The episode I Robot, You Jane has a couple of similarities to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. The voice of the demon Moloch, when he’s still trapped in the computer, is similar to the voice of the murderous computer Hal in the movie. Additionally, the main student with …

Lorne references the 1982 film 48 Hours, starring Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in Dead End.

Lorne: “Two enemies, one case, it’s all coming together in a beautiful buddy movie kind of way”
Gunn: “They’re supposed to work together on this?”
Lindsey: “Work with him? Work with him?
Lorne: “Am I the only one …

In an episode of A Bear’s Tale (a British comedy programme from the creators of Bo’Selecta), the character Bear says, “Mum you look beautiful, even more beautiful that Buffy The Vampire Slayer”.

In Band Candy, the Scoobies ran into Principal Snyder who was giving students chocolate to sell. Xander said, “You weren’t visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, by any chance?” He’s referring to the Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol, in which a man named Scrooge changes his miserly ways …

In the Angel episode, Eternity, we see Cordelia acting her way (badly) through Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House. The play is a critical look at Victorian marriages, concentrating on the decline of the marriage of Nora to Torvald. Cordelia plays Nora.

In In the Dark, Oz says “Yeah, your old buddy Spike dug up Sunnydale looking for it - but he got a fistful of Buffy and left it behind.” This could be reference to the western A Fistful of Dollars.

In Tough Love, Willow mentions Miss Minchin’s Select Seminary for Girls, which was a strict Victorian school in the book A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

In the Angel episode A Hole in the World, there is a reference to the Tim Burton movie A Nightmare Before Christmas. Angel looks to a large tree in England which he believes is the entrance to the Deeper Well. Spike states, “either that or Christmas Land”. In the movie, …

The idea of people’s nightmares coming true in the episode Nightmares most likely comes from the A Nightmare on Elm Street movie series, in which villain Freddie Krueger has the ability to hurt people while they sleep.
The demon Der Kindestod in Killed By Death was clearly influenced by the …

The theme song of this 1959 movie was written by Max Steiner and became a huge hit. In Inca Mummy Girl, Oz tells Devon what it takes for a woman to attract him, “Well, it involves a feather boa and a theme to A Summer Place” and in Him, the …

Xander says in Go Fish, “Swim team. Hardly what I call a team. The Yankees, Abbott and Costello. The A. Those were teams.” He’s referring to the comedy pairing of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, the baseball team The Yankees and 80’s action TV series The A Team.

The network was unhappy with D’Hoffryn’s Abercrombie and Fitch line in Selfless (”It looks like someone slaughtered an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue”), not because they may lose a sponsor, but because D’Hoffryn didn’t care about the deaths of the frat boys. Drew Goddard explained that D’Hoffryn is in fact evil …

One of the movies playing at the cinema in Amends is Abilene, which was not released until March 13, 1999 - three months after the episode aired. Carey Meyer, who was the production designer for Buffy, was also the designer for Abilene, so the movie’s reference is a little in-joke …

Hell’s Bells, the title of a season six episode, is an AC/DC song from their album ‘Back in Black’.

In Help, Cassie references the kids TV show The Adventures of Pete & Pete when she says, “Or a sexy hula girl who wiggles when you flex?”. Michelle Trachtenberg was a regular character on The Adventures of Pete & Pete, called Nona Mecklenbergon.