10 TV Shows That Made You Answer Impossible Questions

10. The X-Files - Would You Sacrifice One Life For Another?

By the time its eighth season rolled around, the nineties conspiracy mystery megahit The X-Files was starting to struggle with attracting an audience. Yes, the central duo of David Duchovny’s zealous Bill Mulder and Gillian Anderson’s hardened cynic Scully were as magnetic as ever, but the monster of the week plots were straining credulity and the show’s overarching mythos had become nigh on impenetrable for anyone less than obsessive.

The on-going beef between mercurial Russian agent Krycek and Assistant FBI director Skinner, however, managed to reignite the show’s propulsive mystery with a vicious moral question that left viewers struggling to make the right call.

Krycek offers Skinner the antidote required to keep Mulder alive as the agent is comatose and rapidly fading after an alien abduction, but there’s a catch (isn’t there always?). Skinner’s end of the bargain is that he has to end the life of Agent Scully’s unborn child in exchange for the antidote.

Don’t worry, dear reader—the venerable director unplugs Mulder, discovering when he does that life support was actually all that kept his alien-acquired sickness alive, and the audience is able to reassure themselves that they too wouldn’t have offed Scully’s unborn offspring in favour of heart throb and all round good guy Mulder’s prolonged existence.