If you’ve never seen it, let me set the scene. It’s a pretty standard X-Files setup on the surface: Mulder travels alone to investigate mysterious deaths in a small town, this time linked to an influx of cockroaches. Scully stays behind, offering skeptical explanations over the phone. They flirt. He says something outrageous. She rolls her eyes through the speaker. Classic stuff.
But what makes this episode so special — and so deeply disturbing — is the way it primes you for discomfort. For the first 20 minutes, we’re assaulted with images of cockroaches doing cockroach things: crawling on walls, skittering across skin, wriggling into unexpected places. There’s even a scene where a man hallucinates a cockroach burrowing under his skin. You don’t just watch the episode — you itch through it. You suddenly feel like your own home is infested. Your skin starts to crawl. It’s visceral, gross, and weirdly funny in that signature X-Files way.
And then… it happens.
Mulder is in a doctor’s office, having a completely normal conversation. Nothing particularly strange is happening. And that’s when a cockroach walks across your screen. Not the character’s screen. Your screen.
It starts in the top left corner and crawls slowly across the glass, right on top of the action, as if it’s inside your living room. The show doesn’t comment on it. The characters don’t notice. There’s no dramatic sting or cutaway. Just... a cockroach. On your TV. In your space. After 20 minutes of being conditioned to dread these creatures, the show uses your own paranoia against you. I remember watching it live with my parents — we all jumped, turned on the lights, and started checking the floor for roaches. We were truly rattled.
I still consider it the most frightening moment in television history.
Sure, other shows have done jump scares. Others have shown horrors beyond imagination. But this moment? It reached out and touched you. It broke the fourth wall in a way that was subtle, brilliant, and devastatingly effective. The monster wasn’t on TV anymore — it was in your house.
And somehow, that wasn’t even the only unforgettable moment in that episode. At one point, as Scully walks into a building, a car crash happens in the background. A real one. It wasn’t scripted. No one called cut. Gillian Anderson glances off-camera, visibly notices it, and just keeps going. Professionalism at its finest. They left it in the episode, and now it’s become one of those little trivia nuggets that hardcore fans will always bring up. A literal crash landing in the middle of one of the show’s funniest, grossest episodes.
“War of the Coprophages” isn’t even considered one of the top-tier X-Files episodes by most fans. But for me, it’s unforgettable. Because it didn’t just tell a scary story — it messed with my reality. It reminded me how powerful this show was when it was firing on all cylinders. It reminded me why I still carry such deep affection for it today. And yes, it reminded me why cockroaches are the worst creatures on the planet.
I found an old internet thread from January 5, 1996 — the morning after the episode aired — where people were already swapping cockroach-on-the-screen stories. So it wasn’t just me. It wasn’t just my family. The show got us. It scared us in a new way, a clever way. And it’s never really been topped.
We talk a lot about iconic TV moments. “Not Penny’s Boat.” The Red Wedding. The final scene of The Sopranos. But in my house, we talk about the cockroach.
And we still check the screen every time we feel that itch.
