Red Bull

Writer Doug Petrie only had 4 days to write the episode Fool For Love and was struggling to get the work done in that short a space of time. When he told James Marsters this, James got him a case of Red Bull (which a fan had given to him, for some reason) so Doug was able to stay awake and finish the episode.

April Weedon-Washington

April Weedon-Washington played the Slayer Spike killed in New York in Fool For Love (the role was later played by K. D. Aubert in season seven). April is a stuntswoman with a long list of credits to her name. She has stunt doubled for Vanessa Williams, Halle Berry, Jennifer Lopez and Solange Knowles (sister of Beyonce). April has also done stunts for the films Crash, Gang of Roses, Bruce Almighty, Deliver Us from Eva, Minority Report, The Scorpion King, Rat Race (starring Seth Green), Double Take, Hollow Man, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Blade, Anaconda and Eraser. She played Faith Burns in General Hospital.

Chris Daniels

Chris Daniels, who played the hairy 80s vampire who stabbed Buffy in Fool For Love, has done stunt work on Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Bringing Down the House, Deuces Wild, Spider-Man, Ready, Willing & Able, Walking Across Egypt and The Rage: Carrie 2.

Edward Fletcher

Edward Fletcher, who played the pompous English party-goer in Fool For Love is a painter as well as an actor. He appeared in Titanic as Sixth Officer James Moody.

Juliet Landau

Juliet Landau played Drusilla. She was a ballerina, and then decided to take up acting. Her first role was in Grifters in 1990. Juliet has also been in Pump Up the Volume, Millennium, Carlo’s Wake, Going Shopping, Millennium and Parker Lewis Can’t Lose. Juliet is the daughter of Martin Landau, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. Lugosi was most famous for playing Dracula in the original US movie directed by Toss Browning. Juliet appeared in Ed Wood alongside her father.

Kali Rocha

Kali Rocha played Spike’s crush Cecily when he was a human, and later went on to play vengeance demon Halfrek. Kali has appeared in Gods and Generals, White Oleander, Meet the Parents, The Object of My Affection, The Crucible, Will & Grace and Becker.

Ken Feinberg

Ken Feinberg, who played the Chaos demon in Fool For Love, was named one of the ‘50 Most Beautiful Atlantans’ (they clearly hadn’t seen this episode!). He has appeared in Pray Another Day, No Turning Back and The District, and he wrote, directed and starred in Coming Clean. Ken has appeared in episodes of Enterprise, Alias and Charmed.

Matthew Lang

Matthew Lang played one of the people at the party in 1880 in Fool For Love, and a ‘High Priest Minion’ in the Buffy episode The Weight of the World. He has also appeared in Target, The Rules of Attraction, We Were Soldiers and The West Wing.

Ming Liu

Ming Liu, who played the Chinese Slayer killed by Spike in Fool For Love, has done stunts for Collateral, The Scorpion King, Ghosts of Mars, Charlie’s Angels and American Pie 2 (starring Alyson Hannigan). She also did stunts for Joss Whedon’s Firefly movie Serenity.

Cecily

Cecily was an English woman who Spike (then known as William) loved and wrote poetry for in the late 1800s. She rebuffed William, seen in a flashback in Fool For Love, telling him he was beneath her. Cecily later became, we believe, Halfrek the vengeance demon. Halfrek meets Spike in Older and Far Away and, though nothing explicit is said, the two clearly recognise each other. She says, “William?” and the two exchange a brief, knowing look.

Nikki Wood

Nikki Wood was Robin Wood’s mother. A Slayer in New York City, Nikki was killed by Spike on a subway in 1977 (Fool For Love). He stole her black leather jacket and made it his own. The First Evil assumed the form of Nikki Wood in First Date and talked to Robin.

1880 crossover

The Buffy episode Fool For Love and the Angel episode ‘Darla’ aired in the same week in US. Both shows covered the 1880 turning of William to Spike, and how it affected Angelus.
In the Buffy episode, William is seen walking down the street with his poetry pages, where he bumps into some passerbys on the street. Those people are Angelus, Darla and Drusilla. William then continues down the alley where he is approached by Dru, and is sired.
In the Angel episode, we see the same scene in the street only from the perspective of Darla, Angelus and Dru. William bumps into them says, “Watch where you’re going!” Dru then sees William for the first time, and follows Angelus’ advice to “make herself a playmate”.

Best night

In Fool For Love, Spike says the night he killed his first Slayer was the best night of his life. In End of Days he tells Buffy that the night they spent together was the best in his life - a bit of a change from killing a Slayer!

Bloody William

A flashback to Spike’s past in Fool For Love reveals that his original vampire name ‘William the Bloody’ (first mentioned in School Hard) was actually given to him when he was human - but he was called ‘William the Bloody Awful Poet’. William/Spike was shy and nerdy as a human, and it took him many years to prove himself when he first became a vampire. We later discover in the episode Lies My Parents Told Me that after he was vamped by Drusilla, Spike went on to sire his mother, to cure her of her illness.
We discover in Fool For Love that Spike got his trademark scar on his right eyebrow from a fight with a Chinese slayer during the Boxer Rebellion. As vampires heal rapidly, leaving no scars (as evident on the bodies of both Spike and Angel throughout the years), and since Spike is already a vamp when he gets the injury to his eyebrow, how would he scar permanently?

Bye, Darla

Darla (played by Julie Benz) is seen in Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the final time in Fool For love - in a flashback to the Boxer Rebellion.

Chaos demons

After leaving Sunnydale in Becoming (Part 2), Spike and Drusilla went to Brazil, which is where she left him for a chaos demon. In Lover’s Walk, Spike claims chaos demons are, “All slime and antlers” - which we discover is literally true when we finally see one in Fool For Love. In The Harsh Light of Day, Harmony mistakenly says Dru left Spike for a fungus demon.

Effulgent

In the Angel finale ‘Not Fade Away‘, Spike finally has a chance to read his poetry to an appreciative audience. Here is the full poem that he was writing in a flashback in Fool For Love:

Spike recites the poem in a biker bar and the crowd love it. Whilst they are applauding, Spike shouts, “That was for Cecily! All right. This next one’s called The Wanton Folly of Me Mum“. This is a reference to Lies My Parents Told Me, when we saw Spike’s mother make a pass at him.
In Hellbound, Angel finally tells Spike that: “Yeah, I never told anybody about this, but I—I liked your poems.”

It’s gotta rhyme

A glimpse of Spike becoming more like his human self, William, is shown in Same Time, Same Place. He says to Buffy “What’s a word that means glowing? It’s gotta rhyme.” William asked the same thing of a waiter in the season five episode Fool For Love, while composing a poem about his love interest, Cecily. This is also part of the same speech he made to his mother in Lies my Parents Told Me - after he sired his mother and she was no longer sick.

Railroad spike

Xander said to Willow in The Witch, “That is the point, you don’t have to drive it through my head like a railroad spike.” The character of Spike (introduced in season two’s School Hard) was said to have got his name by murdering people using railroad spikes. In a flashback to William’s last day as a human, seen in Fool For Love, one of the guests at a party says, “I’d rather have a railroad spike through my head than listen to this stuff.” Perhaps this is how Spike got inspired?

Spike twirler

Spike twirls a shovel in Lies My Parents Told Me, just as he twirled a pole in Fool For Love when he killed Nikki Wood.

Spike’s coat

Spike’s trademark is his old long black coat. To get the look, costume designers took a brand new $2000 coat and ran it over with a truck to make it look old and dirty. In the show, Spike took his coat from the second Slayer he killed - Nikki Wood in New York (Fool For Love).

Taste like ashes

In the episode Fool For Love, Drusilla tells Spike, in a rare moment of clarity, she knew he was in love with the Slayer. This is seen in a flashback to 1998 and is the first hint we get that Spike’s crush has been developing a lot longer than even he lets on to himself. Drusilla also says, “You taste like ashes”, which could be a foresight to the fact that Spike’s love for Buffy led to him saving the world and being burnt to ashes in Chosen.

Tito’s Chips

Tito’s Chips is a brand of potato chips created by the writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a kind of anti-product placement. They were first seen in Fool For Love when Willow, Anya and Xander were eating them whilst patrolling with Riley. They made a comeback in the episode End of Days, when Faith was seen eating a packet.

Slayer blood

In Fool For Love, Spike says to Drusilla, “You ever hear them saying the blood of a Slayer is a powerful aphrodisiac?”

Boxer Rebellion

The Boxer Rebellion was first mentioned in School Hard. It was an anti-Westerner uprising in China that took place from 1900 to 1901. During the rebellion, Spike killed a Slayer (his first, we discovered in Fool For Love). Angel had his soul at that point but he attempted to pretend he didn’t to retain ‘normality’ with his fellow vampires. Darla eventually left him during the rebellion.

Discovery Channel

The Discovery Channel is referenced a few times in the show. Anya mentions she wants to see a programme about monkeys on the Discovery channel in Bargaining (Part 1). Buffy says she saw a behaviour modification chip on the Discovery Channel in The I in Team. Spike name checks the channel in Fool For Love.

Love Fool

The episode title Fool For Love is also the title of a 1985 movie starring Sam Shepard and Kim Basinger.

The Smiths

The line about “bloody awful poetry” in Fool For Love is taken from The Smith’s song ‘Frankly Mr. Shankly’ from their The Queen is Dead LP.

The Untouchables

Buffy says, “Here endeth the lesson” when she has kills the Turok-Han in Showtime. This has been said before in the series: by the Master in season one’s Never Kill a Boy on the First Date and Spike in Fool For Love. The line is taken from the movie The Untouchables - Sean Connery’s character says this to Kevin Costner’s Elliot Ness while lecturing him on how to bring down Al Capone.

Seen at 06.11 minutes:

Considering they know the real risk of vampires, why do Willow, Xander and Anya show no common sense when they are patrolling with Riley? And why does Buffy let them go? I know they have had ‘field experience’, but vampires still have incredible strength and there is a real risk for normal humans to be out hunting them. Allowing the gang to go patrolling surely degrades Buffy’s status as the one and only Vampire Slayer?

Seen at 12.05 minutes:

In The Initiative, Spike said he was 126 years old. However in this episode, we discover he was vamped in 1880 which would make him about 6 yrs old when he was sired.

Seen at 17.24 minutes:

In the season two episode School Hard, Spike says Angel was his sire, which we discover was actually Drusilla in a flashback during the episode Fool For Love. The term ’sire’ seems to be loosely used by vamps.

Seen at 31.15 minutes:

Spike’s reflection can be seen in the windows of the subway train.

Seen at 33.02 minutes:

Spike said to Buffy in School Hard, “The last Slayer I killed begged for her life.” But when they show him killing the Slayer, she doesn’t say a word.