is actually titled 'Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus'. Prometheus was a demi-god who made men out of clay, and is probably best remembered as being the one who stole fire from Olympus and taught men how to use it -- an act that got him punished by Zeus. His punishment was to be chained to a rock and to have a vulture eat his liver every day.

5X07 Emily
Emily is the name of the little girl in this episode.

5X08 Kitsunegari
"Kitsune-gari" is Japanese for "Fox hunt" (with "Kitsune" meaning "fox", and "Gari" meaning "hunting"). The Japanese fox is sometimes regarded as a spiritual or magical figure.

5X09 Schizogeny
Schizogony means "asexual reproduction by fission".

5X10 Chinga
Chinga was the name of a meteorite that fell in Tannu-Tuva, Siberia, in 1913. That's just a few years after the famous Tunguska blast/crash/whatever, in roughly the same part of the world. It also means "to f@#k" in Spanish. Reportedly, although it was not in that episode, it was the name of the doll. Reportedly, Fox made Chris Carter change the name of this episode after they discovered the "bad" nature of the word. Too late to change it as it aired in USA and Canada, overseas the name was changed to "Bunghoney". Supposedly Carter did not want to change the name, so he changed it to this perhaps-equally distasteful but non-sensical word.

5X11 Kill Switch
A 'kill switch' is usually a button or switch that shuts something down completely, and may or may not be the normal method of turning something off (it is sometimes meant to be used only in emergency situations).

5X12 Bad Blood
Killing tourists for their blood was a bad thing, "modern" vampires only drink animals' blood, so human blood is "bad blood". Dealing with vampires, the title "Bad Blood" might be a clever reference to the animosity between Mulder & Scully, or between Ronnie and the other, new style of vampire (the good neighbor, tax-paying kind).

5X13 Patient X
Cassandra Spender, a wheelchair bound multiple abductee, who's looking forward to being abducted again.

5X14 The Red and the Black
Probably the best suggestion to the origin of the title is from a film made by the American government in the 1950's, during the height of McCarthyism. Used as both entertainment and anti-communism propaganda, the film is filled with truly astonishing stereotypes of "Commie Bastards". The film also depicts the cold war as a clear-cut battle between good and evil, with Americans as the patriotic freedom-fighters and the Russians as a threat to all that the Americans hold dear. The title of this film is "The Red and the Black". One of the more interesting suggestions is that the title is a reference to Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noire (French for The Red and the Black). The main character in the book (Julien Sorel) is an angry, self-made man who hates the rich people who don't accept him because he was born poor. The book follows his life as he manipulates and connives to advance his career and his status in life. The title of the book relates to two life-choices that were available to the Sorel, the army or the priesthood. Eventually, the character's past comes back to haunt him, and he loses everything (some people are suggesting that this could be Krycek's story). Another interesting possibility comes from a song from Les Miserables: "Red- the blood of angry men/Black- the dark of ages past/Red- the color of desire/Black- the color of despair/Red! A world about to dawn/Black! the night that ends at last".

5X15 Travelers
"Fellow Travelers" were communist symphatizers during the 50's and 60's.

5X16 Mind's Eye
This episode is reportedly about a blind girl who can see through her father's eyes.

5X17 All Souls
"All Souls Day" is Catholic holiday (11/2) with its roots in the ancient "Pagan Festival of the Dead", which celebrated the Pagan belief that the souls of the dead would return for a meal with the family. Candles would be placed in the windows to help the dead find their way home, and an extra place would be set at the table for them. The act of "Trick or Treat"ing on Halloween can be traced back to the early celebration of "All Souls Day" in Britian. On this day, the poor would go begging and the housewives would give them special treats, called "soulcakes" in exchange for a promise to say a prayer for the dead.

5X18 The Pine Bluff Variant
Pine Bluff is a city in Arkansas. It has a huge military arsenal there which has been used for decades to synthesize or otherwise create chemical and biological weapons. The "variant" could be a variant of a biological virus.

5X19 Folie a Deux
A condition in which two closely associated people who are mentally ill share the same delusional beliefs. It is also French for "maddness has two".

5X20 The End
There have been many rumors concerning exactly what this episode will be "the end" of (including the end of the X-Files and the end of the Mulder/Scully partnership), but one real "end" is the fact that this episode is the last episode of the X-Files to be filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, thus bringing an end to the 5 year relationship with the excellent Vancouver crew.

6X01 The Beginning
A fitting follow-up to the previous episode, this episode should bring many new beginnings to the X-Files show we know and love.

6X02 Drive
Mulder drives all the way...

6X03 Triangle
Episode takes place in Bermuda Triangle

6X04 Dreamland
The name "Dreamland" is a nickname for the infamous Area 51 in Nevada. More specifically it stands for Data Repository Establishment and Management Land.

6X05 Dreamland II
Same as two lines above, sure.

6X06 Terms of Endearment

6X07 The Rain King
Mulder and Scully crash a high school's 20th reunion dance in Kansas as part of a fraud investigation. One of the attendees, a weatherman harbouring an unrequited love, is the Rain King of the title as his emotions are affecting the weather.

6X08 How the Ghosts Stole Christmas
A play on the popular Christmas tale "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"

6X09 Tithonus
Tithonus was, in Greek mythology, a son of Laomedon who was loved by Eos. She persuaded Zeus to grant him immortality but neglected to request for him for eternal youth, so that Tithonus shriveled as he grew older and older, and was finally changed into a grasshopper. It is also worth mentioning that a "tithonograph" is defined as "a photograph produced by the action of 'tithonic' rays on a sensitized surface" -- and "tithonic rays" are "analogous to rays of dark heat". (Special thanks to OpheM for the research).

6X10 S.R. 819
The title may have been named for a "real" Senate Resolution (S 819) from 1993 regarding a hazardous, toxic, and potentially deadly chemical, Trifluoromethylaniline. The bill extended the temporary suspension of duty on the chemical.

6X11 Two Fathers
I assume that the two fathers being referred to in the title are CSM (father of Jeffrey Spender) and William Mulder (father of Fox Mulder).

6X12 One Son
As the follow-up to "Two Fathers", I guess the "One Son" in the title is Mulder, the only son left standing after CSM decides his son isn't worth keeping around any more.

6X13 Arcadia
Arcadia is a region in ancient Greece held to be an ideal of rural simplicity and peacefulness, or a region offering rural simplicity and tranquillity.

6X14 Agua Mala
Spanish for "Bad Water", the term "Agua Mala" also is a slang name for a particularly nasty type of jellyfish (the Portuguese Man of War) in the Caribbean. This jellyfish has tentacles that can spread out over a large area of water, the clear arms unseen until it has wrapped itself around a person's limb or limbs, leaving welts that look very much like acid burns.

6X15 Monday
The episode happens on Monday.

6X16 Alpha
The title refers to the canine alpha-male, or leader of the pack.

6X17 Trevor
Trevor is main characters' son.

6X18 Milagro
Milagro is Spanish for miracle. It is also usually a 'picture' of a body part, offered to the saint who one credits with its miraculous healing.

6X19 The Unnatural
A play on the common phrase used to describe someone born to do what they do, a "natural" or an homage to the Bernard Malamud book "The Natural", as well as Robert Redford's classic baseball film of the same name.

6X20 Three of a Kind
This is the follow-up to Season 5's "The Unusual Suspects", so the "Three of a Kind" here are the Lone Gunmen.

6X21 Field Trip
The field "trip" referenced in the title may have something to do with Mulder and Scully being exposed to an interesting drug.

6X22 Biogenesis
The doctrine that living organisms develop only from other living organisms and not from nonliving matter.

7X01 Hungry
An episode about cannibalism.

7X02 The Goldberg Variation

A Rube Goldberg machine (named for Rube Goldberg, (1883-1970), a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor, and author) is one in which a simple task is made comically complex. The episode is about a guy who has uncanny good luck, and once or twice in the episode, this comes about by a series of random complex events (like when the guy trying to kill the guy with good luck and he gets killed by having his shoe lace caught in the ceiling fan). So although, that occurance is like a Golberg machine, it is a slight variance on the concept, thus "The Goldberg Variation".

7X03 The Sixth Extinction
A reference to the point of Scully's monologue at the beginning of "Biogenesis". "Will we pass, as those before us, into oblivion, into the sixth extinction that scientists warn is already in progress?"

7X04 The Sixth Extinction II: Amor Fati
Latin for "Love of fate". It can be a religious term, having to do with our lives being divinely willed (thus we are supposed to love our lives). A relatively famous phrase, it was written about by Nietzsche ("Amor Fati: let that be my love henceforth").

7X05 Millennium
The X-Files/Millennium crossover.

7X06 Rush
Referring to the way that the people moved so fast, because when someone is rushing they are usually trying to get somewhere quickly, and that's what the kids in this episode were trying to do.

7X07 Orison
The definition of "Orison" is "a devotional prayer or song". An orison is usually devoted to a dead person, it's the kind of song they play at funerals when the casket is taken out by the pallbearers. It is also a name of the Reverend in this episode.

7X08 The Amazing Maleeni
Named for real-life magician Max Malini (1875 - 1942). Famous for relying on his own skill rather than props, Malini performed for kings, queens, and millionaires.

7X09 Signs and Wonders
A fairly common biblical phrase used to describe the acts used to convince followers of the nature of Christ and his apostles, for example: Second Corinthians 12:12: "The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles."

7X10 Sein und Zeit
"Sein Und Zeit" means "Being and Time" and is the title of a rather famous 1927 philosophy book by world renowned philosopher Martin Heidegger. It deals with our existence -- being.

7X11 Closure
The title possibly defines Mulder coming to terms with his sister's abduction.

7X12 X-Cops
So-titled because this episode is filmed with a "Cops"-like perspective. "Cops" is/was a popular show wherein camera crews rode along with real-life policemen and filmed them doing their jobs.

7X13 First Person Shooter
"First Person Shooter" can be a term used to describe games like Quake and Doom -- games where you see the action through your game-character's eyes (first-person perspective), and your main goal is to shoot your weapon and take out your opponents, bad-guys, etc.

7X14 Theef
The word "Theef" (a misspelling of the word "thief") appears throughout this episode.

7X15 En Ami
French for "as a friend", sounds like "enemy".

7X16 Chimera
Greek for "goat". Websters defines "Chimera" as "1) from Greek mythology, a fire-breathing she-monster usually depicted as a composite of a lion (head), a goat (body), and a serpent (tail). 2) A foolish fancy. 3) An organism, especially a plant, with tissues from at least two genetically distinct parents."

7X17 all things
According to Gillian herself, the title "speaks to that which is innate in everything, and the unity of life energy and all of us and of all things"

7X18 Hollywood A.D.
The "Hollywood A.D." is in reference to A.D. (Assistant Director) Skinner, who has pitched an X-Files story to a Hollywood filmmaker. Since much of the story also references religion and Christ, the A.D. probably also refers to "Anno Domini" -- Latin for "the year of our Lord" and our designation for the time after Christ (A.D.) (as opposed to B.C. -- the time before Christ).

7X19 Brand X
"Brand X" is in reference to a brand of cigarettes (Morley).

7X20 Fight Club
A reference to the 1999 Brad Pitt, Edward Norton/Brad Pitt film of the same name.

7X21 Je Souhaite
Means "I wish" in French. The episode is about a genie.

7X22 Requiem
Means "a mass for a dead person".

8X01 Within
A reference to Scully's pregnancy?

8X02 Without
Possibly a reference to Mulder, and Scully's inability to find him.

8X03 Redrum
"Redrum" is "murder" spelled backwards, and is probably best known in pop-culture as a phrase from Stephen King's book "The Shining". It is also a tropical fruit infused Virgin Island rum which used the Redrum/Murder as a marketing gimmick. All sides of the bottle read Redrum, which means no matter which side you face, you can see through the blood red glass and read "murder". The phrase was also used in the movie "The Shining".

8X04 Patience
The title describes the monster-of-the-week's ability to wait to exact his revenge

8X05 Roadrunners
The title comes form the name of the bus company that services the desolation just north of Sugarville Utah. The sign reads "Roadrunner Bus Lines".

8X06 Invocation
According to my trusty Webster's, "Invocation" means "The act or process of invoking, esp. an appeal to a higher power for assistance", and "an act of conjuring up a spirit by incantation"

8X07 Via Negativa
The title is a Latin phrase that refers to the darkest path taken en route to enlightenment. Via negativa is also described as "negative path wherein salvation or enlightenment is achieved less by direct discovery and affirmation of the truth than by seeing through the veil of Maya, the pseudo-truths that we mistake for it; less through knowledge (gnosis) of the one true faith than by transcending the counterfeit creeds that stand in the way of any genuine salvation by faith and by grace; and less by direct discovery of the true self than by fighting free of the false selves that are its masquerades."

8X09 Surekill
Refers to the name of Dwight and Randall's business, AAA1 Surekill Exterminators.

8X10 Salvage
MOTW worked for salvage company.

8X11 The Gift

8X12 Badlaa
An Urdu (language spoken in India) word for retaliation or revenge/exchange/retaliation.

8X13 Medusa
A character from Greek Mythology, one of the three "Gorgons". The most well-known of the Medusa myths describes her with hair of snakes and a face so ugly that looking upon it turns a person to stone. The name "Medusa" means "sovereign female wisdom".

8X14 This Is Not Happenning
Phrase used by the UFO-chasing guy (Richie Szalay) in the teaser and by Scully at the end of the episode.

8X15 DeadAlive
This title describes Mulder's condition.

8X16 Vienen
Spanish for "They come".

8X17 Empedocles
Empedocles (490?-430 BC), Greek philosopher, statesman, and poet, born in Agrigentum (now Agrigento), Sicily. He was a disciple of the Greek philosophers Pythagoras and Parmenides. According to tradition, he refused to accept the crown offered to him by the people of Agrigentum after he had aided in overthrowing the ruling oligarchy. Instead he instituted a democracy. He also formulated a primitive theory of evolution in which he declared that humans and animals evolved from antecedent forms.

8X18 Three Words
The password to the systems consisted of three words, "Fight the future".

8X19 Alone
Scully/Mulder/Dogett are alone now.

8X20 Essence
Mulder in the intro speech: "Essence transforming into Existence."

8X20 Existence
Just like "Essence".

9X01 Nothing Important Happened Today
According to Kersh, it's a line written by King George III, when America declared independence on July 4th, 1776.

9X02 Nothing Important Happened Today II
See part one.

9X03 Daemonicus
Latin word for "Satan". Also a word made from scrabble on the place of first murder. And also it is composed of part of names of the victims. According to the "The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft", a person who is demonically possessed suffers from a complete takeover of his or her personality by a diabolical entity, allowing the entity to dominate; the victim becomes, even somewhat physically, that demonic being.

9X04 Hellbound
The title comes from a tattoo on the arm of a biker ex-con type attending group therapy. The tattoo symbolized his previous behavior.

9X05 4-D
The label of the safebox where Lukesh keeps his stiff. Also refers to the fourth dimension of a parallel universe.

9X06 Lord of the Flies
The translated name of Beelzebub, a demonic god in ancient Judeo-Christian belief, and it is another commonly used name for Satan. According to religious reference material, his association with flies was possibly due to the invocation of Beelzebub to drive away flies from a sacrifice. The episode also shares its name with a classic book by William Golding.

9X07 John Doe
A name given to unidentified people, usually in morgue or hospital.

9X08 Trust No 1
Mulder's computer password (as seen in the season 2 episode "Little Green Men").

9X09 Underneath
The killer was hidden underneath the 'good' guy.

9X10 Provenance
The definition of "provenance" is a place of origin, the source.

9X11 Providence
The definition of "providence" is forsight, or care or preparation beforehand.

9X12 Scary Monsters
Basically what the little kid created. Also a David Bowie song.

9X13 Audrey Pauley
The main guest role in this episode.

9X14 Improbable
This episode deals with numerology and probability.

9X15 Jump the Shark
The title refers to the moment a hit TV show, movie, or musical group starts to go bad. It is the beginning of the end, so to speak. It is derived from an episode of the hit '70s show "Happy Days" where Fonz (played by Henry Winkler) attempts to ski jump over a shark. There is also a website called jumptheshark.com listing all these TV shows.

9X16 Release
The title of the episode last segment, when Doggett gives Luke's ashes to the sea.

9X17 William
Scully's son's name.

9X18 Sunshine Days
This episode was named for the song "Sunshine Days", which was sung by the Brady Bunch themselves.

9X19 The Truth
Word which was uttered in the episode at least twenty times.

Mostly taken from:
Laura Witte
laura.witte@nashville.com
The X-Files In-Jokes List © 1996