1.24 "The Erlenmeyer Flask" Trivia Quiz

Answer: The suspect's car

When Mulder received the call from Deep Throat, he taped the news broadcast and watched it repeatedly to look for clues. Deep Throat hadn't told him why the police chase would be of interest to him, which frustrated Scully, who didn't see a reason to pursue the case.

But when they went to the impound yard to look at the car, Mulder noticed that the windshields weren't the same; the one on the news broadcast had a Caduceus sticker on it. He was able to enlarge a snapshot of the car from the broadcast and get a few numbers from the license plate, which eventually led to Dr. Berube.

Answer: A flask of liquid

When Mulder and Scully first met with Dr. Berube, he denied knowing that his car had been used in a crime; he claimed he didn't even know it was missing. But he wasn't willing to talk with them so they left only to return later after Dr. Berube's death.

The lab was in disarray, and Mulder and Scully believed that his suicide had been staged. Mulder found a flask with brownish liquid at the lab and asked Scully to have it analyzed. She agreed to do so but told him, "If this is Monkey pee, you're on your own".

Answer: Underwater

One of the police officers was sure that he'd shot Dr. Secare before he fell into the bay, but he didn't see a body in the water. When Mulder and Scully visited the crime scene and asked why a body hadn't been found, an officer told them that there was a lot of debris in the bay and the body was probably stuck.

The police finally gave up on the search, and as their boat pulled away, Secare surfaced a short distance away. When he called Dr. Berube's house and spoke with Mulder the next day, he said that he had been hiding underwater for three days.

Answer: Toxic fumes escaped from Dr. Secare's chest.

Dr. Secare had collapsed in a telephone booth while talking to Mulder, who he thought was Dr. Berube, and a good Samaritan who was passing by called for an ambulance. The paramedics were doing a needle decompression on Secare's chest to relieve pressure, but when the needle went in, a toxic gas was released.

The paramedics began gagging and covering their eyes, and the driver stopped the ambulance and ran out. When Secare pulled the needle out of his chest and left the ambulance, one of the paramedics could be seen motionless on the floor.

The idea for this scene came from a real incident that occurred earlier in 1994 when hospital staff in Riverside, California, were overcome after being exposed to ammonia-like fumes from the body of a cancer patient.

Answer: Extraterrestrial

Dr. Carpenter explained that there were only four naturally-occurring nucleotides in DNA and that the sample liquid that Scully had brought in contained a fifth and sixth nucleotide that did not exist in nature. She stated "that it would have to be, by definition, extraterrestrial".

When Scully later returned to the lab to get the sample back, she discovered that Dr. Carpenter and her family had been killed in a car accident and that the sample had disappeared. Dr. Carpenter was portrayed by Anne De Salvo, who memorably played "Princess" Gloria in the 1981 version of "Arthur".

Answer: Men

Mulder had broken into Dr. Berube's house and found a phone bill in his desk. He noticed the repeated calls and had one of his colleagues look up the number for him. When he went into the warehouse, he saw six large tanks of water, five of which contained naked men; the other tank was empty.

The men were hooked up to monitors but were lying motionless in the tanks, but then Mulder saw one reposition himself in the tank and realized they were still alive. When he returned the next day with Scully, the room was empty.

The warehouse address was 1616 Pandora Street; according to series creator Chris Carter, they had planned to use a fake address that had some genetic meaning, but then he saw the actual filming address and realized that it was even more appropriate - the opening of Pandora's Box.

Answer: Deep Throat

Deep Throat walked into the warehouse just as Scully was asking what had happened to the men that Mulder had seen in the tanks. "Most likely they've been destroyed", responded Deep Throat. He denied knowing who would have done so, explaining that "inside the intelligence community, there are so-called Black Organizations, groups within groups conducting covert activities unknown at the highest levels of power". Deep Throat said that Dr. Berube had been working on DNA transplants to create alien-human hybrids using six volunteer patients who were all terminally ill, but his work had been too successful.

The government was only interested in the technology, and when the patients began to recover from their illnesses and had gained superhuman strength, it became problematic, so the patients were to be destroyed.

However, Dr. Secare was a personal friend of Dr. Berube, so Dr. Berube warned him that men were coming for him. That was why Dr. Secare was being chased at the beginning of the episode.

Answer: An alien fetus

Mulder finally met up with Dr. Secare at Dr. Berube's house when he found Secare hiding in the attic. He told Secare that they could protect him, but he spoke too soon. Secare was shot by the men who had been searching for him, and the gas that escaped from the wound incapacitated Mulder. Since Scully couldn't get a hold of him, she went to Mulder's apartment and was met by Deep Throat who told her that Mulder had been captured.

He said that Mulder was "too high profile" to be killed and that the men who had him might be willing to make a deal to trade him for the evidence that Scully collected from Dr. Berube's lab.

When Scully told him that evidence was gone, he said that there was other evidence at a high-containment facility at Fort Marlene, Maryland, and that he could get her access to the facility.

She was able to access the cryology department at the facility by providing the password, "Purity Control" that had been written on the bottom of the Erlenmeyer flask from Dr. Berube's lab. Once inside, she opened the cryologic container and pulled out the alien fetus.

Answer: Trust no one

Scully had brought the alien body to the exchange point on a deserted overpass. She wanted to make the exchange herself, but Deep Throat told her that he had made the deal so he needed to be the one to make the exchange. She gave him the parcel containing the alien body, and he went to the van, but when he handed over the box, he was shot. Mulder was then dumped out of the back of the van before it sped off.

After checking to see if Mulder was alive, which he was, Scully ran to Deep Throat. He'd been shot in the chest, and before he died, he mumbled "Trust no one".

Answer: The X-Files were being shut down.

Mulder told Scully that he had been called in to see Skinner that night and was told that the X-Files were being shut down. He said they would be assigned to other departments within the agency. Scully was shocked and told him that he needed to lodge a protest, but Mulder responded that the directive had come down from higher up. When she asked him what he was going to do, he said, "I'm not going to give up. I can't give up. Not as long as the truth is out there".