Television shows don’t get much more iconic than The X-Files. Even people who have never seen the show know the names Mulder and Scully, and that they chase UFOs and government conspiracies. Most people consider The X-Files science-fiction; some call it a supernatural procedural; a few people even find it the most slow-burn “romance” on television.

I have always considered the series flat-out horror. The show frequently featured monsters that would make Freddy Krueger shudder, along with well-plotted episodes that ratchet up the tension to uncomfortable levels. Plus, the show has always had a healthy amount of gore.

In honor of one of my all-time favorite TV shows, I present to you the goriest, most gruesome, most horror-fying episodes of The X-Files.

Episode 202: “The Host”

The monster in “The Host” is the most gruesome sight in this episode. Half-man, half-flukeworm, this creature is one of the most iconic in the history of The X-Files. Flukie has wrinkled white skin and a big, round mouth with curling fangs. The size of a man, but with no human attributes, Flukie is a walking/swimming nightmare.

Episode 220: “Humbug”

A personal favorite of mine, “Humbug” sends Mulder and Scully to an off-season carnival camp to investigate a strange murder. A humorous episode, the carnival folks are quirky and generally gentle people. It turns out that the murderer is an attached, parasitic twin that is little more than a torso with skinny arms it uses to drag itself along the ground. The twin detaches from his host, leaving a shark-sized hole in the host’s abdomen. The little, bloody creature – not too different from Belial in Basket Case – drags himself through dog doors and various vents in order to attack.

Episode 222: “F. Emasculata”

The agents head to a prison to help with the manhunt for two escaped convicts, only to discover a much more diabolical problem: the prison is under quarantine with an unknown disease. This disease causes huge, bleeding, throbbing boils to form on the skin. Frequently in the episode, these boils rupture, exploding an enormous amount of pus on whoever is in the way. An extra dimension of ick: the infection is caused by an insect, and it procreates when the pustules explode, sending the larvae flying onto their next host.

Episode 402: “Home”

This episode is one of the most upsetting of all episodes. It was the first episode of the show to carry a viewer discretion warning. Even still, Fox Network received so many complaints about this episode when it premiered in 1996, the network pulled it from rotation and it didn’t reair for a year, in syndication, on the FX cable channel. The most notorious scene from the episode is probably the opening, in which a woman gives birth to a grossly deformed baby, then three similarly deformed men bury the infant in a nearby sandlot. Things get weirder when you find out the mother of the baby has no arms or legs, is kept under a bed, and the baby is a product of mother-son incest.

Episode 406: “Sanguinarium”

This episode, about witchcraft, blood sacrifice, and plastic surgery, starts off gross enough: with a liposuction gone horribly wrong. Things get grosser, with scenes that include leeches on a woman’s stomach; a laser burrowing through a woman’s face and out the other side; a nurse hiding in a bathtub full of blood, only to leap out and attack a doctor; and another doctor burning off a woman’s face during a chemical peel. The grand finale features a doctor literally peeling his own skin off – and leaving it in a puddle on the floor, like a misshapen Halloween mask.

Episode 607: “Terms of Endearment” 

Most episodes of The X-Files have some basis in science. Even the monsters come with some kind of pseudo-scientific reasoning. This episode is about demons. Not metaphorical demons, but horns-and-tails demons. In the opening sequence, a demon steals a woman’s baby right from her womb. The demon has claws, horns, and glowing red eyes, and he stands against a wall of flames as he holds the tiny half-demon baby aloft. Bonus: this episode stars Bruce Campbell.

Episode 804: “Roadrunners”

A particularly weird episode – even by The X-Files’ standards – “Roadrunners” follows a cult of desert-dwellers who worship a giant parasitic slug. Scully is trapped in a tiny “town” in order to care for a man who seems to be dying. It turns out the cult has infected this man with the giant parasitic slug in the hopes that he would then become their god. While caring for this man, she discovers a fist-sized hole in the small of his back. When she presses the edges, it oozes blood, and a lump starts squirming around beneath the skin. With a pair of pliers, Scully digs in to the hole to remove the lump. She only gets half of it. 

Episode 807: “Via Negativa”

This episode – about a cult led by a man with a third eye – doesn’t waste any time getting to the gruesome bits. In the cold open, a couple of cops keeping surveillance on the cult go into the headquarters in the middle of the night – and find every one of the followers dead in their cots, due to an axe wound in their head. Adding to the copious amounts of blood in the scene are the faces of the followers. Clearly, this was no suicide, and many have a look of surprise or sheer terror on their faces.

Episode 1109: “Nothing Lasts Forever”

This episode wasn’t quite as good as “Home,” but it is loaded with grotesquerie. Back-alley surgery and cannibalism are the set-up for a cult seeking to cure aging. In one scene, a woman mixes up miscellaneous human organs in a blender, then drinks the resultant goo. In a few other scenes, the leader of the cult, a “doctor” sews himself to young, nubile cult followers, in order to imbue himself with their youth. 

Episode 1110: “My Struggle IV”

The final episode of the revival is a terrible episode, but it has two amazing, bloody scenes. Mulder and Scully’s teenage son, Jackson – the one Scully gave up for adoption when he was just a few months old – is back, and he has “superpowers” due to his alien DNA. One of the powers he has is the ability to make people’s heads explode without laying a hand on them. In this episode, you see him do it to several conspiracy goons. He explodes them all one at a time, in succession, spray painting the cheap motel room with blood and brains and goo. In this scene you get to actually watch him explode these men, but a more impressive scene is the preceding one, in which we see yet another goon who has already been exploded in the front seat of his car. In addition to bits and pieces, the goon’s face has peeled off his skull and is stuck to the car window like a bloody decal.