Jeff’s favourite episode

Jeff Pruitt, the show’s stunt coordinator until season five, said in Entertainment Weekly (issue October 1, 1999) that Lie to Me was his favourite episode.

Passes the time

This line of Angel’s was deleted from Lie to Me:
“Yeah, I eat too. Not for nutritional value – it just kind of passes the time.”

Previously Joan

In the original script for Lie to Me, Chantarelle’s (later Lily and Anne) name before changing it was Joan.

Jason Behr

Jason played Billy ‘Ford’ Fordham in Lie to Me. He went on to play Max, the lead character of alien teen drama Roswell High. He and Sarah Michelle Gellar were reunited when they played the lead characters in the 2004 movie The Grudge. The movie also stars Clea DuVall, who played Marcie Ross in Out of Mind, Out of Sight. Jason played Chris in Dawson’s Creek and has been in Pleasantville and The Shipping News.

Julia Lee

Julia played the character Chantarelle in Lie to Me, who later appeared as Lily in Anne. Lily took Buffy’s middle name, Anne, and moved to L.A, where she appeared in the Angel episodes: Blood Money, The Thin Dead Line and Not Fade Away. Julia has also been in Charmed, Ophelia Learns to Swim and A Man Apart.

Todd McIntosh

Todd was the make-up supervisor on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He made a cameo in the episode Lie to Me as the vampire who says “Hi!” to Willow and Xander when they visit the Sunset Club. Todd has also done the make-up on Enterprise, Traffic, The Brady Bunch Movie and City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold.

Billy “Ford” Fordham

Ford was a school friend of Buffy’s at Hemery High, and also her fifth grade crush. He founded a cult of vampire worshippers and offered them - and Buffy - to Spike in exchange for becoming a vampire. Ford wanted to become a vampire because he was dying of a brain tumour. He was sired by Spike and staked by Buffy when he rose as a vampire.

Chantarelle/Lily/Anne

Chantarelle was a member of Ford’s vampire wannabe group in Lie to Me. She later turned up again in L.A., this time calling herself Lily (Anne). There she met Buffy who politely informed her that Chantarelle was actually a mushroom. Later still, and using the name Anne (which she ‘borrowed’ from Buffy), she appeared in Angel, where she had become more confident and was running a shelter for the homeless.

Lucius

Spike’s vampire lackey in Lie to Me was called Lucius. He didn’t have a speaking part in the episode.

Marvin

Marvin was a nerd who was part of Billy Fordham’s vampire worshipping cult in Lie to Me. He wanted his vampire name to be Diego, and wore a shiny blue cape. Marvin managed to escape when the vampires attacked the cult.

Blackberry patch

Drusilla sings the rhyme, “Run and catch, run and catch, the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch” in the episodes Lie to Me and What’s My Line? (Part 2). She also sings this in the Angel episode ‘Reunion‘.

Hemery High

Before she moved to Sunnydale, Buffy attended Hemery High in L.A. The school was also the setting of the 1992 Buffy movie. Buffy was expelled from there as she burned down the gym (there was a bunch of vampires in there at the time). We see her in a flashback at Hemery High in Becoming (Part 1), and Buffy and Ford mention the school in Lie to Me. Buffy refers to her time at Hemery High in Homecoming, mentioning that she was the Prom Princess and the Fiesta Queen at that school, as well as being on the cheerleading squad.
The building used as Hemery was previously used as the clock tower in the Back To The Future movies. The set is at Universal Studios, along with a number of European village sets often used in Buffy and Angel flashbacks.

Once more, with tension

In the episode Lie to Me, Angel gets jealous when he sees Ford and Buffy at the Bronze. Buffy says that the Bronze is too crowded and leaves with Ford. Xander then says in a sarcastic way: “Once more, with tension.” The musical episode in season 6 was called Once More, With Feeling.

William variants

The writers of Buffy seem to love the name William and all its derivatives. Here’s a list of all the William variants used on the show:

• William the Bloody (Spike’s human name and original title)
• Liam (Angel’s human name)
• Billy Fordham: (Buffy’s friend from LA who sold her out to Spike)
• Billy Palmer: (the little boy in the coma who caused nightmares to come to life)
• Billy Crandal: (chained himself to a snack machine in I Only Have Eyes For You)
• Billy (an unclassified demon in Angel, who brought out the worst in men with a touch)
• Willy the Snitch (demon bar tender)
• Wil or Will: the name sometimes given to Willow (yeah, this was a bit of a stretch)

Willow’s computer

Willow has a laptop in the episode Lie to Me. She must have brought a new one as she had a desktop computer in I Robot, You Jane.

Xander’s happys

In Revelations, Buffy says she was waiting to tell everyone about Angel being alive and Xander replys, “For what? For Angel to go psycho again the next time you give him a happy?”. In Lie to Me where Buffy and Willow are secretly talking about Angel meeting with Dru and Xander replys, “Hey, it’s me. If Angel’s doing somethin’ wrong, I wanna know. ‘Cause it gives me a happy!”

Creaming Jesus

When Willow, Xander and Angel enter the Sunset Club in Lie to Me, we hear “Reptile” by Creaming Jesus, from the album Guilt by Association.

Sisters of Mercy

In the first broadcast of the episode Lie to Me, the music playing as Ford enters the Sunset Club is “Never Land” by the Sisters of Mercy, from their album Floodland. In later broadcasts it was replaced by a track called “Blood of a Stranger”, specially composed for the episode. This was for copyright reasons.

Willoughby

When Willow, Xander and Billy play pool in Lie to Me, we hear Willoughby’s ‘Lois, On The Brink’, from the album Be Better Soon.

Du Lac

Josephus du Lac was a theologian and mathematician. He belonged to a religious sect that was excommunicated by the Vatican at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He invented the du Lac cross, which was used to decipher hidden meanings and encrypted texts, and wrote the du Lac manuscripts which contained evil rituals and spells.
In Lie to Me, Spike got one of his vampires to steal the du Lac manuscript from the school library. This became crucial in the episode What’s My Line? (Part 1). We discovered then that the manuscript included a way in which Spike can cure Drusilla’s weakness.
The name du Lac may be a reference to the Anne Rice character Louis from her Vampire Chronicles. His full name is Louis de Pont du Lac.

DiVinyls

Buffy says in Lie to Me that she got over her crush on Ford by listening to the DiVinyls 1991 hit “I Touch Myself”. (Willow: “Oh, that’s what that song is about?”)

Dracula the Movie

In the Sunset Club in Lie to Me, Ford mouths the words of a vampire movie playing in the background. The film is the 1973 TV movie Dracula, starring Jack Palance and directed by Dan Curtis.

Marie-Antoinette

In Lie to Me, Buffy’s class discuss Marie-Antoinette and the French Revolution - in which the lower classes in France demanded equal rights from King Louis XVI and the land-owning aristocracy in 1789. Marie-Antoinette (the Queen of France), convinced her husband to seek aid from foreign governments, and not bow down to the uprising. Austria and Prussia declared war on France in 1792, and she passed secrets to those armies, hoping to get aid to defeat the rebellious lower classes. Both King Louis and Marie-Antoinette were executed at the guillotine in 1793 for treason.

Seen at 10.53 minutes:

Buffy’s stunt double’s hair is longer than Buffy’s when she fights in the alley.

Seen at 13.40 minutes:

Angel comes over to Willow’s house just before she goes to bed. Why was Willow going to bed with full make-up on? It seems to be fresh.

Seen at 30.39 minutes:

Buffy arrives at the club an hour or two early to talk Ford out of becoming a vampire. Spike arrives a few minutes later - so Buffy couldn’t have been that early at all.

Seen at 32.51 minutes:

Ford never told Buffy that Spike was the vampire he was going to give Buffy to - so how does she suddenly know?

Seen at 38.47 minutes:

Why does Buffy spare Drusilla? She knows she’s an ally of Spike and she could have easily staked the vampire and escaped.