Robes change

In Graduation Day (Part 1), Cordelia complains that she wanted the graduation robes to be teal and not maroon in colour. In the original script, she wanted the red but the school went with the blue.

Trailer

The first trailer for the spin-off show Angel aired during Graduation Day (Part 1). It showed Angel against a red background with the words: “Angel: This Fall”.

James Lurie

James Lurie played the teacher Mr. Miller at Sunnydale High in the episodes I Only Have Eyes For You, Anne and Graduation Day (Part 1). You might remember him as the teacher who plays hangman with his class in Graduation Day (”They always go for the ‘E’”). James has also been in Picket Fences, Law & Order and Cowboy Up.

Mr. Miller

Mr. Miller was a teacher at Sunnydale High. He appeared in the episodes I Only Have Eyes For You, Anne (”Slow down, people. Summer is over. Be somber.”) and Graduation Day (Part 1) (Playing hangman: “They always go for the ‘E’”).

Barry and 7-Up

Willow tries to seduce Oz in Amends using Barry White and chilled 7-Up. The two finally sleep together for the first time in Graduation Day (Part 1).

By the Sun Cinema

As Buffy and Angel walk through the snowy street in Amends, the shot starts with a close up on the inside of the U on the Sun Cinema sign. This is where Faith stands when she shoots Angel in Graduation Day (Part 1). In Enemies, Buffy and Angel stand outside the cinema again, when they’re joined by Faith.

Faith’s bow

Faith steals a bow and arrow in Bad Girls, which she uses to shoot the courier in Choices, and Angel in Graduation Day (Part 1).

Faith’s knife

The Mayor gave Faith an intricate knife as a present in Choices. She used it to kill one of the Gavrok spiders and Buffy then took it away. Buffy stabbed Faith with the knife to try and cure Angel in Graduation Day (Part 1), then taunted the Mayor-snake with it in Graduation Day (Part 2). In This Year’s Girl, Faith dreamt that Buffy killed the Mayor with the same knife, and also that she still had the knife in her when talking to Buffy whilst making a bed.

Firecracker

In Graduation Day (Part 1) Faith mentions her childhood in Boston, where she describes herself as, unsurprisingly, a tough kid. The Mayor calls her a “firecracker” and she reveals that her mother used to call her that when she was younger. In Touched, the First Evil appears to Faith in the form of the Mayor, and calls her a firecracker again.

Foreshadowing the Dawn arc

There are two significant references to the character of Dawn before she first appeared in Buffy vs Dracula:
In This Year’s Girl, Buffy and Faith are making a bed in Faith’s dream. They have the following conversation:

Buffy: “I wish I could stay, but…”
Faith: “Oh, you have to go.”
Buffy: “That’s just what…”
Faith: “Little sis coming. I know.”
Buffy: “So much to do before she gets here.”

As well as referencing Dawn verbally, the two Slayers are making the bed in Dawn’s future room.
The second reference occurs in the episode Restless. Tara says to Buffy, “Be back before Dawn”.
There is also a couple more, slightly cryptic, references: In Graduation Day (Part 1), Buffy walks into Faith’s apartment and Faith says, “Look at you, all dressed up in big sister’s clothes.” In Restless. In Giles’ dream, Olivia is pregnant, which may signify the coming of Dawn as Giles became a father figure to her after Joyce died.
In Graduation Day (Part 2), Buffy dreams that she and Faith are making a bed together (again!). Faith says, “Miles to go. Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0″. Faith’s riddle is explained later in the series. “730″ is a forshadowing of Buffy’s own death (Buffy dies to save Dawn). It means 365 multiplied by 2, meaning in two year’s time. This date coincides with the episode The Gift where Buffy dies. The number crops up again in season four’s finale Restless, where Buffy sees a clock saying 7:30 and Tara tells her the clock is wrong. It is: there are no longer 730 days before Buffy’s death, there are 365.

Office romance

In Graduation Day (Part 1), Buffy says that her relationship with Angel will be her “last office romance”. She contradicts this in later seasons with her relationships with Riley and Spike.

Rat love

Amy the rat makes another appearance in Graduation Day (Part 1). She witneses Willow and Oz making love.

Run away gal

In Graduation Day (Part 1), Joyce sees Buffy packing and asks if she is running away again (”…and you’re taking my clothes”). Buffy ran away after the events of Becoming (Part 2), and stayed away for the whole summer.

Shrimp

Shrimp have been a referenced many times in the show: In Spiral, Anya says that Xander doesn’t travel well, like fine shrimp; in Graduation Day (Part 1), Willow finds a spell to “communicate with shrimp”; in Superstar, Anya compares a parallel universe with shrimp; and in Triangle, Anya mentions a ‘world without shrimp’, to which Tara replies that she’s allergic to them. In the Angel episode ‘Underneath’, Illyria says she once visited a world populated with nothing but shrimp.

Sunnydale Press

Sunnydale’s local newspaper was called the Sunnydale Press. It can be seen in the episodes Never Kill a Boy on the First Date, Reptile Boy, Becoming (Part 1), Bad Girls, Consequences, Graduation Day (Part 1), Hush and Once More, With Feeling.

Thanks, Willow

In Graduation Day (Part 1), Percy thanks Willow for not kicking his ass in Doppelgängland, when her vampire doppelganger hit him.

The glass trick

Faith and Buffy fight and crash through a sheet of glass in Revelations. They do this two more times whilst fighting: in Graduation Day (Part 1) and This Year’s Girl.

Spectator Pump

Spectator Pump’s “Priced 2 Move” plays in the Bronze in Doppelgängland. When Buffy goes to Faith’s apartment in Graduation Day (Part 1), Faith is listening to Spectator Pump’s “Sunday Mail”.

Ascension

An Ascension is when a mortal or part-demon becomes pure demon, resulting in massive destruction. In Graduation Day (Part 1) Anya revealed she was the only living person to witness an Ascension, and it took a volcano to destroy the resulting demon (Lohesh, a four winged soul killer). In Graduation Day (Part 2), The Mayor of Sunnydale ascended to become a giant snake-like demon. He was eventually blown up, along with the rest of the school.

Dead owner

Angel is able to enter the Professor’s home uninvited in Graduation Day (Part 1), because the vampire invitation rule no longer applies when the owner of a home is dead.

Gavrok

In order to proceed with his Ascension, the Mayor of Sunnydale had the Box of Gavrok flown from Central America in Choices. Buffy and Angel stole the box but Faith kidnapped Willow and they were forced to return it. The box contained 50 billion Gavrok spiders, which were large, black and powerful.
The Mayor ate the spiders in Graduation Day (Part 1) as an essential part of his ascension: “My god, what a feeling! The power of these creatures… it suffuses my being. I can feel the changes begin. My organs are shifting, merging, making ready for the Ascension. Plus these babies are high in fiber. And what’s the fun in becoming an immortal demon if you’re not regular, am I right?”

Killer of the Dead

Killer of the Dead is a poison used to kill vampires. It causes extreme pain, and a long death. Faith shot Angel with an arrow dipped into the poison in Graduation Day (Part 1). The only cure is for a vampire to drink the blood of a vampire Slayer. After unsuccessfully trying to get Faith’s blood, Buffy allowed Angel to drink from her.

Lo-Hash

Lo-Hash was described in Graduation Day (Part 1) by Wesley as a “four winged soul killer” and not particularly fierce. Anya (the only person to ever survive an Ascension) told him that Lo-Hash was a pure demon when it destroyed a village during an Ascension, and so was, amongst other things, bigger. She says of the event, “About eight hundred years ago in the Kastka Valley above the Urals, there was a sorcerer there who achieved Ascension. He became the embodiment of the demon Lo-Hash.”

Habitrail

In Graduation Day (Part 1), Willow worried that she couldn’t turn Amy the rat back into a human. Oz assured her that, “you got the swinging Habitrail going. I think Amy is in a good place emotionally”. Habitrail is a company who specialise in different designs of rodent cages, including the Habitrail Home (”A comfortable Home Sweet Home offering spacious living quarters and play activities for your hamster”), Habitrail Park, Habitrail Safari (”The new Safari range features a radically new design and colour-scheme, bring a fully themed adventure to your hamster’s life”) and for the more refined hamster - the Habitrail Villa.
In Wild at Heart, Veruca calls Oz’s wolf-cage a “Habitrail”.

Heathers

In Graduation Day (Part 1), Buffy says to Wesley, “Get a job!” This might be a reference to the film Heathers in which Veronica Sawyer (played by Winona Ryder) says the same thing to her guidance counselor. Sarah Michelle Gellar has said this is one of her favorite movies.

Jaws

Steven Spielberg’s 1975 shark movie Jaws is alluded to a few times in Buffy.
In Go Fish, Xander says, “This was no boating accident” - which is a line from the first Jaws movie.
In Graduation Day (Part 1), Xander and Giles open a page of a book to see a giant monster they may have to face. Xander says, “We’re going to need a bigger boat”, which was the phrase used by Brody (Roy Scheider) in the movie when he first sees the size of the great white shark he’s hunting.
In the episode Anne, Oz suggests that Willow uses the phrase “This time it’s personal” as it’s a “classic”. He’s quoting from the fourth Jaws movie.
Anya makes an explicit reference to the movie in End of Days when she suggests killing demons with gas cylinders, “They’d only be useful if something big was attacking, and then we could shove one down their throat and blow ‘em up like Roy Scheider did with that shark in Jaws.”
In Empty Places, Xander mentions the abysmal third movie in the Jaws series, made in 1983. After he loses his eye, Xander says, “Oh, you know what the best part is? No one will ever make me watch Jaws 3-D again.”
In Soul Purpose, whilst dissecting Angel in his dream, Fred holds up a Mexican license plate saying, “Hmm. Came up the gulf stream, huh?” This is a reference to the first Jaws movie,in which Hooper opens the dead shark and says, “Ah. Just like I thought. He came up with the Gulf Stream - from southern waters” before holding up a licence plate from Louisiana.

Siegfried and Roy

In Graduation Day (Part 1), Willow hopes that Siegfried and Roy might be the speakers at the graduation ceremony. This is a reference to the pair of flamboyant magicians who used to perform with big cats and bad mullets in a spectacular Las Vegas show. They are referenced again in Seeing Red by Andrew: “You can’t Siegfried-and-Roy the barrier”.

Seen at 21.35 minutes:

Angel’s reflection can be seen in the picture frame when he leaves the Professor’s apartment.

Seen at 22.04 minutes:

When Angel is talking to Buffy, he holds a box in two hands which changes to one hand in the next shot.

Seen at 24.51 minutes:

When Angel is in the library, we see his face is sweaty, but from the side it looks dry.

Seen at 36.59 minutes:

Buffy and Faith’s stunt doubles can be seen in their big fight at Faith’s apartment.

Seen at 40.13 minutes:

When Faith and Buffy are fighting on the balcony, Faith falls on some cement and gets quite a bit of white dust on her bottom but it’s gone when she breaks out of her handcuffs.