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 …

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.

Spike references famous crime novelist Agatha Christie in The Cautionary Tale of Numero Cinco when he says, “Doesn’t leave much to do other than watching blokes stumble around playing Agatha Christie.”

Al Franken is an actor and ’self-helpist’ on Saturday Night Live, whose name on the show was Stuart Smally. In Becoming (Part 1), Buffy mistakenly called Acathla ‘Al Franken’.

In Superstar, Buffy interrupts Anya reading Jonathan’s autobiography. Anya complains that she was just getting to the part where he “invents the internet”. This is a deliberate prod at Al Gore, who was getting a lot of flack at the time for allegedly making the very same claim. …

In Shadow, a Magic Box customer looks for the album ‘Aleister Crowley Sings’. English occultist and writer Crowley (1875-1947) dabbled in magicks. His works include “Magick in Theory and Practice” and “The Book of the Law”.

Alfalfa was the name of a cheeky child character in a long-running series of movies, called The Little Rascals. In Becoming (Part 1), Buffy mispronounced the demon Acathla as ‘Alfalfa’.

Allen Funt is the host of the American TV show Candid Camera. In Tabula Rasa, after the Scoobies lose their memories, Anya says, “I don’t see any booze, I don’t feel any head bumps, I don’t see Allen Funt.”

The Amazons were a group of powerful female warriors who lived without men. They only met men when they wanted to reproduce and would then kill the father. If the child was male, the child would also be killed. In The Body, Tara says, “Strong like an Amazon” to Willow …

Lorne says in Reprise, “Most anything that can manifest in order to move in this dimension can be killed. Kinda the downside to being here. Well, that and the so-called musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber.”

In Him, Buffy catches Dawn dancing sexily with her crush R.J Brooks. She tells her sister, “Anna Nicole Smith thinks you look tacky.” Anna Nicole Smith (real name Vickie Lynn Hogan) was the 1993 Playboy Playmate of the Year. She married billionaire J. Howard Marshall in 1994 when she was …

Anne Rice was the author of a popular best-selling series of vampire novels, including Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned. In School Hard, Spike says to Angel, “People still fall for that old Anne Rice routine?”
In Buffy vs Dracula, Buffy tells Dracula, “I’ve fought …

Harmony asks in The Harsh Light of Day, “Is Antonio Banderas a vampire?” Actor Banderas played a vampire in the 1994 movie Interview With The Vampire, which also starred Tom Cruise. In the film Banderas played Armand, a 400 year-old vampire who ran a theatre, where the vampire killings were …

In Band Candy, Principal Snyder mentions Barbarino (”Call me Snyder. Just a last name. Like Barbarino”) who was a character played by John Travolta in the TV series Welcome Back, Kotter.

In Sleeper, Buffy asks a bouncer at a club if he’s seen Spike. The Bouncer says, “Yeah I know the guy, Billy Idol wannabe.” Billy Idol was a punk with distinctive bleached blonde hair in the 1980s. Buffy mutters something about Billy actually stealing his look from Spike.