Tucker Gates, making it the first of only two episodes of The X-Files—the other being the show's fourth season entry "El Mundo Gira"—that he directed. The episode features pre-fame Lucy Liu in a guest star role. Liu would later gain prominence as a cast member of the show Ally McBeal in 1998. The premise of the episode evolved from an idea that series creator Chris Carter had about a "pyramid scheme for body parts". Writer Jeff Vlaming took this concept and combined it with two other ideas: The first involved "a lottery in a small town" and the other concerned a corporate entity controlling the poor in Chinatown. When the initial script for "Hell Money" was submitted, Carter streamlined the three stories into one. Entertainment Weekly later noted that "the twisted grotesquery of this story makes you think it must be based on a true story", but, according to Carter, the story was completely original. Vlaming had originally hoped that the episode would end with Scully being correcta rare occurrence on the show. In the end, however, Mulder is once again vindicated. Filming Exterior scenes for the episode were filmed in Chinatown, Vancouver, while the scenes taking place in a crematorium were shot on a soundstage. Interior shots of the gambling parlor were shot at the Welsh Irish Scottish English (W.I.S.E.) Hall, a community building in Vancouver. The production staff created a second balcony in the hall exclusively for the episode, with an agreement to tear it down once the episode was filmed. However, after the filming ended, the W.I.S.E. Hall's owners requested that the balcony be left in place "for aesthetic reasons". The vase and tiles used in the episode were created by the show's production department. The scene where a frog pops out of a victim's chest was created by using a live actor pretending to be a corpse, covered with a faux torso. For a close-up shot, the torso itself, which had a discrete access hole in it, was placed on the autopsy table, and an animal wrangler pushed a real frog up through the slit. After filming wrapped up, actors Michael Yama and Lucy Liu were asked to re-record their dialogue, this time affecting Cantonese accents. Their lines were then added over the original footage in post-production. Reception "Hell Money" premiered on the Fox network in the United States on March 29, 1996. This episode earned