The X Files 117 E.B.E. Facts, Trivia, Goofs & Description

 Mulder and Scully become the focus of a disinformation campaign when they attempt to trace the government's secret transport of an alien life form.

Trivia

• First appearance of The Lone Gunmen.
• The inspiration for the Lone Gunmen came from a group of men that writers Glen Morgan and Marilyn Osborn met at a UFO convention in June 1993.
• Early in the story, Mulder tells Scully about places where he's experienced multiple sightings of UFOs. One that he mentions is Okoboji Falls, which Scully would have known about because she was with him there in Conduit (1993).
• As per Dean Haglund (Langly), his glasses are different for the first several appearances of The Lone Gunmen, as the wardrobe department wasn't sure if the characters would return.
• The casting of Tom Braidwood as Frohike was absolutely casual, being he is an assistant director. When they were looking for Frohike, nobody found the perfect one. Somebody told something like "we need someone repulsive and with the appearance of Braidwood", so, he was cast.
• The name Mulder uses to infiltrate the military base is Tom Braidwood. Tom Braidwood is the name of the actor who plays Melvin Frohike and is also a First Assistant Director on the series. The cover name given to Scully is Val Stefoff, which is a variation on Val Stefoff - another First Assistant Director.
• Some of the scenes were inspired by photographs sent to the writers by location scouts of a BC Hydro power station, which was used as a shooting location.
• Roger Cross, who plays the guard in the facility, is a reoccurring actor in The X-Files, with "E.B.E." as the first of his five appearances throughout the series.
• The episode's title, E.B.E., stands for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity.
• Peter LaCroix, who plays the trucker Ranheim, later played different characters in Ascension (1994) and Unrequited (1997).

spoilers

• First instance of Mulder turning off his apartment lights leaving just a lamp on shining out his window. No 'X' in tape, just the lamp. He used this sign when he wanted to meet Deep Throat. Later, he would use the X in order to meet Mr. X.
• The Lone Gunmen say that they have had breakfast with the man who k*lled John F. Kennedy. Later in Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man (1996), the supposedly true (within the X-Files universe) identity of the k*ller is revealed.
• Deep Throat reveals to Mulder that he actually exterminated a captured alien many years ago. This scene will be portrayed in a flashback in Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man (1996).
• When The Lone Gunmen first meet Scully, Frohike tells her twice that she is hot. This is the beginning of an internal joke about the crush that Frohike has on Scully. He seems to be both Mulder and Scully's favorite gunman.

Goofs

• During the first truck scenes, it is clearly the middle of the night and the time is stated as 12:20 AM, except when the police cars pass the truck at 03:30, it is daylight.
• When Fox and Scully gain access to the "power plant" they are trying to get to Level 6. The black guard who confronts them is a 1st Sgt in the US Army. In the military, 1st Sgt is an administrative position. They handle pay, discipline, punishment and grooming of the Company they lead. A 1st Sgt would not be guarding a door.
• Not all sharks have to swim constantly to achieve a flow of water through their respiratory system, so not all sharks will die if they stop swimming; they must continue swimming, however, to avoid sinking to the bottom of the water column.
• The polyester strips inserted into some US currency is neither metallic nor magnetic, and has absolutely no effect on metal detectors.
• Revealing mistakes
• While following the truck, the electronics go haywire in the Taurus. When Scully slams on the brakes, the transmission shifter is in Park.
• The 'bugging device' that Scully finds in the pen is just a collection of resistors, diodes and capacitors. It is fully rotated to reveal that there are no transistors which would be required to form a transmitter.
• At the start, when we first see the agents in the woods, Scully is incorrectly using a camera with a telephoto lens to examine things very close up.
• At 27:40 Mulder and Scully parked their gray car in front of a red car already parked on the street. Both cars have the same license plate: 5S2 706.
• (at around 30 mins) When Scully is looking through binoculars in the car in the background, she (and her window) are clearly on a green screen because they contain interference.
• When explaining the cover-up of the Roswell incident, Deep Throat mentions a secret conference between "the United States, the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Britain..." in reality, the PRC was established in August 1949, more than two years after the Roswell incident, and therefore the Chinese Communist Party was unlikely to have been privy to such negotiations.
• Audio/visual unsynchronised
• Frohike is using a SLR camera with a telephoto lens, yet it makes the shutter sound of a digital camera.
• When Mulder and Scully wait for the truck on the side of the highway and drive off to follow it, the crew is briefly reflected on the car's windows.
• (at around 29 mins) There is a large snow-capped mountain in the distance, even though Mulder is supposed to be driving through D.C. towards the Baltimore airport.
• Mulder and Scully meet a group of UFO enthusiasts in a thick forest identified as being outside Mattawa, Washington. Mattawa is situated on a plateau in the high desert surrounded by sagebrush; there are no natural forests for more than 50 miles in any direction.