fired and Modell is severely wounded. Later, Mulder and Scully visit Modell in the hospital, where he is lying in a coma from which Scully predicts he will not awaken before his brain tumor kills him. Mulder surprises her by revealing that Modell's brain tumor was operable at all times, but he refused to have it removed, even as his health deteriorated. Scully asks why, and Mulder repeats her earlier assessment of Modell — that he was always a "little man", and his psychic ability made him feel big. Production Writing "Pusher" was written by Vince Gilligan and directed by Rob Bowman. Gilligan wanted the episode to be a "tense cat and mouse game between Mulder and Modell", and he later explained, "the only conscious thing I wanted to do from the start was get them together as much as I could". When Gilligan turned in his script, he told series creator Chris Carter that the episode was "the best work I'm ever gonna do for you." Carter retorted that the show's writers should try to out-do their last effort. Modell would later return in the fifth season episode "Kitsunegari". The final scene, featuring a game of Russian roulette, was met with resistance from Fox's standards and practices department, which argued that because the game had never been seen in a television series before it was unsuitable for broadcast. The department also claimed that the scene could be harmful to impressionable young children. After a series of tense negotiations, the producers refused to concede and the scene was included in the episode largely uncut; Gilligan later noted that he could not "believe we got away with it". The episode contains several inside jokes: The Flukeman from the second-season episode "The Host" appears on a tabloid in the opening scene. The tabloid that featured the Flukeman also had a small image of props master Ken Hawryliw and the American Ronin magazine that Mulder flips through contained a "blink-and-you'll miss-it" shot of production assistant Danielle Faith. When Mulder is being fitted for a camera, the script originally had him ask if the device received the Discovery Channel. Duchovny, knowing that his character had an interest in pornography, changed the line to "the Playboy Channel". Casting Several actors were considered for the role of Robert Modell, even Lance Henriksen, who went on to play the lead role in Millennium. Initially, Gilligan considered Harvey