All dressed up

Buffy’s mother bought her daughter a long white dress for the dance in Prophecy Girl (a sacrificial garment, if I ever saw one - what was Joyce thinking?!) Everyone comments on it. At the end of the episode, when the gang are walking away, Angel says “I like your…”, and Buffy quips back “yeah, yeah. It was a big hit with everyone.” This was added in post production and wasn’t in the script.

Bloodier

Alyson Hannigan claimed that she filmed a much stronger version of the scene in Prophecy Girl where Willow and Cordelia discovered the bodies the students:

Chaste and tasteful

The following is a stage direction for Prophecy Girl, in the scene in which Xander saves Buffy: “A small moment, then Xander leans over Buffy. Closing his fingers over her nose, he gives her mouth to mouth. Puts the heels of his hands to her chest (need I mention this will all be terribly chaste and tasteful?) and pumps the heart rhythmically.”

First directions

Prophecy Girl was the first episode to be directed by the show’s creator Joss Whedon.

Joss Whedon’s favourite episodes

Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon spoke to USA Today in May 2003 (after the final episode had aired) about his favourite Buffy episodes. They are as follows:

1. Innocence: “It’s a mission-statement show, and one of the ones where I first found out what we could do.”
2. Once More, With Feeling: “What am I going to say?”
3. Hush
4. The Body
5. Doppelgängland: “Because one Willow is certainly not enough.”
6. The Wish: “Very bleak, very fun. It went to a dark place, and that’s really exciting to me. That’s where I live.”
7. Becoming (Part 2): “Buffy loses everything. Also, it had a sword fight. I love sword fighting.”
8. Restless: “Most people sort of shake their heads at it. It was different, but not pointless.”
9. Conversations with Dead People: “I’m very fond of ‘Conversations with Dead People.’ I just thought structurally and tonally it was very interesting and had a lot to say. And I got to write another song.”
10. Prophecy Girl: “Because that was my first time, besides telling directors what to do, that I actually got to direct. And it was the first time I got to kill Buffy, and the first season ender, and it was the first time I realized I could take everything we did in the season and tie it in a bow.”

Monster from Hell

The budget for filming Prophecy Girl didn’t allow for any major CGI, so the Hellmouth’s monster eventually became a massive tentacled thing, made by Special Effects studio Optic Nerve. Each of the tentacles had a person inside it, operating it.

Stoned

In a scene scripted for Prophecy Girl but never filmed, it rains stones on Sunnydale High School after Buffy rejects Xander when he first asks her out:

TV-14

The Dark Age was the first episode since Prophecy Girl to be rated TV-14.

Scott Gurney

Scott played Kevin in Prophecy Girl. He played Nick in Baywatch and has been in Malibu Shores (with Charisma Carpenter), 7th Heaven and Beverly Hills, 90210.

Kevin

Kevin dated Cordelia in Prophecy Girl but was killed by the vampires in the school. His body was discovered by Cordelia and Willow.

A meeting

Buffy’s mother Joyce met Hank Summers in her freshman year of college, when Joyce didn’t have a date and Hank did. She told this story to Buffy in Prophecy Girl.

Activation

Buffy’s death in Prophecy Girl, albeit very brief, was enough to activate another Slayer, Kendra. The two met in season two’s What’s My Line? (Part 1). Giles said in that episode that the event was unprecedented.

Angel’s cross

Angel gave Buffy a cross necklace when he first met her in Welcome to the Hellmouth. She can be seen wearing the necklace in The Harvest and Prophecy Girl.

Cordy’s car

Before her father was arrested for tax evasion, Cordelia drove a red Chrysler Sebring convertible, and her license plate was “QUEENC”. Cordelia passed her driving test sometime between The Witch (when we discovered she hadn’t yet passed her test) and Prophecy Girl (when we saw her driving.)

Dance With You

Xander says to Buffy in Prophecy Girl, “I want to dance with you”. His wish comes true when Buffy dances sexily with him in the very next episode - When She Was Bad.

Dreams can come true

All of the visions in Buffy’s first prophetic dream in Welcome to the Hellmouth are clips from later episodes from the first season. Most of the clips are from Welcome to the Hellmouth and Prophecy Girl.

Knocked out

In Buffy vs Dracula, Giles falls into Dracula’s basement, where he is surrounded by the sisters. After he falls he says, “Good show, Giles. At least you didn’t get knocked out for a change.” In A New Man, Giles says he has a “tendency to get knocked on the head”. He’s not kidding. Giles has been knocked unconscious in the episodes:

• The Witch (by vampires who want to raise the Master again)
• Never Kill a Boy on the First Date (by Andrew Vorba in the crematorium)
• Prophecy Girl (by Buffy, to stop him from trying to help her)
• When She Was Bad (by the vampires attempting to raise the Master)
• Passion (by Angelus, after Giles attacks him for killing Jenny)
• Becoming (Part 1) (by a group of vampires who take him to Angelus)
• Beauty and the Beasts (shot with a tranquilizer gun)
• Homecoming (by Lyle Gorch and Candy).
• Revelations (by Gwendolyn Post, in his office)
• Gingerbread (by the MOO mob as they come to take Buffy away. When Cordy wakes him up shes says, “I came over here to tell Buffy to stop this craziness and found you all unconscious… again. How many times have you been knocked out, anyway? I swear, one of these times, you’re going to wake up in a coma.”)
• Earshot (he doesn’t get knocked out in this episode - but he does walk into a tree in a very amusing manner)
• Flooded (by the Mfashnik demon as it breaks ino Buffy’s house. Giles later says, “Well, I know I’m back in America now. I’ve been knocked unconscious”).

Life saver

Xander saved Buffy’s life by giving her CPR after she drowned in Prophecy Girl. He helped to bring her back from the dead again in Bargaining (Part 1). In season seven’s End of Days he tells Buffy that if she dies again he’ll bring her back. “It’s what I do”.

Pergamum Codex

Angel met Giles for the first time in Out of Mind, Out of Sight (”A vampire in love with a Slayer. It’s rather poetic, in a maudlin sort of way.”) and revealed to the Watcher that he could get copies of the Tiberius Manifesto and the Pergamum Codex, which are key accounts of Slayer lore. The books proved vital to Buffy in Prophecy Girl, as Giles discovered in them the prophecy that the Slayer would face the Master and die. In the season four episode of Angel ‘Orpheus‘, Willow was asked by Fred about the Pergamum Codex because it had some interesting stuff in it.

Punching Giles

Buffy punches Giles twice in the series: In Prophecy Girl, to stop him preventing her from facing the Master, and in Passion, after he attacks Angelus.

Same set

In Choices, when Buffy, Angel and Willow are on the rooftop of city hall, it’s the same rooftop from the season one episode Prophecy Girl, when Buffy faces the master on the rooftop of the school, above the library.

Wrong guy

In Prophecy Girl, Giles finally realises that the vampire Buffy killed in Never Kill a Boy on the First Date wasn’t the Anointed One. Oops.

Jonatha Brooke

When Buffy looks at her photo album in Prophecy Girl, we hear Jonatha Brooke’s “Inconsolable” from the album Plumb.

Patsy Cline

Xander listens to country music (”the music of pain”) in Prophecy Girl, after Buffy turns him down. His chosen track is Patsy Cline’s “I Fall To Pieces“. A season one episode of Angel was entitled I Fall To Pieces after this song.
Fred sings Patsy Cline’s song “Crazy” at Caritas in That Old Gang of Mine (Cordelia: “I swear to God, she picked out the song herself”).

Master’s skeleton

When the Master is killed in Prophecy Girl, only his soft tissue is dusted: his skeleton stays intact. There is no explanation for this other than as a plot device for the season two premiere When She Was Bad.

Portents

In Prophecy Girl, Jenny revealed that she knew the end of the world was coming because of a series of weird portents: a cat gave birth to a litter of snakes, a boy was born with his eyes facing inward and blood poured from the sink in the girls’ bathroom at the school.

Vampire breath

In Out of Mind, Out of Sight, Angel saves Giles, Xander and Willow by turning off a leaky gas valve. He tells them, “It’s not like I need the oxygen.” This ties in with Prophecy Girl, where Xander saves Buffy’s life using CPR as Angel is unable to because he can’t breathe. There have been numerous goofs where vampire have been seen panting when they shouldn’t be able to. See the goofs section for more on this.

Porky the Pig

A few seconds of a Porky the Pig cartoon can be seen in the school common room where the students where killed in Prophecy Girl.

Star Trek

There are many cast/crew links between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the long-running cult sci-fi show Star Trek. Armin Shimerman (Principal Snyder) played Quark in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for seven years. Dominic Keating, who played Blair in the episode Helpless, later went on to star in Star Trek: Enterprise as Lt. Reed. Jennifer Hetrick, who played the teacher Ms. Moran in Homecoming (whom Buffy asked for a reference) played the girlfriend of Jean Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Buffy writer Jane Espenson wrote an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine called ‘Accession’. Star Trek has also been referenced numerous times in Buffy the Vampire Slayer:

• In Prophecy Girl, Xander says, “Calm may work for Locutus of Borg here, but I’m freaked and I intend to stay that way.” Upset by Giles’ reserve, he is referencing Star Trek’s emotionless cyborgs from the episode ‘The Best of Both Worlds’. Locutus was the name given to Captain Pickard (Patrick Stewart) when he was captured, and ‘assimilated, by the Borg.
• In Homecoming, Cordelia woos the nerds at Sunnydale High by saying, “Are you kidding? I’ve been doing the Vulcan death grip since I was 4.”
• In Consequences, Cordy calls Wesley, “Giles the next generation” in a reference to Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• In Out of My Mind, Buffy says, “You’re like my fairy godmother and Santa Claus and Q all wrapped up into one… Q from Bond not Star Trek“.
• In The Replacement, the two Xanders say, “Kill us both Spock” - a reference to a Star Trek episode where Kirk is split two - one being good and one bad.
• In Flooded, the nerds vote with the Star Trek Vulcan salute, which is the same salute that Cordelia used to impress the ‘geeks’ in Homecoming.
• In Smashed, Spike tells the nerds, “You can play holodeck another time” - he means the virtual reality technology used in Star Trek.
• The nerds compare Buffy’s time loop in Life Serial with an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called ‘Cause and Effect’ (Andrew: “I just hope she solves it faster than Data did on the ep of TNG where the Enterprise kept blowing up.”)
• In As You Were, Buffy says. “they’re like really mean Tribbles”, referring to the popular, but quick breeding, pets on board the Starship Enterprise.
• After her visit to the nerds’ ‘lair’ in Doublemeat Palace, Willow says that they had numerous pictures of the “Vulcan women from Enterprise“. She’s referring to Jolene Blaylock, who played T’pol in UPN’s Star Trek show.
• The episode Normal Again is similar to the season five episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine called ‘Far Beyond the Stars’. In that episode, Captain Benjamin Sisko imagines that he is a science fiction writer living on 1950s Earth and writing about a station full of aliens called Deep Space Nine. He hallucinates that the people he knows in the 1950s are futuristic aliens and is thrown into an asylum.
• In Seeing Red, Andrew references Star Trek: The Next Generation when he discusses who’s boss of the nerds: “Warren’s the boss. He’s Picard, you’re Deanna Troi. Get used to the feeling, Betazoid.” In that episode, Xander realises that the nerds had love poems in their lair written in Klingon.
• In Grave, after the Magic Box has been destroyed, a William Shatner book can be seen on the floor.
• In Conversations with Dead People, we learn that Andrew learned Klingon (a language in Star Trek) from a dictionary in two and a half weeks.
• In Dirty Girls, Andrew hilariously confuses Faith’s murder of a Volcanologist with a Vulcan:
  

  Andrew: “Nobody was immune to her trail of destruction. Not friends, not family, not even the most pacifist and logical of races…”
  Amanda: “What the hell are you talking about? I thought Faith killed a volcanologist.”
  Andrew: “Silly, silly Amanda. Why would Faith kill a person who studies Vulcans?”

Seen at 07.26 minutes:

When Xander and Buffy go to a bench to sit down, Xander says to a guy on the bench, “move”. It seems very unlike him to do this, and for Buffy not to react to his uncharacteristic bossiness. It’s also weird that the guy moves - isn’t Xander supposed to be some kind of unpopular geek?

Seen at 07.31 minutes:

When Buffy and Xander sit down on the bench, the strap of Xander’s shoulder bag keeps moving in every shot. Sometimes it’s under his collar, sometimes it’s over the collar and in some shots the strap is not there at all.

Seen at 09.35 minutes:

Where does Giles get Angel’s phone number from?

Seen at 10.48 minutes:

The calendar in Giles’ office reads June, but everyone is getting ready for the May Spring Fling dance.

Seen at 17.40 minutes:

When Buffy is sitting on her bed looking through her photo album in Prophecy Girl, it is clearly visible when she turns the page that the exact same pictures are used on both pages they have just been moved into different places.

Seen at 27.04 minutes:

When Buffy walks through the sewers, you can see the shadow of what seems to be a production member on the wall.

Seen at 27.26 minutes:

How does Xander know where Angel lives?

Seen at 30.54 minutes:

Willow, Giles and Jenny are talking about where the Hellmouth will open. They figure the Bronze and Willow says, “The Prom!”, the only problem, the dance was the Spring Fling.

Seen at 33.04 minutes:

When Buffy drowns, she falls into the pool with her hair tied in a ponytail and her arms under her. When she is discovered by Angel and Xander, her arms are by her sides and her hair is loose.

Seen at 33.47 minutes:

You can clearly hear Angel breathing heavily when he runs over to Buffy, but he then says he can’t resuscitate her as he has no breath. He also mentioned this in the previous episode Out of Mind, Out of Sight, when he saved the Scoobies from the gassed boiler room.

Seen at 35.22 minutes:

When Willow and Jenny get into Cordy’s car, Cordelia’s mouth doesn’t move when she’s talking, when we see her in the shot from behind.

Seen at 38.21 minutes:

Cordelia bites a vampire and says, “See how you like it.” In contradiction to that, Cordy just moments later, asks Willow and Jenny what “those things are”.

Seen at 40.31 minutes:

When Buffy has her big fight with the Master on the roof you can see her white shoes. But later when she kicks him you see that she has on brown boots. When did she change?