Such was Chris Carter's standing with the FOX network at the time that he was given an entire month to shoot the pilot with little or no network interference - almost unheard of indulgences for a brand-new show.
Although the series was canceled long before the actual millennium occurred, the story of Frank Black was (more or less) resolved in a 1999 episode of "The X-Files" entitled "Millennium."
During a 2016 interview on Kumail Nanjiani's podcast "The X-Files Files," "X-Files" writer and "Millennium" showrunner Glen Morgan said that because "Millennium"'s ratings were low, they had the idea to do a "Millennium" episode involving the Peacock family characters from the "X-Files" episode "Home," for which Morgan was the cowriter. The Peacocks were a reclusive, heavily deformed, murderous family that had sustained itself by inbreeding for many generations and that kept its limbless matriarch under a bed. The original airing of "Home" had been controversial; it was the first "X-Files" episode to receive a TV-MA rating, and FOX refused to allow it to be rerun. But since it was also one of the highest-rated and most-talked-about "X-Files" episodes ever, Morgan thought the return of the characters might boost "Millennium"'s ratings. They cleared the idea with Peter Roth (then the head of FOX TV) and Karin Konoval, the actress who played Mrs. Peacock, but then Roth called Morgan back and said that "News Corp, FOX, lobbyists in Washington...somehow got wind and said 'those characters never appear on television again.'"
Whenever Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) enters a crime scene, his jacket or coat is always buttoned up to the very top and stays that way until he leaves.
The show's level of violence sparked a short-lived call for curtailment of violence on television.