Trivia for
The X Files: I Want to Believe (2008) More at IMDbPro »

• Gillian Anderson told The New York Times that it was harder than she expected for her to get back into character as Scully to make this movie after five years had passed since the end of the television show. The Times quoted her as saying, "I walked in thinking, it's going to be like riding a bicycle. It wasn't. It was like riding a [fucking] unicycle. I'd been trying so hard to stretch myself in other roles, and to catch myself when I did anything that remotely resembles Scully, that when I was put back in the ring with her, my brain started misfiring."
  
  
• The television show ("The X Files" (1993)) upon which this movie is based was filmed for its first five seasons in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The show's production moved to Los Angeles for seasons 6-9, but this movie was once again filmed in and around Vancouver. While the show was made in Vancouver, the show often used local Canadian actors in guest and secondary roles, often reusing the same actors in different parts in multiple episodes. With the franchise's return to Vancouver, the producers were able to continue the tradition by recasting many of the same actors they had used so often on the show. For example, Alex Diakun (Gaunt Man) appeared as different characters in three episodes; Lorena Gale (On Screen Doctor) appeared as different characters in three episodes; Stephen E. Miller (Feed Store Proprietor) appeared as different characters in three episodes including the pilot; Sarah-Jane Redmond (Special Agent In Charge) appeared as different characters in two episodes; Stacee Copeland (Doctor) appeared as different characters in two episodes. Callum Keith Rennie (2nd Abductor - Janke Dacyshyn) appeared as different characters in two episodes and was the original choice to play the long-running character Alex Krycek. Several other secondary and tertiary members of the movie cast had also appeared on the show as other characters.
  
  
• Mulder visits the Nutter feed store; David Nutter directed many episodes of the series.
  
  
• The film's production was kept under a tight veil of secrecy in order to keep plot details from leaking to the public prior to its release. The code name "Done One" was used as the film's working title during filming, along with a logo that was designed to deter suspicions of the film's true nature. The Directors Guild production list specified "Rich Tracers" as the project's attached director, which is an anagram of the actual director's name, Chris Carter. A fake production company name, "The Crying Box Productions," was used in work orders and information sheets. Fake scripts were produced for actor auditions. On any particular day of filming, only the pages required for that day's scenes were distributed - and were then collected and shredded at the end of the day.
  
  
• When Mulder tries to call Scully from his cell phone, the display shows two names above hers and one name below. The two names above are Bowman and Gilligan, which can only be references to Rob Bowman (director of the first movie and several episodes) and Vince Gilligan (writer-producer of the show). The name below is Shiban, a reference to John Shiban (another writer-producer).
  
  
• When Scully is on her way to her office, Chris Carter (director) is seen sitting on a bench outside it. He is holding and urn containing the ashes of his dog, Frankie, who died during the filming of the movie.
  
  
• The character named "Franz Tomczeszyn" shares the same surname as the movie's costume designer Lisa Tomczeszyn.
  
  
• Joseph Patrick Finn, Producer of many X-files episodes, can be seen as the whispering priest seated next to Father Ybarra during the staff meeting where Scully first mentions using Stem Cell therapy.
  
  
• When Mulder and Scully first walk back into the FBI offices right before they walk into the bullpen, a female agent walks by that catches Mulder's attention and he watches her walk away. The woman is Vanessa Morley, who throughout the series played the young Samantha Mulder, and is the same Samantha in the photo Mulder has taped to the back of his home office door.
  
  
• This movie is dedicated to Randy Stone, the casting agent who cast the pilot of "The X Files" (1993) (and therefore found David Duchovny to play Mulder and Gillian Anderson to play Scully). Stone died in 2007.
  
  
• When Scully first visits Mulder in his rural home, Mulder is seen tacking up a story about "Princeton closes ESP Lab after 40 years of paranormal study" This is referencing a real-life event and place, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research facility, which was closed in 2007 after school administrators felt it unjustified to continue funding it. Originally the lab was tasked to investigate possible phenomena for the defense industry, such as if the minor electrical field present in the human body could interfere with sensitive electrical equipment when the body was placed under extreme stress, such as a fighter pilot involved in a dogfight causing his controls to malfunction. While the lab in its time failed to provide conclusive evidence that such things could occur, they did find in large-scale experiments that there was a statistically detectable influence. This was however at the tamer end of PEAR's experiments which included such things as remote perception.
  
  
• At the end of the scene where Scully is discussing the options for her patient with the hospital administrators, on the wall behind her are several photographs of priests. The last one is a photograph of actor Bruce Harwood who played John Fitzgerald Byers, one of the three Lone Gunmen from both "The X Files" (1993) and its spin-off series, "The Lone Gunmen" (2001).
  
  
• When Mulder and Scully are talking in bed, Scully has a book lying next to her pillow. The book is, "Beautiful WASPs Having Sex" by Dori Carter - Chris Carter's wife.
  
  
• Chris Carter originally planned to make this movie right after the end of the TV series, and use it to end the alien invasion storyline. Since the start of production was delayed for over five years, Carter changed his mind and decided to focus on a standalone mystery story in order to make the movie appealing to people who weren't familiar with the show's mythology, leaving the invasion subplot for a possible third film.
  
  

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