The X-Files (1993) - 165 mistakes in entire show

Continuity: When Scully goes to Mulder's room, thinking she has the marks, after he has checked her we see Scully's hair is behind her collar, but when the shot changes to her going to sit down, her hair is now hanging out.

Continuity: The first time Scully walks into Mulder's office, we see his "I want to Believe" poster in full view. Later on in the scene, we see papers stacked in front of it.

Continuity: When Scully is in her room after the autopsy, we see the x-ray attached to her lamp. When we first see it, we can see the letters LD on it, yet when the shot changes back to the x-ray after Mulder has gone, we can only see I, presumably the other x-ray is now overlapping it.

Continuity: When we first see Scully, going into the office at the beginning of the episode, we see when she is on her way to the office and when she enters it she is wearing her badge, yet when the shot changes, it is no longer on her, then when she comes out she is wearing it again.

Continuity: When Mulder and Scully are driving after their plane lands, we see at one point that Mulder has his left hand on the wheel and he is eating a sunflower seed with his right, yet when the shot changes he's driving with his right hand and eating with his left.

Continuity: When Scully is having lunch with her friend just after the intro, we see at one shot from behind her she is holding a knife, then when the shot changes she is no longer holding it.

Continuity: When Tooms is in the cell right at the end, we see when his food is being brought over to him on the tray that there is a drink and a bun, when the shot changes to the other side of the door the drink and bun have swapped sides. When the shot changes back to the other side of the door, the tray is now the other way around and then when the shot goes back to the other side the whole tray has now disappeared.

Factual error: Scully tells Mulder that Ruby is alive, so why is she performing CPR on her?

Continuity: When Mulder is running after the boy near the end, and the motorcycles are coming, we see him throw the torch quite far away, yet when the motorcycles are gone we see it is right next to him.

Factual error: Atlantic City, New Jersey really doesn't have woods around it like it does in this episode.

Visible crew/equipment: When Mulder and Scully are talking about Howard Graves faking his own death, when they get to the bottom of the stairs, you can see the pole which the camera used to travel down the stairs.

Continuity: Howard Graves' tombstone states that he died on the 5th of October, but the opening scenes date stamp says the 22nd of September when it was supposed to be two weeks after Graves had died.

Continuity: When Mulder and Scully are questioning Lauren in the investigation room, the piece of paper on Mulder's jacket changes place in between shots.

Continuity: When Mulder and Scully are leaving Laurens house, when we see the doors lock themselves they are different locks to what the car actually has.

Continuity: When the cup falls over when Lauren wants to see Mr. Dorlund, the box of tissues disappears in the last shot.

Revealing: While the computer is being infected with the virus, Peterson turns away from the screen to face Scully. Two seconds later, after the shot of Scully, the same shot is shown again but in reverse so that Peterson turns back to the screen. It's more obvious if you look at the weird way his eyes blink in the reversed shot.

Audio problem: When Jerry uses the elevator, the voice of the computer reads out the floors as "twenty-third floor, fourth floor, fifth floor" etc, missing out the "twenty-" prefix until the 29th floor. The DVD subtitles list these numbers with their prefix, so this was not intentional.

Continuity: When Brad is showing Mulder and Scully the video tape in his house, you can see the crew reflected off the TV screen.

Continuity: At the beginning when a man says: "We're not who we are", he says it differently when Scully watches the tape.

Plot hole: The worm is supposed to increase production of a violent hormone, making the host incredibly violent and unable to control it. Yet the infected member of the group manages to hide it perfectly between making their first kill and being discovered by the rest.

Continuity: When Mulder is examining the paper which says "We are not who we are", the writing changes position in between shots.

Plot hole: Mulder and Scully are driving after the women to the command center, it is raining hard. The woman has an accident and Mulder stops to check on her, it isn't raining anymore. They were right behind her.

Continuity: When Captain Belt is going to bed after the press conference, the bottle on his side table moves between shots.

Continuity: When Mulder is at Ground Control and the woman is telling the space ship that they're going into fly-by-wire mode, the Mulder's visitor pass changes from beneath his jacket to above his jacket between shots.

Continuity: When Mulder helps Max lie down he notices the scar behind his right ear but when he tells Scully about it later he says that the scar is behind his left ear.

Continuity: When Mulder and Scully are going to the caravan for the first time, you can see a person walking in the background, but when the shot changes they are no longer there.

Continuity: After Mulder has been released from the containment cell, and he and Scully go back to his room, the items on the table change position in between shots.

Continuity: When Max is trying to escape through Mulder's window, in the first shot, the bottom window is halfway down, but in the next shot, it's fully up.

Continuity: When Max bleeds out his ear, the blood stain on the pillow changes when Mulder and Scully see it.

Continuity: When Tina is in the foster home the camera looks through the windows at her, but when Mulder and Scully enter, the curtains are closed.

Continuity: When Dr. Kendrick/Eve is talking to the two little girls and she's clearing up the mess on the table, the position of the straw changes between shots.

Continuity: When Scully is reading report from Simmons' death, we can see that is has occured on the 7th of November, 1993; which means that whole episode takes place at the very beginning of November, but at the same time Scully and Mulder should be at Alaska (see episode "Ice").

Continuity: We see Cindy and Teena at the table talking with Eve 7, drinking out of paper cups. Later on, when Mulder picks up a cup from the table, it's made of glass.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene at the very beginning of the episode, when the camera is going up the stairs, you can make out a man's reflection holding a camera on the stairs.

Continuity: After the part where the head Kindred woman tells Mulder and Scully "I asked you not to interfere", Mulder leads Scully away. From one camera angle, he is leading her away by the hand. In the same scene, but from a different camera angle, he has his arm around her. When we go back to the first camera angle, he is once again leading her away by the hand.

Continuity: In the close-up shot of Mulder just before he shoots Barnett, his black ear piece disappears.

Continuity: In the scene at the start, when the police car passes the truck, clearly it is daylight, but right after the truck shuts down it is completely dark.

Continuity: In the establishing shot of the courthouse the subtitle reads "Kenwood County Courthouse" but you can read on the building that it is the "DeKalb County Courthouse".

Plot hole: At the end, a man is attacked while standing in the light of his automobile's headlights. Supposedly, though, the bugs were terrified of light.

Continuity: When they find the felled ancient tree, the stump that Mulder clambers up onto to investigate the growth rings has a distinctive crack at the center and the growth rings are irregular in shape. However the stump that we get a close up of has no crack and regular circular rings.

Continuity: When Scully is doing the exam on the dead guy on table, he blinks and breathes.

Factual error: At the crime scene where Roland killed one of the professors by dunking his head in liquid nitrogen and dropped him on the floor, someone has drawn an outline of the dead prof's body and all the bits his head broke into when Roland dropped him. This outline-drawing doesn't happen in life because it interferes with the crime scene, it's a popular myth.

Factual error: The Arecibo Radio Telescope is abandoned when Mulder goes there. However, after SETI was cancelled, the telescope was still used for other things.

Continuity: When Mulder is in the tower and Scully has just found him the sweat patches on his shirt change in between shots.

Continuity: When Fox Mulder is having the flashback when Samantha was abducted, he looks at the doorknob, in the close-up he is still looking at the doorknob but it has changed colour.

Factual error: Scully reads to Mulder from a book all about flukes (Trematodes). However, the information she is quoting is wrong. She states that flukes or flatworms have a "scolex" with hooks and suckers. These are actually the distinguishing characteristic of cestodes (tapeworms). Trematodes have no scolex and definitely no hooks.

Continuity: When Mulder is in the Tram car ascending the Mountain, to rescue Scully, he pulls all of the things out of under the top left-hand seat, but when the scene moves to Krycek in the booth, you don't see any of the thing that Mulder threw out.

Continuity: Krycek & Mulder leave FBI Headquarters, to go to Skyland Mountain, in a blue sedan - only in the next sceene - as Mulder is driving and almost falls asleep, the color of the sedan has changed to maroon.

Deliberate "mistake": When Scully is shown on her hospital bed, it's obvious she's wearing a bra under her hospital gown. It's doubtful that a patient in a coma would be wearing a bra as it could restrict her circulation.

Continuity: When the old man shows Mulder the two guys, the one that is not Deep Throat's murderer, from a distant angle his shirt is completely red. In the close-up he has a red and a bit green shirt.

Factual error: Mulder sees water going down the drain counterclockwise and says something is up since all water in the northern hemisphere drains clockwise. This is not true. Water can drain in both directions in both hemispheres. Things like convection currents, basin design, and residual swirl from filling the sink have a much greater influence. You would have to drain a small ocean to see the Coriolis effect, or use specially-designed test apparatus. See http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.htm and http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~dvandom/Edu/newcor.html (scroll down to *5.2. Water Going The Wrong Way Down The Sink* near the bottom of the page).

Continuity: When Scully is looking over the file on Agent Chaney, the shot over her shoulder shows the page turned over but from Mulder's point of view it is not.

Continuity: In "Firewalker," Mulder reports that the day is November 11 and that he and Scully ended up in a 30-day quarantine. Scully reports that the date for the autopsy in "Irresistible" is November 14, which conflicts with the quarantine.

Visible crew/equipment: When Mulder chases Chester on the pier, the camera's shadow can be seen as it circles around him.

Revealing: While Mulder, Scully, and the groundskeeper are walking through Folkstone Municipal Cemetery, there is a partially hidden but still conspicuous sign that reads "Vancouver Cemetery."

Factual error: The flag in Skinner's office is hung upside-down.

Factual error: The Norwegian bar has a Norwegian flag on the wall. In the '90s no Norwegian bar would have the country's flag on its wall unless it was a racist/Nazi bar.

Continuity: When Mulder and Scully are on the boat and check the other boat in the radar, you can see that the first time, the boat in the radar is at the center left. When it changes angles, the boat is now at the center right.

Factual error: Mulder refers to a Royal Navy vessel that sailed from Leeds. No large ship can sail from there - it is at least 50 miles from the coast.

Factual error: Mulder mentions the USS Eldridge as disappearing from Philadelphia (and later reappearing in Norfolk) "nine months after Roswell", i.e., May 1948. In fact, the supposed incident took place much earlier - in February 1943, according to almost all reliable sources.

Continuity: When Mulder pulls the nail from Blockhead's nose, the pliers are at the end of the nail, but in later shots it changes to the middle and then back to the end.

Continuity: When the dad is offering the son some ice cream, the cone he offers is a single scoop. In the next shot, as the son takes it, it is now a double scoop. In addition, the scoops change from single to double and back and forth in the next few shots.

Continuity: After the meeting with Dr. Davey, we cut to Mulder sitting in the train station trying to figure out what Dr. Banton was doing in the video. We see an overhead shot of the station, which shows a column in the far distance. Watch carefully: the shot never loses sight of the column, and you can see random passersby walk towards the column, but NO Scully. As the camera moves downwards to focus on Mulder in the foreground, Scully suddenly appears from behind the column, as if she had been walking towards it all this while. Obviously, she had been standing behind the column until her cue to come out.

Factual error: Scully makes a reference to an F.B.I. field office in Kansas City, however, no such office existed at the time of this episode.

Factual error: The townspeople contracted Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) from the bodies they consumed and it showed up in the brain tissue within a matter of weeks. However, this extremely rare disease takes several years to even be detectable.

Factual error: Mulder says that the events occur near I-10, however, I-10 is nearly 200 miles south of Arkansas's border in southern Louisiana.

Visible crew/equipment: As Scully stands up to leave at the offices of the Navajo Nation, the reflection of a boom mike moving in one of the picture frames on the wall can be seen.

Continuity: After Mulder has his tantrum and goes to see Skinner, he does not have or reach for his suit coat, but when he walks up to Skinner, he has it on.

Continuity: When Mulder experiences his near-death trance state his body is lying, apparently lifeless, in a star spangled sky. As the camera tracks in on him the toes on his right foot twitch, just after Deep Throat begins to speak. The foliage covering his chest also changes position between shots. In the wide shot he is covered up to the armpits. But the first close up shows his chest is exposed. Then in later close ups it is covered again.

Continuity: In the mine with the medical records we see Samantha's file. In the season 1 episode "Conduit" we see the X-File Mulder opened on her. In the previous episode she is listed as Samantha T. Mulder and her birth date is 1/22/64. Here we see her name as Samantha Ann Mulder and her birth date as 11/21/65.

Visible crew/equipment: When the agent says "I'm Kline, this is Havez" the boom mic is by the light on the ceiling.

Continuity: During the autopsy, Scully says that the date is August 29. The two previous episodes were set in September.

Deliberate "mistake": It's completely impossible that the sound of the tape(that sounds like "Fox Maytrink") is in fact "Your time has come,Killer".

Continuity: General Callahan tells Mulder that the man he saw in his office said his name, but all he said was, "Your time has come, killer".

Continuity: General Callahan, who is referred to as General Callahan throughout the episode by Mulder, gets called "Lieutenant" Callahan in the last scenes in the steam-room, while lying on the floor.

Factual error: Scully stops Mulder from performing CPR on Amy when, as a medical doctor, she should have known that it is possible to revive cold-water drowning victims long after the heart stops.

Continuity: When Mulder breaks into the boat, the door shuts, but in the next shot it's wide open. Shot after that, it's closed again.

Continuity: When Senator Richard Matheson tells Mulder about the four Japanese Nationals had been murdered, he says that the murders had occurred several weeks ago. But when Mulder brings Scully up to speed a scene or two later, he tells her that someone must have been able to identify the four doctors who were performing the autopsy because they were murdered YESTERDAY.

Revealing: When Mulder finds the Japanese doctor dead on the floor of the train bathroom, the man's eyes are open. Just before the shot cuts to the girl and boy at the door, he closes his eyes.

Continuity: If you watch closely you can see that Mulder runs the key card through the door scanner the wrong way, scanning nothing but plastic.

Factual error: After the agents meet with Kevin's father in the mental institute, Scully lists the medication that he is on: haloperidol, loxapine, and chlorpromazine make sense, but the fourth medication - LARGACTIL - is in error. Not only is it a brand-name of chlorpromazine, but it is not available in the USA, it is a CANADIAN drug.

Factual error: In the scene where Mulder, the police officer and the doctor are in the doctor's room, the time on the clock reads 8:40. The doctor announces that he going to the bathroom. The scene cuts to him in the bathroom and then back to the doctor's office with Mulder and the police officer. Another cop comes in and says, "Come to the bathroom, something's happened." The clock still reads 8:40.

Visible crew/equipment: When Scully says "This is rumor panic" you see the camera shadow following her on the lower left side of screen.

Continuity: When Scully arrives to investigate the kid who was crushed by the bleachers the time stamp says 5:10AM. It seems strange that the investigation would start the next morning, unless the high school holds basketball practice at 3:00 in the morning.

Continuity: When Scully and Mulder first visit John Mostow he says that he drew all the pictures of Gargoyles, which would have been a pretty good act considering he was in a strait jacket and would not have been allowed to have paper and drawing materials anyway.

Continuity: When Skinner walks into the cafe (the time he gets shot) another man is just walking out, leaving a table with a used glass and coffee cup. The waitress is in the back, getting Skinner a cup of coffee (she couldn't have cleaned the other table yet), but when we look over Skinner's shoulder you can see that the other table is cleared and has a clean coffee cup (turned upside down) on it.

Continuity: Mulder recalls to Scully that he saw Krycek being pulled out of the car and then saw the bright flash, but he only came to just in time to see the flash.

Plot hole: When Mulder and Scully are going to the town/city where the disappearances took place Scully says they should stop so she can walk the dog. Mulder says OK because he has to ask for directions yet the next scene we see is Mulder and Scully interviewing Dr. Faraday. How did they find him if they didn't know where they were?. And after that we see them at a store where they do ask for directions.

Factual error: In this episode, Mulder says that he's red/green colorblind. Colorblind people cannot be F.B.I. agents.

Continuity: In the pre-credits sequence when the gunman is shot by the police officer, he initially clutches a wound on his right side. When he is shown lying down, the bullet wound is higher up and on his left side.

Visible crew/equipment: While Fox is fighting the agent in underground garage you see a crew person on the right side of screen for split second.

Continuity: Scully tapes an X in the window,that X changes shape when Scully is talking to Mr. X and before Mr.X dies when he checks on the apartment.

Continuity: Jeremiah Smith and Mulder are with the kids, and in the background, when CSM is looking through the window, Samantha's clone and the other kid disappear.

Continuity: Scully was bound with tape to the chair, but in the last scene she gets out of the chair after Mulder frees her hands, but without freeing her legs.

Revealing: When Mulder and Scully enter the doctor's house, you can see over their shoulders that it is showering with rain outside, yet both of them are bone dry.

Continuity: In other episodes the name of The Lone Gunmen's newsletter is "The Lone Gunman", but in the shots of their office door it has a sign saying "The Lone Gunmen. Publishers of 'The Magic Bullet' newsletter."

Other: In the episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man," when CSM is writing his letter of resignation on his typewriter, you can see that the letters are already there - he is simply typing over them.

Continuity: When Scully finds out about Betts' mother she says that "She lives right here in Pittsburgh." Nothing wrong there except that at the time they has just left Chuck Burks' lab - which is in Maryland.

Visible crew/equipment: When Ed turns to go into the office, you see the reflection of the boom mike on the glass window.

Deliberate "mistake": When Mulder is about to go into the metal detector he puts his gun on the counter. He goes through the metal detector on his cell phone but his keys set it off, when he steps through again it doesn't go off. No cell phones can go through metal detectors without setting it off.

Other: When Mulder opens the body bag containing the "partial" remains of Max Pfennig (AKA Paul Gidney) a pulse can be seen beating in the right side of the corpse's neck.

Plot hole: Scully's statement that she was 23 when she wrote her senior thesis in college throws off her timeline of college, med school, residency, FBI Academy, Quantico teaching assignment for two years, and X-Files assignment at 28. Her undergraduate degree in Physics should have been completed when she was 20 or 21 to allow at least 4 or 5 years for her medical training.

Continuity: In the shot of the 6th Precinct police station, it has a California state flag flying out front. The episode took place in Massachusetts, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Continuity: We see Scully wearing pants while sitting on the couch, but when the real Mulder comes in, she jumps up and we see she's wearing a skirt.

Visible crew/equipment: As Fox is being led into the jail, when Scully says, "Mulder" the boom mic is at the top of the screen, while she's walking towards him.

Visible crew/equipment: When Scully asks Fox "Do you know what day it is?" the boom mic drops down at the top of the screen.

Factual error: The date stamp says that it is April 12 and Scully says that it is Sunday, but April 12, 1997 was a Saturday.

Continuity: During the shootout in the warehouse, a wedding ring is visible on Mulder's finger. While it's possible Mulder was married before, the Lone Gunmen are shown hacking into Mulder's FBI dossier and Langley reads out that he is single.

Visible crew/equipment: When the Lone Gunmen catch up with Suzanne at the end of the episode, when she is talking to them and the camera is on the three, you can see not one, but two boom mics at the top of the screen.

Continuity: The toxicology report lists the birth date of Mrs. Sim as 6/6/67 which would make her 30, but Detective Kresge says that she is 40 years of age.

Continuity: Scully's FBI badge number that she gives to the phone company is different to the one she gives in season 4's "Teliko".

Continuity: Mulder says that Scully was abducted and missing for four weeks. In "Duane Barry," the date stamp is given as August, then in "3," when Mulder returns to the X-Files office he turns the calendar all the way to November. Since Scully is returned the next episode after this, she must have been missing for at least 3 months, not 1.

Continuity: How was Modell tried and convicted in 1996 if he only woke up six months ago? Six months before this episode would be at least mid 1997.

Continuity: After her father is pulled out of the window, Lisa leans out and there is no glass left on the sill, she even places her hands on it. Later when Mulder and Scully look at it, there is all sorts of jagged edges on the sill.

Continuity: In the same season episode "Unusual Supects" Fox Mulder's file lists him as Fox William Mulder. The A.I. discovers a similar file but the name is just Fox Mulder.

Visible crew/equipment: I don't know if this is visible in all formats, but on the newest UK release on DVD, watching in widescreen, it's amazingly obvious. When Mulder recovers from the vampire attack, he gets up from the floor and breaks up a chair to make a stake. There is a shot of his feet as he smashes the legs off and bends to pick up a piece. In the bottom left hand corner of the screen, you can see a crew member's hand carefully and quickly placing a piece of wood on top of the pile for Mulder to pick up.

Revealing: When the doctor examine Ronnie's "corpse" in the morgue, he pulls out the stake. It is quite obvious that he's struggling with a wooden stake that is placed on the actor's side, not through his chest. Moreover, the camera pans up and you can briefly see Ronnie's unharmed chest.

Continuity: In season 2's "Ascension," Skyland Mountain was a private ski resort, yet here we are told it is a national park.

Other: When Marty is being transferred and 'sees' herself because the killer is watching her, she should have seen herself viewed through a wire fence, as the killer was standing behind one.

Continuity: At the end of this episode when Mulder is talking to Marty through her jail cell, the position of their hands change. In one shot, Mulder's hand is covering hers, and in the next, each of their hands are gripping the cell bars. This goes back and forth a few times.

Visible crew/equipment: Just after Mulder asks Scully "Could the victim have placed it?" a boom mic is visible at the top right of the screen.

Revealing: During the autopsy, right after Scully has the vision of her daughter, the body of Paula Koklos can be seen to move (watch her hands and neck).

Continuity: If the Kernoffs were really devoted Catholics why would they have waited six years to have Dara baptised?

Continuity: When the bank manager goes to open the door for the brinks truck containing the robbers, the clock on the wall reads 9:45. When the robbers are taking him back to the vault, a couple of shots of the skull-masked robber shows the clock reading about 9:43.

Continuity: A move is repeated in the opening chess game. The first overhead shot shows Gibson's white rook near the top left of the board. The adult opponent then takes it with his king at the bottom of the board. Gibson next moves the white rook to the bottom of the board and the adult captures it again, repeating his earlier move.

Continuity: In addition, to the repeated move, a black pawn suddenly moves backward one space, which is not only a continuity error but an impossible move. Without this change, Gibson would not have gotten checkmate as the black queen would have not have been blocked.

Continuity: When we see the Russian guy get shot and he falls out of his chair, he knocks the chessboard off the table. But when Jeffrey Spender shows his team the tape, the guy hits the board so that it spins around, instead of falling off completely.

Continuity: Watch the odometer in Mulder's car. When we first get a shot of it the counter is at about 2092, the when he runs out of gas it is at 2043.

Factual error: The alternate version of Scully is identified as an OSS agent, but the OSS did not exist in 1939.

Factual error: In the scene where Daryl Mootz pulls up in his SUV for the rain-making event, there is a shot of the SUV with a front Kansas license plate. Cars in Kansas only have rear license plates.

Factual error: In the episode "Rain King" when Mulder and Scully first arrive in Kroner, Kansas, you can see mountains in the background. There are no mountains in Kansas, only valleys and hills.

Factual error: Lewis Brady had a "Felon wanted by the FBI" file in 1929, but the FBI wasn't called the FBI until 1935; until then it was just the "Bureau of Investigation."

Continuity: At the end of the season 1 finale, The Erlenmeyer Flask, CSM is seen placing the alien embryo (pickled in a jar) in a box somewhere deep in the Pentagon's storage facility - yet in season 6's One Son, the embryo is back in the flask, in the freezing solution where Scully found it in the first place.

Factual error: When Mulder and Scully are moving into the house, there is a shot of Mulder's watchface which reads that the date is the 7th. A few minutes later, Scully is walking around with a video camera, and narrating and she says the date is February the 24th.

Continuity: In the scene where the Riley Animal Hospital sign lights up, the time comes across the bottom of the screen saying 6:21 p.m. The scene then cuts to inside the animal hospital. However, the clock inside does not read 6:21. It reads somthing roughly before 6.

Continuity: It seemed strange that Mulder was surprised not to find the Arthur Dales he knew at his apartment, when in "Agua Mala," he learned that Dales had moved to Florida.

Factual error: The beginning of the episode shows a baseball game taking place in Roswell, New Mexico. A ball smashes into a sahuaro cactus. The only place in the United States of America where sahuaros grow is in the Arizona desert. There are none in New Mexico.

Continuity: When Frohike plays the slot machine, the first position on the reel shows a single bar. After Byers spots Suzanne, the camera goes back to Frohike and the first position now is not a single bar. There wouldn't have been enough time between the shots for Frohike to have another pull of the machine.

Continuity: At Mulder's 'funeral' around when there is a knock at the door, we see Frohike raise his bottle to take a swig. The shot cuts to facing Scully and we can see Frohike further in the background and his bottle is nowhere to be seen, when he should've been mid-swig.

Factual error: In this episode, Mulder says, "In 1996, a rock from Mars was found in Antarctica." The rock ALH84001 was found in 1984, and the announcement that it may contain life came in 1996.

Continuity: When Mulder and Scully first see the artifact rubbing in Skinner's office, the rubbing is quite faint and lightly done. A couple of times during the episode, the rubbing becomes darker and heavier drawn.

Continuity: At the end, when Scully is trying to wipe sand and water from the moving tide away from a section of spacecraft, she stands up and the camera pans out; she is suddenly 3 feet away from the ship and several more away from the tide line.

Visible crew/equipment: When Scully asks Mulder, "Are you losing it?" the boom mic is up top of screen.

Revealing: When Scully enters the F.B.I. Building after returning from Africa, she isn't wearing her badge. She'd need it to walk around without being stopped by security.

Continuity: When Scully is talking to Skinner in Mulder's empty hospital room, her cross necklace is off to the left. Then, when she says, "Sir." it's almost centered. And no, this was not caused by her turning around a minute or so before she said it.

Continuity: The dates on the academic discipline and progress forms for Max are not in accord with the order of the episode, coming after the "Millennium" episode. Supposedly the changes in his behavior and grades started a few months before, but the reports are from a few years ago.

Factual error: Mulder calls the dust in Maleeni's van "lycopodium powder" that the Los Angeles Police Department used to collect fingerprints, but the real LAPD uses latent print powder not lycopodium.

Visible crew/equipment: A mic boom operator is visible on the left hand side of the screen wearing a white t-shirt, beige shorts, and sneakers. He's carrying the boom mic and following Mulder and Scully. You can see him when Mulder and Scully arrive at the "Church of God with Signs and Wonders" for the first time...when Mulder delivers the line "That's funny, I knew a couple Catholic schoolgirls who were experts at it."

Factual error: When Reverend O'Connor is reading from the Book of Revelations, his Bible is flipped open towards the front. Revelations is the last chapter in the New Testament, so his Bible should have been open towards the back.

Plot hole: When Scully enters the game room after the game has shut off and the Lone Gunman are there but Mulder is missing. She is told that the only way in/out is from the door she came in. Later we find out that the bay that players use to enter the game is at the other end of the room and not conected to the door Scully used. So how did Mulder and Scully enter the game from the bay when the game was running?

Plot hole: In this episode, Mulder and Scully are watching a film about them that was shot sixteen months ago. But that would have been sometime in late 1998, when Mulder and Scully were not on the X-Files. But yet they're in Skinner's office at the beginning. If they had shot the film in consistency with the current timeline, (2000) then the film would have been shown in late 2001. But in that time, Mulder was missing and Scully had a newborn. if anything, she would have seen the movie with Doggett. Somebody didn't plan ahead...

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Scully is performing the autopsy on Micah Hoffman, you can see a shadow of someone moving across the wall behind her.

Continuity: Scully tells Burt that Betty lived in a blue house and later tells Mulder that she found Lulu, who lived in a pink house. Betty actually lived in the pink house and Lulu lived in the blue one.

Continuity: In this episode, both Mulder and Scully say that the last time they were in Oregon was 7 years ago. A previous episode this season dealt with the millennium, so we know this episode took place in 2000. So seven years ago would be 1993, the year the show first aired. But in the Pilot episode, the corner of the screen reads their location in Oregon and March 7, 1992. 8 years ago.

Continuity: When Scully points out the location of the last time they saw Gibson Praise, she points to the (real) Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, which is west of Phoenix. In 'The Beginning' the plant shown was the (fictional) Rolling Hills Nuclear Plant, 60 miles east of Phoenix.

Continuity: Doggett says that Mulder and Scully first met Gibson Praise in 1997. As we saw in the season 5 finale "The End," Mulder and Scully first met Gibson Praise in 1998.

Continuity: When the psychic collapses, sun is streaming through the window, indicating early afternoon. When we see the ambulance driving away a few scenes later, it's dark outside. It's highly unlikely it took a medic team several hours to get there and stabilise her.

Continuity: When Martin takes out the nanny-cam from the bear, the lens-protection is on so the camera could not have recorded anything.

Continuity: Randall has strange pale eyes but just before he shoots Dwight, when he is aiming the gun at Tammi, there are several close ups of his face and his eyes are a normal brown.

Continuity: When Ray is eating the sandwich, there is a large bite out of one corner just before he removes the foil. In the shot from behind after the foil is removed, the bite is only from one slice of the bread.

Continuity: Just before he removes it, the foil disappears from Ray's sandwich in one shot, then appears again in the next shot.

Plot hole: When Scully goes down to The X Files office at the beginning of the episode, Doggett calls Assistant Director Brad Follmer "Agent Follmer."

Visible crew/equipment: In an early scene with Scully and Skinner talking in the hallway, there is a crew member obviously hiding behind a trash can.

Other: When Doggett starts clawing at the freshly plastered wall, he does so at just below his eye-level and blood starts pouring from the hole he makes. The dead woman inside the wall was stabbed in the lower abdomen; there's no way that blood from the abdominal wound would've seeped through the wall at the level he was digging.

Continuity: Marita Covarrubias tells the tribunal that she used to be Special Representative to the Secretary General of the United Nations. However, in "Herrenvolk," she told Mulder that she was the assistant to the S.R.S.G.