Anthony on kissing Emma

Giles and Anya kissed in the episode Tabula Rasa. Anthony had the following to say about the experience:

“My children went, “Eeuuww. You kissed Anya.” “I know, but it was gone very quickly and we didn’t enjoy it.” Thank God nobody ever asked me to kiss Alyson, because that would have been weird. It was weird enough with Emma. I was glad it was over with very quickly. Weird; not right.”

Marti on Giles leaving

Marti Noxon said about the episode Tabula Rasa:

Raymond O’Connor

Raymond O’Connor, who played the loan shark ‘Teeth’ in Tabula Rasa, has also been in April’s Shower, My Giant, Halloween 4, Six Feet Under, Days of Our Lives, Babylon 5, Sister, Sister and Beverly Hills, 90210.

Bunnies

Anya has a fear of bunnies, first referenced in Fear, Itself when she wore a bunny costume to a Halloween party, with the simple explanation: “bunnies frighten me”. This fear is shown in Shadow, The Gift, Once More, With Feeling, Tabula Rasa, Smashed, Selfless and in Chosen. In Bargaining (Part 2), Razor asks Willow what she’s going to do, “pull a rabbit out of a hat?” Anya turns to Tara to be reassured that she won’t. Anya’s final words on the show are about bunnies. She thinks of them whilst preparing for the huge battle - “Bunnies. Floppy, hoppy, bunnies.” Anya’s bunny suit in Fear, Itself became so popular that modelmakers Clayburn Moore created a figure of the character.

Duck!

In Tabula Rasa, Buffy says, after an unexpected blow, “note to self, learn to duck”. She didn’t heed her own wisdom though - in Lessons, when Buffy discovers crazy Spike, he says “Buffy, duck.” To which Buffy replies, “What? Duck? There’s a duck?” Then she gets hit by the flying dead janitor, thus concluding her ducking lesson.

How lame is that?

In Tabula Rasa, Spike/Randy comes to the conclusion that he’s a noble vampire with a soul because he doesn’t feel the need to bite Buffy and he helps her to attack the other vampires. Buffy/Joan says “A vampire with a soul? How lame is that?” little knowing that her ex-boyfriend, Angel, is just that. Spike himself gets a proper soul at the end of season six.
When Spike decides that he is a “noble vampire”, he says “I help the hopeless”. Of course, “We help the helpless” is the motto of Angel Investigations in Buffy’s spin-off show Angel.

Janus again

In Tabula Rasa, there is a replica of the two faced statue Janus behind Giles when he finds his airline ticket in his pocket. The statue was seen first used by Ethan Rayne in Halloween.

Kinda gay

Vampire Willow’s attraction to women in Doppelgängland is a foreshadowing of Willow’s future as she has a relationship with Tara from season four, and with Kennedy in season seven. Buffy says in this episode “vampires are nothing like the people they were, right?” to which Angel replies, “well, actually…” Willow says, “I think I’m kinda gay” again in Tabula Rasa.

Kitten poker

Some demons and vampires use kittens as currency in games of poker. Spike joined a game in Life Serial, which was where we first met Clem. A literal lone shark came after Spike in Tabula Rasa looking for kittens he was owed.

Living the dream

The tweed suit Spike wears for most of the episode Tabula Rasa is similar to the one he wore in Xander’s dream in Restless. It was in this dream that Giles said he looked upon Spike as a son. As they both have English accents, they assume they are related when they lose their memories. The shark in Tabula Rasa was also mentioned in Restless. In Xander’s dream, he said, “Like a shark with feet and … much less fins”, Spike then added, “And on land!”

Nancy Boy

The phrase “Nancy Boy” is used three times in Buffy and Angel - In Tabula Rasa, Spike says, “He’s got his crust all stiff and upper with that nancy
boy accent” and in School Hard he says, “A lot faster than nancy-boy there.” In Sense and Sensitivity, Tony says to Angel, “”Seems that sensitivity training I paid for really took, huh, nancy boy?”

Not without you

In Tabula Rasa, Buffy tells Giles, “I can’t do this without you”. She made the same statement to her Watcher when Giles confronted Angelus after he murdered Jenny in Passion.

Randy

When he lost his memory due to the Tabula Rasa spell, Spike believed that he was called Randy, and was Giles’s son.

Michelle Branch

Michelle Branch sings ‘Goodbye to You’ in the Bronze at the end of the episode Tabula Rasa. The song is taken from her platinum selling album ‘The Spirit Room’. The song was also played in the UPN promotion for the episode Empty Places. The lyrics are:

Lethe’s Bramble

In All the Way, Willow uses Lethe’s Bramble to perform a forgetting spell on Tara (and herself and her friends, by accident, in Tabula Rasa). Tara discovered what Willow had done in Once More, With Feeling when she researched Lethe’s Bramble in a book at the Magic Box. It said: “Lethe’s Bramble: Used for augmenting spells of forgetting and mind control”.

Tabula

Translated from Latin, tabula rasa means ‘Clean slate’. It is a forgetting spell which involves burning a lethe’s bramble, and dipping a crystal into the flame. When the fire burns out, the crystal turns black, and memories are erased. Willow performed the spell in the episode Tabula Rasa, but it went wrong when a spark from the fire set light to a large bundle of lethe’s bramble. Willow, Tara, Dawn, Buffy, Xander, Anya, Giles and Spike all forgot who they were. The spell was broken when the crystal was crushed.

Allen Funt

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.”

Gone with the Wind

The epic 1939 movie Gone with the Wind starring Clark Gable and Vivian Lee is referenced a couple of times in Buffy. In Tabula Rasa, Spike says to Buffy, “we kissed, you and me all Gone with the Wind, with the rising music and the rising… music”. In The Killer in Me, Kennedy refers to the movie when she tells Willow how she first knew she was gay: “It was Gone with the Wind. I saw that, and I knew I wanted to sweep Scarlet off her feet.”
Coincidentally, the O’Hara plantation in the movie is called “Tara”.

Joan Collins

In When She Was Bad, Cordelia asks Buffy, “what’s with the Joan Collins ‘tude?”. Later, in season six’s Tabula Rasa, Buffy has amnesia and decides to call herself Joan.

Joan of Arc

Willow dressed as Joan of Arc when going to a Halloween party in Fear, Itself. Joan of Arc is the patron saint of France. From a young age she thought she heard voices which she believed to have been sent by God. They told her to free France from the English, who were occupying northern France. She was given troops to command and she led them to victory but she was captured, interrogated and tried for witchcraft. Joan was burned at the stake at only nineteen years of age. The people of Sunnydale attempted to burn Buffy and Willow at the stake in Gingerbread when they were under a spell and thought the girls were witches.
In Tabula Rasa, after losing her memory, Buffy decides to name herself Joan (“I feel like a Joan”). This isn’t completely random - like Buffy, Joan of Arc also died young after a violent life.

King Ralph

In Tabula Rasa, Xander says, “I just got back the memory of seeing King Ralph“. This was a movie made in 1991 starring John Goodman.

Mary Poppins

In Revelations, Faith calls Gwendolyn Mary Poppins, after the eccentric British nanny from the book and the 1964 musical of the same name. In Once More, With Feeling, the men seen sweeping streets and dancing is an homage to the chimney sweeps’ dance from Mary Poppins. In Tabula Rasa, Spike says of Giles, “Oh listen to Mary Poppins. He’s got his crust all stiff and upper with that nancy-boy accent.”

Seen at 14.26 minutes:

You can clearly see that the lights in the bookcase behind Giles are on before the gang fall asleep under the spell. When Buffy awakes, she turns the lights on again. Who turned them off?

Seen at 18.33 minutes:

When Spike is talking to Giles about him and Anya he says, “I saw you two, sleeping together”. Giles and Anya awoke before Spike did - how can he have seen them sleeping together?

Seen at 30.44 minutes:

When Buffy and Spike are fighting the vampires, Buffy uses a post from a letter-box to stake one of the vampires. From the vampire’s point of view we can see that Buffy held out the blunt part of the pole, however when the shot changes we can see that Buffy used the pointed part to stake the vampire.