For your viewing pleasure:

P.S. For people who are not 40 have not watched The X-Files, that other guy in the red speedo scene is Mulder’s new partner, the apparent woobie whom Mulder is a jerk to because he’s not Scully… but who later turns out to be a Secret Villain.

1 guess what the big slash ship was back then.

And the Secret Villain (with tragic backstory) kissed Mulder in one scene! In an angry non-romantic way but whooooo, the fic it generated.

Um, excuse me, you can’t just SAY that. The Youth need PICS!

(aka I am way too lazy to go find X-Files screencaps myself.)

It’s a SUPER DARK scene so the caps are awful - plus caps can’t get across just how startling it was to see Krycek pointing a handgun at Mulder, threatening his life, and then just….. lunge forward, and kiss Mulder on the cheek. Because this was 1998 and one of the most popular shows on TV and you just didn’t SEE THAT. So here’s a GIF instead.

Edited for @olderthannetfic

Dear fandom: please enjoy this EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL.

@nanners-the-great

It was such a cultural phenomenon even The Simpsons had their take on it:

Is it a good time to remind everyone this song exists

Heheheheheh.

This gets stuck in my head regularly.

Who wrote this song? Is it a fan song? It’s a serious fan song to have ALL those celebrities in on it. I’m in awe!

Bree Sharp.

There’s a wikipedia article.

Basically, somebody on the crew got sent the song, thought it was fucking hilarious, and ran around the Fox lot getting all the people who were there at the time to participate in what was essentially a prank for the set Christmas party—hence the really random selection of non-X-Files celebrities. It was just whomever was working with Fox right then.

So. Somehow. I honestly do not remember how. I was sent a VHS of a gag reel that had been put together by the crew for some cast party.

To my knowledge, the footage it contained had never been, or never was, publicly released. But someone had gotten ahold of a copy, perhaps from someone on the crew or at a con, and copies were distributed through a whisper network of message boards and email groups.

I carried it to England when I went to meet my internet pen pal/Fandom buddy, and we sent it off to be converted to the local standard.

It spread across Europe from there, and I got letters and emails for years thanking me for it.