By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The X-Files has many great supporting characters, but none are quite as beloved as The Lone Gunmen, a trio of nerdy computer types who often help out Fox Mulder. It’s not hard to see why these characters are so popular. After all, “nerdy computer types” describes much of the fan base, especially back in the ‘90s when the show was new. Fans who always see themselves reflected in the Lone Gunman may be particularly intrigued to know these nerds were inspired by some conspiracy-theorist attendees of a UFO convention.
The Real Lone Gunmen
When The Lone Gunmen were introduced in the Season 1 episode “E.B.E.,” nobody had any reason to believe they were based on real people…in fact, nobody even knew if these characters would make another appearance. That was certainly true of episode writers Glen Morgan and James Wong, who thought they did a bad job with this episode until they learned how much online fans loved these new characters. And it was Morgan who later revealed that the Lone Gunmen were inspired by a real trio of people that he met at a UFO convention he attended shortly before he began writing for The X-Files.
He attended this convention along with Marilyn Osborn, who went on to write the memorable X-Files episode “Shapes”. Morgan claims that this trio of conspiracy theorists left an impression on him, and once he began writing for the series, he thought to himself, “Well, these people have got to make it in here somewhere.” He had wanted to write them into the show earlier and lamented, “It just took a long time to get them in.”
If you’re more of a Scully than a Mulder, you might be skeptical about how much the Lone Gunmen that we saw on screen resembled the real men that Glen Morgan ran into at the UFO convention. After all, these fan-favorite X-Files characters are legendarily quirky, so it’s only natural to think that their personalities or mannerisms were exaggerated compared to their real-life analogs. However, Morgan is adamant that this isn’t the case and that, “I put them almost verbatim into the story.”
In fact, the Lone Gunmen’s antics in “E.B.E” were directly inspired by the antics of the real nerd trio at the UFO convention. According to the DVD special features for this episode, Glen Morgan and James Wong were particularly impressed by the real nerds giving a speech about how everyone’s money is magnetized and nobody knows it. This inspired the moment in the episode where Byers takes apart a $20 bill, a fun onscreen stunt that was so difficult that Frohike actor Bruce Harwood ended up destroying (in Morgan’s estimation) about $120 of bills before getting it right.
The Lone Gunmen may have seemed like a larger-than-life trio of conspiracy theorists when they appeared in “E.B.E,” but it turns out they were directly inspired by real attendees of a UFO convention with similarly outsized personalities. That makes these beloved sidekicks a bit like most of the best X-Files stories: a mixture of truth and fiction. And as for the UFO attendees, we suspect, like the truth, they’re still out there and hopefully very proud of the iconic pop culture characters they inspired.
