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The character had been killed episodes before and appeared totally unexpectedly in the episode called Unearthed. As the Wikipedia notes:

Though his character Charlie Francis had been killed off earlier in the second season, former series regular Kirk Acevedo appeared in the episode, sparking confusion among some viewers.

Has this ever been properly explained?

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  • That explanation doesn't really make sense considering the plot of the "unearthed" episode follows events that happened in S2E1. It sounds like they took some junk footage they discarded earlier and just slammed it into this episode with total disregard for how foolish it looked.
    – user11887
    Commented Jan 11, 2013 at 18:23
  • @user11887 What parts of the plot follow S2E1?
    – user1027
    Commented Jan 11, 2013 at 18:47
  • 2
    @Keen None that I recall. He may be referring to the press release that Fox added, which hinted that the episode may be set in an alternate universe. That, however, is not part of the episode and is just Fox being stupid.
    – Izkata
    Commented Jan 12, 2013 at 0:22
  • God... finally some closure :P
    – Priidu Neemre
    Commented Jun 29, 2015 at 16:34
  • God. Thats rubbish.
    – ʞɹᴉʞ ǝʌɐp
    Commented Jul 15, 2017 at 19:10

1 Answer 1

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Basically, it was an episode they made during the first season, but didn't air. Fox decided to air it during the second season.

This was explained during its original airing. The Fox promos for that episode explained it as a 'lost 1st season episode'. That's why Charlie's there, and there's no attention drawn to his presence, as he was always around during season 1.

Also, in this scan of the blu-ray booklet, you could see that the Unearthed episode is within the special feature of the disk 4. So the episode number 11 is "Johari Window".

blu-ray booklet

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  • 6
    Go Fox! </sarcasm>
    – Izkata
    Commented Nov 24, 2011 at 19:51
  • Stupidity is always good thing. I mean they did not air it but who cares throw it in the second seasond. It all makes sense
    – John Demetriou
    Commented Oct 24, 2014 at 13:37
  • When watching the series on (Dutch) Netflix, it's positioned between seasons 1 and 2. Which did make some sense, regarding people coming back from apparent death and screaming gibberish. But it probably would have been better before the final episode of the first season.
    – SQB
    Commented Nov 13, 2014 at 20:41
  • 2
    Explains Agent Farnsworth's hair as well. Thank you for explaining this, was going a bit nuts.
    – troglobit
    Commented May 23, 2020 at 19:34
  • Sh*t, I had to repeat few episodes quickly to make sure I didn't miss anything
    – ainasiart
    Commented Jul 26, 2023 at 1:32

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