Melvin Frohike

A conspiracy theorist and journalist who compiles the truth with The Lone Gunmen.

Melvin Frohike is one-third of The Lone Gunmen, a trio of conspiracy theorists and investigative journalists known for their attempts to compile a conspiracy-theorist magazine. Portrayed by Tom Braidwood, Frohike works alongside Richard Langly and John Fitzgerald Byers. The series featuring them was released in 2001 and was abruptly canceled after one season.

Quick Facts

Affiliation: The Lone Gunmen

Lore & Background

Frohike was a former 1960s radical and the oldest of the three. Though a skilled computer hacker, he was primarily the photography specialist for the group's newsletter. He had a romantic attitude towards Dana Scully: when she was gravely ill in "One Breath", he appeared at the hospital in a tailored suit carrying a bouquet. His fashion made him stand out, with leather jackets, black vests, combat boots and fingerless gloves, and he considered himself the "action man" of the trio. In The Lone Gunmen episode "Tango de los Pistoleros", he is revealed to be a former tango champion who danced under the stage name "El Lobo".

Reader's Guide

In one account of the group's origin, Frohike was a freelance hacker selling bootleg cable hardware when Susanne Modeski enlisted him, Byers and Langly in 1989; in another, Byers enlists the computer hacker and cable salesman Frohike to decrypt a file. All three of the Lone Gunmen die in the ninth-season episode "Jump the Shark", and Skinner arranges for them to be interred at Arlington National Cemetery.