Unable to find Bruckman in the hotel, Mulder and Scully return to Bruckman's apartment to find that Bruckman has committed suicide; Scully sees a plastic bag has been tied around his head, and that he is clutching a bottle of pills in his hand. Scully sits on Bruckman's bed holding his hand, deeply moved, just as he had predicted. That night Scully sees a commercial for the Stupendous Yappi on TV, causing her to throw her phone at it. This episode was the second of four episodes written for the series by Darin Morgan during its initial run. Morgan had previously written the second season episode "Humbug", which was a stylistic break from the series' norm, being more overtly humorous. After working on said episode, Morgan worried that he had written the script the "wrong" way, and so he decided to write a more traditional "X-Files" story the next time he wrote an episode. To get inspiration, Morgan watched the first-season episode "Beyond the Sea", which features an unreliable criminal who claims to have psychic powers. Morgan was struck by the story and its tone, and sought to write a script that emulated its overall feel. Initially, Morgan was leery about focusing too much on humor, so he decided to make his episode very dark; in the end, however, he decided to lighten some of the mood by adding in some jokes. The tone of the episode was also affected by Morgan suffering from depression, which led to him developing a plot in which the main character kills himself in the end. The episode focuses heavily on free will and fatalistic determinismtopics that Morgan was drawn to due to his frustration with the task of plotting episode stories. Morgan later explained that the way Bruckman and the killer interact was "really easy to plot, but [makes] the story seem complicated." While working on the script, Morgan realized that while Mulder is supposed to be intelligent, were he to talk to a "normal person" in real life, he would come across as paranoid or insane. The writer was thus inspired to "shake up Mulder's image" in the episode by making him fallible and foolish. This approach is illustrated by how Mulder views Bruckman "only as a phenomenon" and not as a person, whereas Scully views the titular character as a human, first and foremost. Bruckman's cryptic prediction that Scully would not die "sent fans into a frenzy" due to its implications.