War of the Coprophages

"War of the Coprophages" is the twelfth episode of the third season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on January 5, 1996. It was written by Darin Morgan, and directed by Kim Manners. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, a stand-alone plot which is unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "War of the Coprophages" earned a Nielsen household rating of 10.1, being watched by 16.32 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mostly positive reviews from critics, who praised its humorous tone.

The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, Mulder investigates a small town plagued by deaths in which the bodies are found covered in cockroaches. Working from home, Scully has scientific explanations for all of them, but Mulder—at the crime scene with an attractive bug expert—suspects the insects may not be organic, or earthly.

"War of the Coprophages" was Darin Morgan's third episode, after the second-season episode "Humbug" and season three's "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose". In order to achieve the effect of a cockroach infestation, the show used around three hundred cockroaches for the episode in addition to extremely detailed rubber cockroach props and "piles and piles" of faux-dung. The episode's title is a reference to the famous novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, as well as its 1938 radio adaptation by Orson Welles. The character Dr. Berenbaum is named for entomologist May Berenbaum.