The X-Files: Easter Eggs and References In "Scully and Mulder Meet the Were-Monster"

THOSE STONERS

You might recognize character actors Tyler Labine and Nicole Parker Smith from not one but two previous outings as hapless stoners on The X-Files. Their characters (apparently the same ones, considering their musing on there being more to life than getting high every night) appeared in both "War of the Coprophages" and "Quagmire," which tonight's writer/director Darin Morgan had a hand in.

PORT-A-POTTY

Darin Morgan himself played Flukeman, one of the show's most notorious and gross monsters of the week, who moved through the sewers and ate people.

At one point, Flukeman hid inside of a similar portable chemical toilet, which ended up on a truck and moved him to a new location, where he ended up squaring off with Scully and Mulder.

Seriously, Morgan, what's with the Port-A-Potties?

RED SPEEDO

Is that actually a Speedo in tonight's episode, or just red briefs that Mulder is sleeping in? Either way, it's a wink and a nod to "Duane Barry," a season two episode.

In the episode, a former FBI agent who claims he was abducted by aliens takes several people hostage.

The red speedo! #TheXFiles pic.twitter.com/T1IyS5ta1E

— The X-Files (@thexfiles) February 2, 2016

But...yeah. The thing most people remember is a scene where Mulder comes out of a swimming pool in a soaking red Speedo. There is a truly impressive number of shots of David Duchovny's crotch on the Internet if you Google that episode.

THE HOTEL MANAGER

This guy's been everywhere.

Tonight's motel owner is played by character actor Alex Diakun, who appeared in three prior episodes of The X-Files -- "Humbug," "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," and "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" -- as well as in The X-Files: I Want to Believe.

The actor also appeared in a pair of episodes of Chris Carter's Millennium.

GRAVESIDE MANNERS

At the cemetery where Mulder hears Guy Mann's story, fans got a glimpse of the tombstones for Jack Hardy and Kim Manners.

Bot of those names should probably be familiar to longtime fans of the series and Chris Carter:

Manners, who has gone on to work on Supernatural, directed more than fifty episodes of The X-Files, including the series finale in 2002.

Hardy, meanwhile, has served as an assistant director or second unit director on a number of projects ranging from The X-Files: I Want to Believe to Millennium to The Lone Gunmen to Arrow.

MULDER'S RINGTONE

Given the original era of The X-Files, there have been plenty of jokes about Fox Mulder's oversized '90s cell phone over the years.

In the rebooted series, we've got a few jokes about how he can't seem to make a smartphone work...but he did at least one cool thing: customized his ringtone.

Now, it plays Mark Snow's iconic theme song to The X-Files.

I'm sure this has been done before, but the only time i can specifically remember a series using its own theme as a cell phone ringtone was on Arrested Development.

QUEEQUEG

This isn't the first time that Dana Scully has bonded with a dog and taken it home on a case.

In the previous instance, the dog belonged to a dead woman, and when Scully took it home, the anonymous Pomeranian was rechristened Queequeg. That was the name of a character in Moby-Dick, as were the nicknames Scully and her father (Ahab and Starbuck) had for one another.

In the 1996 episode "Quagmire," Queequeg was killed and eaten by an alligator -- that may have been to mirror the novel's Queequeg, who was killed by Moby-Dick, or that may be a coincidence. In any event, fans had an attachment to the dog, and apparently the showrunners, too: after its death, the dog's tags appeared on an episode late in the series.

IS SCULLY IMMORTAL?

Here's another reference to "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," the episode in which Scully adopts Queequeg: In that episode, Bruckman -- who had the ability to see how people will die -- tells her that she "doesn't."

Of course, he told Mulder autoerotic asphyxiation, and Mulder this time said something about wanting to get mauled by dangerous animals while nude. So that's...close?

"Clyde Bruckman" wasn't the only time Scully's immortality had been discussed, teased, or theorized by fans. It's a recurring element, and one that showrunners promised would be addressed in the sixth episode of this season.