Episode Trivia
A nice trip
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In the episode 5.05 No Place Like Home, just before Buffy gets all trancy, Riley tells Buffy to have a nice trip. Of course, this a popular saying but it is play on the fact that the trance Buffy has is pretty trippy.
Aye Aye Captain
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Some characters have a habit of putting the word “Captain” before nicknames on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.
- Angel has been called Captain America by Jack McNamara in 1.16 The Ring
- Angel has been called Captain Forehead by Spike in 5.02 Just Rewards
- Giles has been called Captain Slow-Poke by Spike in 5.20 Spiral
- Riley has been called Captain America by Xander in 5.08 Shadow
- Riley has been called Captain Can-Do by Sam in 6.15 As You Were
- Riley has been called Captain Cardboard by Spike in 5.05 No Place Like Home
- Spike has been called Captain Peroxide by Xander in 6.09 Smashed
- Spike has been called Captain Peroxide by Angel in 7.22 Chosen
- Wesley has been called Captain Courageous by Giles in 3.14 Bad Girls
- Wesley has been called Captain Obvious by Gunn in 4.08 Habeas Corpses
- Xander has been called Captain Fear by Anya in 6.04 Flooded
- Xander has been called Captain Logic by Anya in 6.04 Flooded
Bloody bell
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In 5.05 No Place Like Home, Giles says of the bell on the door in the Magic Box:
“Would someone please rip that bloody bell off its hinges?”
Buffy does this in 6.05 Life Serial.
Buffy confuses herself
details | 14 comments | suggested by Jess
A continuing joke for Buffy throughout the show is her misunderstanding of common phrases or sayings. In 3.11 Gingerbread, she and Angel have the following conversation:
Buffy: “Like that kid in the story, the boy that stuck his finger in the duck.”
Angel: “Dike… It’s another word for dam.”
Buffy: “Oh. Okay, that story makes a lot more sense now.”
In 2.09 What’s My Line? (Part One), Buffy says:
“They had tools, flashlights, whole nine yards. What does that mean, anyway? ‘Whole nine yards’? Nine yards of what? Now it’s gonna bug me all day.”
And again in 2.09 What’s My Line? (Part One):
“They go together like chicken and… another chicken, or… two chickens, or… something, you know what I’m saying!”
In 5.05 No Place Like Home, she says to Giles:
“Yeah. You’ll be making money hand over fist” (holds her hand over her fist in a puzzled way) “…Which I guess is a good thing.”
In 7.21 End Of Days, Buffy says to Xander:
“Of course I’m not putting you out to pasture. …What does that even mean?”
In 3.17 Enemies:
“Just don’t like to rub your nose in it. Suddenly wondering where that expression comes from.”
In 3.20 The Prom:
“Right as rain, whatever that means.”
Buffy’s bad French
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Buffy struggled with French in school - in 2.03 School Hard, she and Willow study together:
Buffy: “La vache… doit me… touche… de la… jeudi. Was it wrong? Should I use the plural?”
Willow: “No. But you said, ‘The cow should touch me from Thursday.’”
In 5.05 No Place Like Home, Buffy translates the French phrase “Tirer la Couture” (”Draw back the curtain”) as “Rotate many foodstuffs”.
Casting Glory and Ben
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Clare Kramer, who played Glory, talked to the BBC about how she and Charlie Webber (Ben) were cast:
“I got the two pages and thought “Well why not?” I’d heard good things about the show, so just went in, auditioned, did what I felt was interesting and worked with the material a little bit and got a call later that day. “Okay, they want you to come back in and read for some more people”, so I went in along with Charlie Webber who ended up being cast as Ben.
“They went, “Okay, can you wait in the lobby,” and then he went in, and they said, “All right, can you wait”. They were talking and we looked at each other and thought, “Huh, what’s going on here?” and next thing you know Joss came out and said, “Okay, you guys have the part.”"
Cherie
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In an interview with the BBC, Clare Kramer said that Glory’s original name was “Cherie”:
“My introduction to Buffy was getting material that I was going to be auditioning with. If I remember correctly, the character was actually called Cherie at first, and there was no character description, no hint as to how this person was going to tie into the script or the storyline or anything at all.”
Clare Kramer
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Clare played the hell-god Glory. She grew up in Delaware, Ohio and got her degree in acting from New York University. One of her first acting jobs was as a ‘Wendy Girl’ for the fast food chain, which she landed as runner-up when the winner became pregnant. She is a good friend of Eliza Dushku (who plays Faith). The two appeared in Bring it On together and Clare later appeared in an episode of Eliza’s show Tru Calling. Clare keeps a journal of her acting activities to improve character consistency. Clare has stated that she was given full freedom to interpret her Glory character emotionally, since Glory’s backstory was purposely kept so vague for so many episodes. She has appeared in Outreach, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, D.E.B.S, Hangingaround, In & Out, Guy in Row Five, L.A. D.J. and The Rules of Attraction. Clare makes regular appearances at Buffy conventions and events.
Dagon
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The monks of Dagon were the brethren who dedicated their lives to protecting the Key. They gave it a human form, and sent it to Buffy as a sister, hoping she would protect it from Glory. They also shaped the memories of those associated with Buffy so they thought Dawn had always been Buffy’s sister. Buffy discovered the truth in 5.05 No Place Like Home. The monks of Dagon were founded by Tarnis in the twelfth century and were based in the Czech Republic.
Glory
details | 12 comments | suggested by Jess
Glory was one of three hellgods who ruled over a demon dimension. Her power started to outstrip that of the other two and they expelled her from their dimension, by trapping her inside a human body. The idea was that she would die when the man in which she was trapped (Ben) died. Glory’s power was so great that occasionally she could take over his body, forming him to look like herself. When this happened, neither had any memory of each other’s actions. Glory’s power was limited by being in human form but she was still extremely strong. Her sanity was deteriorating from being in a new dimension, and she would ’suck’ people’s sanity from them, by plunging her hands into their head. This would leave the victim insane. Glory’s mission was to obtain the Key, in the form of Dawn, and use it to get back to her own dimension. This would involve the material of the universe being broken down and all dimensions merging into one. Buffy defeated Glory using a heavy troll’s hammer, thus weakening her to the point that Ben’s form emerged again. Giles then killed Ben, killing Glory with him.
Hand of Glory
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In 5.05 No Place Like Home, Anya says,
“The hand of glory has some serious power”.
This is apt as the powerful character Glory appears in Sunnydale for the first time in that episode.
Iron Chef
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In 5.05 No Place Like Home, Dawn says to Buffy:
“Who died and made you the Iron Chef?”
She is referring to a Japanese cooking show of the same name.
James Wellington
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James Wellington, who played the night watchman in 5.05 No Place Like Home, has appeared in Still Single, Roundabout and Too Fast Too Young. He played Rob in The Young and the 4.22 Restless. He played the same character in Listening to Fear - but as a brain-sucked mental patient.
Key
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The Key was a mystical blob of green energy which was created to open the gates between different dimensions. Only those “outside reality” (such as crazy people) can the see the Key’s true nature. The monks of Dagon hid the Key from Glorificus, who wanted to use it to get back to the dimension she was expelled from. They made the Key into a human girl called Dawn and sent her to be protected by Buffy. They changed everyone’s memories to accommodate Dawn as Buffy’s younger sister. The Key was used to open the portal, but Buffy jumped into it, killing herself to save the world.
Little Miss Muffet
details | 4 comments | suggested by Jess
In 3.22 Graduation Day (Part Two), Faith says (as a foreshadowing of the arrival of Buffy’s sister Dawn):
“Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0″
In the season five episode 5.02 Real Me, Dawn is approached by a mad man who calls her “curds and whey”. This is a line from the popular children’s nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet.
In 5.05 No Place Like Home, Glory says:
“I’m just going to sit on this tuffet…”
This is apt as she’s looking for the Key, which is in the shape of Dawn.
Magic Box
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Giles opened the new Magic Box shop in 5.05 No Place Like Home and took on a new member of staff - Anya. He first eyed up the prospect of opening a magic shop in 5.02 Real Me, after the previous owner was found dead. Giles dressed as a wizard for the grand opening but Buffy told him, without words, how very silly he looked.
The Magic Box is located at 5124 Maple Court in downtown Sunnydale. The phone number there is 803-555-8966. Their slogan is “Your one-stop spot to shop for all your occult needs. Let us make it easy”, which Tara says in 5.08 Shadow is great in a hard-to-read way.
A sign at the Magic Box warns customers that “Shoplifters will be transfigured”.
The magic box was trashed by Olaf the Troll in 5.11 Triangle, but miraculously restored by the next episode, 5.12 Checkpoint. It was finally destroyed completely by Willow in 6.22 Grave after she consumed dark magics and fought Giles there. We see in 7.03 Same Time, Same Place that the Magic Box has an “Unsafe” sign on the outside, presumably because the building was structurally damaged.
Misery
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In 7.11 Showtime, Buffy and Andrew mention the 1990 movie Misery starring James Caan (as Paul Sheldon) and Kathy Bates (as Annie Wilkes). It was based on the book by Steven King:
Buffy: “So I’m here to tell you, you try anything, try to run… you ever see the movie Misery?”
Andrew: “Six times. But the book was scarier than the movie because instead of crushing his foot with a sledgehammer, Kathy Bates chops it off with…” (realising) “I’ll be good.”
I’m also quite sure that the scene in which Dawn innocently brings tea to her mother in 5.05 No Place Like Home is a visual reference to the scene in Misery, in which Annie gives a cup of cocoa to the Sheriff. Dawn’s hair is even styled in the same way as Annie’s.
There is another visual reference to the film Misery in 2.16 Epiphany - when the demons come to Wesley’s apartment he quickly goes into a cupboard in his wheelchair and struggles to reach up to find his gun. This is very similar to a scene in the film in which Paul Sheldon desperately reaches up from his wheelchair to grab pills before Annie finds him.
Pull the curtain back
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Sorcerer Cloutier was a sixteenth century French sorcerer, who excelled at trances. In 5.05 No Place Like Home, Anya mentions “Pull the curtain back”, a trances which enables a person to see a spell, via it’s trace signature. Buffy performed the trance to see what was harming her mother.
Ravil Issyanov
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Ravil Issyanov, who played the monk who tells Buffy what Dawn really is in 5.05 No Place Like Home, has also appeared in Holes, K-19: The Widowmaker, Arachnid, Along Came a Spider, The Shrink Is In, Under Pressure, Hamlet (1996), GoldenEye and Hackers. He played Sergei in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
Seth’s non-cameo
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Some fans believe that Seth Green (Oz) made a small cameo appearance in the season five episode 5.05 No Place Like Home, when Giles is in the Magic Box, talking to Buffy on the phone. After a closer look, the guy definitely isn’t Seth.
Shutting Glory up
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Although Glory likes to swear when she’s particularly annoyed, something always prevents her from doing it: in 5.05 No Place Like Home, when she accidentally brings the factory down on herself, you can see her begin to mouth “oh, crap” but the noise and the collapsing walls cut her off.
A few episodes later, in 5.13 Blood Ties, Willow teleports her several miles above the ground, and she barely has time to say “Oh, sh…” before gravity catches up with her.
Silly hair
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In 5.05 No Place Like Home, we see that Spike has started to act upon his crush on Buffy, first realised in Out of My Mind. He hangs around outside her house, and tells her she has silly hair.
Spider-Man
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Spider-Man is a popular Marvel comic starring Peter Parker, who leads a double life as superhero Spider-Man. Made into two successful movies starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. There are many similarities between Peter and Buffy, as she too is trying to lead a normal life, and (occasionally) make a living, whilst saving the world. Spider-Man has been mentioned in numerous Buffy and Angel episodes, including:
- 1.07 Angel - The Master says, “With power comes responsibility”, which is the motto of the Spider-Man comics and movie.
- 1.08 I Robot, You Jane - Buffy says, “My spider-sense is tingling”.
- 4.12 A New Man - Riley says to Buffy, “You’re strong. Like Spider-Man strong”.
- 5.05 No Place Like Home - Ben suggests Buffy’s strength comes from a “Radioactive spider bite”.
- 6.04 Flooded - Anya and Dawn argue over if Spider-Man charges for helping people - Xander reminds them that “Action is his reward”.
- 6.21 Two To Go - Andrew says, “Lex Luthor had a false epidermis escape kit in Superman Versus the Amazing Spider-Man Treasury edition”
- 7.05 Selfless - Xander says, “This isn’t springy high-flying fun!”
- 7.10 Bring On The Night - Andrew says “My spider-sense is tingling”.
- 4.17 Inside Out - Cordy says “That’s it? I get away with bringing the world down around you and two eensy words tingle your spider sense?”
- Additionally, Buffy stuntman Erik Betts was director Sam Raimi’s choice for doubling actor Tobey Maquire for the movie Spider-Man, but was told by the costume designer that his shoulders were too large. Nicholas Brendon auditioned for the role of Spider-Man in the movie.
The Wizard of Oz
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The movie The Wizard of Oz, made in 1939, in mentioned several times in Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
- Buffy refers to the hyena-possessed bullies in 1.06 The Pack as the “winged monkeys”. The phrase comes from the scene in The Wizard of Oz in which the Wicked Witch of the West sends her loyal winged monkeys to collect Dorothy and the ruby slippers.
- In 6.04 Flooded, Andrew says he trained flying demon monkeys to disrupt the school play.
- In 1.10 Nightmares, Billy Palmer awakens from his coma and, seeing the Scoobies around his bed, says, “I had the strangest dream. And you were in it, and you”. This is a reference to when Dorothy wakes in her bed and sees her friends around her.
- In 2.10 What’s My Line? (Part Two), Xander says, “Welcome my little pretties”. In The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West called Dorothy her “pretty”.
- In 4.20 The Yoko Factor, Willow says, “If ever a whiz there was.” This is a line from the song in the film ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’ / ‘We’re Off To See the Wizard’.
- The episode 5.05 No Place Like Home takes it’s name from Dorothy clicking her heels together and repeating the phrase, “There’s no place like home” in order to get back to her Kansas home.
- A similar reference to this phrase is in the Angel episode 2.22 There’s No Place Like Plrtz Glrb. In that episode, Lorne also sings the song ‘Over the Rainbow’.
- In 6.22 Grave, Willow says, “Fly my pretty…fly!” when she sends her ball of fire to find Andrew and Jonathan. This is what the wicked witch says to her flying monkeys when she sends them off.
- In 7.19 Empty Places, Rona says, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead.” This is from a song in The Wizard of Oz.
- The title of the Angel episode 2.20 Over The Rainbow is another reference to The Wizard of Oz, in which the land of Oz is said to be ‘over the rainbow’. In that episode, Cordelia clicks her heels three times (as Dorothy does in the film) and says, “Worth a shot.”
- In 5.02 Just Rewards, Angel says, “To see the wizard”, is a reference to The Wizard of Oz song called “We’re Off to See the Wizard”.
X-Men
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Buffy creator Joss Whedon is a huge comics fan, particularly the Marvel comic X-Men. His dream came true when, post-Buffy, Joss wrote the Astonishing X-Men comics. The comic has been referenced numerous times in Buffy.
In 5.05 No Place Like Home, Riley says, “Giles, you got that Danger Room set up out back?” The Danger Room was a training room in the X-Men.
In 5.19 Tough Love, Xander reads an X-Men comic while in the Magic Box.
In 6.21 Two To Go, Jonathan says Willow is like the “Dark Phoenix” who was a character in the X-Men comics.
In 7.06 Him, Xander calls Spike a “nimrod”. Xander himself was called this by a soldier in 2.14 Innocence, and Spike called Warren a nimrod in 6.09 Smashed. Nimrod was a figure in ancient Babylon, and was also an X-Men character.
In 7.10 Bring On The Night, Andrew mentions Apocalypse, who was also an X-Men character (”Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Andrew, bad guy. You think I’m a super-villain like Dr. Doom or Apocalypse or The Riddler”).
Gwen Raiden in Angel’s season four appears to have been inspired by Rogue from the X Men - the two had great powers which could harm other humans by touch, and had to wear gloves to protect others.
Joss Whedon has said that the X-Men character Kitty Pryde (AKA Shadowcat) was a large influence for the character of Buffy.
[Goof] Stone?
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When Buffy meets Glory for the first time in 5.05 No Place Like Home, she is thrown against a stone wall. In the shot where she falls from the stone wall, it clearly moves, proving it’s not real.
[Goof] Where’s Xander?
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When the Scoobies are in the Magic Box talking about what’s hurting Buffy’s mother, Xander and Buffy are sitting side by side with Willow standing behind Buffy. The shot changes and Willow sits down next to Buffy… where did Xander go?