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| “ | Life is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So you're stuck with this undefinable whipped mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while there's a peanut butter cup or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast and the taste is... fleeting. So, you end up with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts. And if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you got left is an empty box filled with useless brown paper wrappers. | „ |
| ~ The Cigarette-Smoking Man to a homeless person. |
| “ | Men can never be free… because they're weak, corrupt, worthless and restless. The people believe in authority. They've grown tired of waiting for miracle and mystery. Science is their religion. No greater explanation exists for them. They must never believe any differently if the project is to go forward. | „ |
| ~ The Cigarette-Smoking Man justifying his actions. |
Carl Gerard Busch Spencer, better known as the Cigarette Smoking Man and the Cancer Man, is the main antagonist of Fox's The X-Files franchise.
He is a mysterious state official working alongside the Syndicate including being behind some of the most obscure events in the entire series, He is also the archenemy of Agent Fox Mulder for abducting the latter’s sister for the Colony and being responsible for the death of Scully’s sister. Not only is CSM the Biological father of the former but he is towards many others such as both William and Jeffery Spencer.
He is portrayed by William B. Davis, who also played Colonel Whitley from The Thing video game, Robert Parker from Medium Raw: Night of the Wolf and William Tate from Smallville.
History[]
1969: The Smoking Man observes the faking of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing.
Very little is known about his origins. The following information is from the episode "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", the seventh episode of the Fourth Season of the X-Files. The smoking man's full name, Carl Gerard Busch, is German in origin, and it is highly likely he is of German descent.
His last name, in German, is the word for a bush or forest. According to the Lone Gunmen, a small tightly knit trio of hackers and allies of Mulder and Scully, he was first documented in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1940.
1992: The Smoking Man in the Pentagon.
His father was a Communist sympathizer and agent of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, but in 1917, around the time of the Russian Revolution, it is claimed that the smoking man's father was executed under the Espionage Act, which had come into effect that same year, "before his boy could walk", implying that the smoking man may have been born in the mid-1910s.
It may also be likely, that if his father was indeed executed due to the Espionage Act, his German ancestry may have been one of the other reasons as German-Americans were heavily persecuted and vilified during the First World War in the United States, and the smoking man's family, as the Lone Gunmen appear to be hinting at, were not spared.
The Smoking Man incinerated by a missile in 2002.
It is said that his mother, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer around the same time - both events appear to have occurred during the smoking man's infancy. Because he had no surviving family, Carl became a ward of the state (orphans that are under the custody of an agency or government), and was sent to various orphanages throughout the Midwestern United States.
The Kennedy assasination[]
The Cigarette-Smoking Man resurfaces fourteen years after his presumed death.
At some point, he enlisted in the United States Army and became an officer. In the early 1960s, before he had acquired the smoking habit for which he would become known, the Cigarette-Smoking Man was a Captain assigned to the Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He had already participated in covert and clandestine operations by this point. While at Fort Bragg, he crossed paths with Captain William Mulder, the father of series protagonist Fox Mulder, the former he would serve alongside with.
Here the Cigarette-Smoking Man would be recruited by a general to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, as some government circles believed Kennedy was too soft on Communism. He would go on participate in other high-profile conspiracies, including the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the killing of Martin Luther King (whom he initially admired, but later accused of being a 'Maoist' and attempting to undermine American involvement in Vietnam), and the faking of the 1969 Moon landing.
The flames left him severely scarred, depending on surgical and cosmetical facial reconstruction.
The Cigarette-Smoking Man was, at first, the only face associated with the conspiracy hounding Mulder's efforts to reveal the truth. The men in black under his command were ruthless, and his actions only focused on the obstruction of the search for the truth.
Later seasons, however, showed the Cigarette-Smoking Man's place as a member of lower status in the Syndicate, his actions constantly second-guessed by all involved in the conspiracy. Quite often, the other members of the Syndicate looked on the CSM as a high-ranking errand boy, and criticized his constant failures to hinder Mulder's efforts.
The Smoking Man reveals his plans to wipe out humanity and ultimately take over the world.
Later, however, the CSM revealed how dangerous he was again by revealing how much he knew about the other members of the Syndicate and their own illicit activities. His activities endangered them so badly that the Syndicate needed to cull both the CSM, and replace the men in black with the alien-human hybrids that they had been creating.
Despite their actions, CSM was still the only member of the original Syndicate that survived the purge by the alien rebels. While this might not mean much now that the Syndicate is destroyed, it does remind those who know the series that the power of the Syndicate meant nothing in the face of their alien foes, while the supposedly low-ranking Cigarette Smoking Man outlasted them all.
The Smoking Man's dead body is finally washed away.
In the final episode, the CSM followed Mulder and nearly crushed Skinner with his car. He confronts William near the waterfront. William challenges him to kill "Mulder". The CSM kills him, only to come out conscious, but is ultimately shot by the real Mulder as he later pushes him to the pool of water below.
Appearance[]
The Smoking Man with one of his characteristical Morley cigarettes.
The Cigarette-Smoking Man is a man who is usually seen wearing a black suit with a tie and he always appears to be smoking a cigarette. He is quite a loner and often takes his own decisions to which the Syndicate group is very negative towards. He feels a kind of respect towards Mulder and occasionally he will attempt to help him avoid or escape danger, though not when it is against his interests.
After developing cancer again, he had a tracheotomy fitted into his throat.
Although the Smoking Man miraculously survived being burned by launched missiles, he needed his face reconstructed. He is shown to be able to remove parts of his face, which reveals his flesh underneath.
Personality[]
The Cigarette-Smoking Man is a vicious and utterly ruthless terrorist who sees murder and worse as tools to achieve his goals, for much of the series he is very much a "neutral evil" character and thus will do whatever is necessary to achieve personal victory - though even in the early days of the series he showed a dark fondness for killing, seeming to prefer murder even when other options were available, yet he always kept himself restrained enough to keep up the conspiracy and cover his tracks.
As the series progressed the CSM grew much, much worse and his plans escalated to a full-scale epidemic designed to wipe out a large portion of the human race - no longer content with simple conspiracy and murder the CSM would delve into his true homicidal nature and effectively became an apocalyptic threat intent on reshaping the world in his image.
In his private life the CSM aspired to be a writer, drawing on his inside knowledge to concoct thriller-type plots. However, his submissions were poorly received, and he became disillusioned with the idea of a career in writing.
Skills and Abilities[]
The Cigarette-Smoking Man's competency lies in planning and directing various operations in the service of the Syndicate. As such, his power is exercised through the many subordinates and resources that he controls, including his access to vast troves of secret government information that he can use to blackmail, ambush or anticipate his opponents.
However, he was quite capable of directly engaging targets himself, with his preferred weapon being the sniper rifle. He was skilled enough that he was able to shoot President John F. Kennedy twice while the President's car was in motion, using only the iron sights of a short-barreled hunting rifle. He would continue to occasionally assassinate opponents in this manner, all the way into the series' present day.
In his younger years, the CSM he was an officer in the newly formed Special Forces Group, so it can be assumed that he underwent a demanding military training and selection process.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Smoking Man was originally just a non-speaking extra in the first season, who only spoke four audible words. But as the series progressed, his role within the narrative began to grow and he developed into the series' primary antagonist.
- Whilst the major antagonist and adversary to Fox Mulder in the original run, the Smoking Man was not the main mastermind and mostly acted under the orders of The Syndicate, with them even trying to kill him. The Smoking Man also went into hiding during the super-soldier arc. The 2016-2018 revival series retconned the Smoking Man's role and cemented him as the mastermind, who was apparently manipulating the Syndicate all along and had his own schemes differing from theirs, despite his appearances in the original series clearly showing otherwise.
- According to one of the directors of the show, Kim Manners, he is the Darth Vader of X-Files.
- Season 8 is the only season that William B. Davis (Cigarette Smoking Man) did not appear in. His role as the main antagonist is taken up by the super-soldiers for the remainder of the original series.
- The nickname Cancer-Man was first coined on ATXF, one of the first usages of the term was on November 12 1994 by user Jeffrey P. Wendt. The name even found its way as a canonical name for the character on the show.
- According to Gabe Newell, he specifically requested a character similar to the CSM be included in the original Half-Life, and the result was the G-Man.
External Links[]
- Cigarette-Smoking Man on the X-Files Wiki.
- Cigarette-Smoking Man on the Pure Evil Wiki.
