"Hell Money" is the nineteenth episode of the third season of the science fiction television series The X-Files and 68th episode overall. It premiered on the Fox network in the United States on March 29, 1996. It was written by Jeffrey Vlaming and directed by Tucker Gates. The episode is a "Monster-of-the-Week" story, unconnected to the series' wider mythology. "Hell Money" earned a Nielsen household rating of 9.9, being watched by 14.86 million people in its initial broadcast. The episode received mostly mixed to positive reviews from television critics. The show centers on FBI special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. In this episode, Mulder and Scully investigate a murder in San Francisco's Chinatown involving masked intruders, strange Chinese symbols, a lottery, and the clandestine selling of body parts. The premise of the episode was based on three major ideas: a pyramid scheme involving body parts, a lottery in a small town, and corporate beings assembling the destitute in Chinatown. The episode's writer, Vlaming, developed the latter two ideas and series creator Chris Carter merged all three ideas in the finalized script. The episode contained several elaborate special effects shots, most notably the scene wherein a frog bursts out of a victim's chest, which was created by using molds to create a fake human torso that was then placed over an actor. Plot In San Francisco's Chinatown, a Chinese immigrant, Johnny Lo, makes his way to his apartment. There, he is confronted by someone telling him to "pay the price", and is overtaken by three figures wearing shigong masks. A security guard later finds the three figures near a crematory oven, in which Lo is being burned alive. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigate Lo's death, the latest in a series of fatal incinerations in Chinatown; Mulder believes that ghost activity is behind the deaths, while Scully suspects a cult. The agents collaborate with Glen Chao (BD Wong), a Chinese-American detective with the SFPD. When they find a Chinese character written inside the oven, Chao translates it as meaning "ghost." Mulder also finds a scrap of burned paper in the ashes, which Chao identifies as "hell money", a symbolic offering to deceased spirits. The agents locate Lo's apartment, where they find his collection of charms, as well as bloodstains underneath the recently installed carpet. Meanwhile, another