Emmy Awards

A bone of contention with many who love Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the fact that it is often overlooked by the Emmy Awards. The show has won in these categories: Christophe Beck’s score to Becoming; and ‘Best Make-Up’ for Surprise and Innocence. Joss Whedon was nominated for the ‘Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series’ award for Hush (interesting considering most of the episode has no dialogue!) and Chosen was nominated in the ‘Special Visual Effects for a Series’ category. Beer Bad received an Emmy nomination for ‘Outstanding Hairstyling for a Series’ in the 52nd Annual Emmy Awards. Hell’s Bells got 3 Emmy nominations: Outstanding Hairstyling for a Series, Outstanding Make-up for a Series (non-prosthetic), and Outstanding Make-up For A Series (Prosthetic).

Juggling Sarah

Sarah Michelle Gellar shows a hidden talent in Hell’s Bells that she can juggle.

Klutzy Amber

Amber Benson on her on-set activities during Hell’s Bells:

Lack of Giles

The following dialogue from Hell’s Bells, which explains Giles’s absence from Xander and Anya’s wedding, was deleted from the episode:

Sex Poodle

In the season six episode, Hell’s Bells, as Anya is practicing her vows in front of Tara and Willow, Tara tells her that she’s probably not supposed to say ’sex poodle’ in her vows. Inher DVD commentary for the episode, Rebecca Rand Kirshner mentioned that this was a shout-out to fellow writer Jane Espenson, who had been calling herself a sex poodle at work.

Abigail Mavity

Abigail Mavity, who played Xander’s daughter Sara (aged 8) in Hell’s Bells can also be seen in America’s Most Terrible Things, 100 Mile Rule, Malcolm in the Middle, Haunted, Becker, Strong Medicine, Gideon’s Crossing, Family Law, Touched by an Angel and Judging Amy.

Ashleigh Ann Wood

Ashleigh Ann Wood played Xander’s daughter Sara (aged 18) in Hell’s Bells. She can also be seen in Joan of Arcadia, Like Family, ER, The Hidden Room and Beyond Reality.

Casey Sander

Casey Sander played Xander’s father in Hell’s Bells. He has played Captain Jimmy Wennick in Tucker and has appeared in Hijacked: Flight 285, The Stranger Beside Me, Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys, Predator 2, Punchline and Dragnet. Casey played Rock in Home Improvement and Wade in Grace Under Fire. The voice of Xander’s father was previously played by actor Michael Harney in season four’s Restless.

Chris Emerson

Chris Emerson, who played Xander’s son Josh aged 21 in Hell’s Bells has been in Bring It On Again and What Women Want. He has also appeared in JAG, The District, 7th Heaven, Boston Public and Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.

George Wallace

George Wallace, who plays the fake Xander from the future (real name: Stewart Burns) in Hell’s Bells, has had a varied career. He worked in the coal mines in McMechen, West Virginia when he was 13. He joined the Navy in 1936 and served during World War II. He had a small job as a singing bartender, which attracted the attention of Hollywood columnist Jimmie Fidler, who helped him get his start in show business. Wallace then starred on stage in several stage productions. In 1960 a horse fell on him and broke his back during the making of an episode Swamp Fox. It took him 7 months to recover. Wallace can be seen in Minority Report (as Chief Justice Pollard), Nurse Betty (as Grandfather Blaine), Bicentennial Man, Forces of Nature, Multiplicity, My Girl 2, The Towering Inferno, The Six Million Dollar Man, Forbidden Planet, Star Trek: The Next Generation and many other movies and TV shows. George sadly died in July 2005, aged 88.

Jan Hoag

Jan Hoag, who played Cousin Carol in Hell’s Bells can also be seen in Dating Games People Play, The Parlor, The Last Dance, Silk Hope, Progeny, Columbo, The Ellen Show, The Norm Show, Melrose Place and Married… with Children. She also appeared in an episode of Dave’s World, on which Nicholas Brendon (Xander) worked behind the scenes.

Joey Hiott

Joey Hiott, who played Xander’s son Josh (aged 10) in Hell’s Bells, has been in Cowboy’s Christmas, Curb Your Enthusiasm, That ’70s Show, Malcolm in the Middle and The Bernie Mac Show.

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.

Lee Garlington

Lee Garlington, who played Xander’s mother, Jessica Harris, in Hell’s Bells, can also be seen in The Hot Chick, Everwood (as Brenda Baxworth), The Sum of All Fears, One Hour Photo, Life Without Dick, American Pie 2 (as Natalie’s mother, starring alongside Alyson Hannigan), Evolution, Dante’s Peak, Meet the Applegates, Psycho III, Joan of Arcadia, The West Wing, Six Feet Under, NYPD Blue, Malibu Shores, Friends, Roseanne and Hill Street Blues. Lee appeared in the pilot episode of Seinfeld (known then as The Seinfeld Chronicles), playing the female role in the show as a waitress. When the show was picked up her character was replaced with Elaine.

Nick Kokich

Nick Kokich, who played the teenage demon talking to Dawn at the wedding in Hell’s Bells, played Daniel Cloud in The Alamo and Private Niebolt in The Last Castle.

Steven Gilborn

Steven Gilborn, who played Xander’s Uncle Rory in Hell’s Bells, can also be seen in Formosa, The Kiss, Coastlines, Evolution, Alien: Resurrection, Nurse Betty, Doctor Dolittle, Private Parts, Final Vendetta, The Brady Bunch Movie, Ellen, Columbo, The Wonder Years (as Arthur Collins), 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, The West Wing, Get Real (as Dr. Chris Carlisle), The Practice (as Gavin Bullock), and many other movies and TV shows.

Cousin Carol

Carol was Xander’s cousin. She went to Xander and Anya’s wedding with her daughter in Hell’s Bells. Carol accidentally used Xander’s cufflinks as earrings.

D’Hoffryn

D’Hoffryn was head of the vengeance demons, with the power to make humans into demons, if they show enough talent. He monitors events on Earth from a demon dimension called Arashmaha. D’Hoffryn was responsible for making Anyanka and Halfrek vengeance demons, and offered to do so for Willow in Something Blue, but she declined. He became a type of father figure for many of his demons, even attending Anya’s wedding in Hell’s Bells, though he quickly became angry when they went against his wishes. When Anya decided to become human again, D’Hoffryn killed Halfrek to spite her, in Selfless.

Josh

The name of Xander and Anya’s son in the phoney vision shown to Xander on his wedding day in Hell’s Bells was Josh.

Sara

Sara was the name of Xander and Anya’s fictional daughter in the fake future Stewart Burns showed to Xander in Hell’s Bells.

Stewart Burns

Stewart Burns was made into a demon and sent to a hell dimension by Anya in Chicago, 1914. He got revenge on her by disguising himself as an old man, pretending to be Xander from the future. He showed Xander false visions of a hellish married life to Anya, which made Xander rethink his skills at being a husband. Burns fought Anya and was crushed by Xander in Hell’s Bells.

Uncle Rory

Xander’s Uncle Rory, who was a “stodgy taxidermist” by day and at night it was “booze, whores and fur flying”. Mentioned in The Dark Age, The Zeppo (when he lent Xander his car), Fear, Itself, Gone and As You Were. We finally got to meet Uncle Rory when he was a guest at Xander’s wedding in Hell’s Bells - and he didn’t disappoint. He pretended to be electrocuted by a toaster and hit on a waitress at the wedding, pretending she was his date. He then explained the finer points of taxidermy to her.

Anya’s dress

Anya wears her wedding dress from Hell’s Bells in her musical-based flashback in Selfless, implying that she brought her wedding dress long before her wedding day in season six.

Anything you wish

In Hell’s Bells, Halfrek tries to get another wish from Dawn, who first fell for her tricks in Older and Far Away.

Back to her old ways

At the end of Hell’s Bells, Anya is seen being comforted by her old boss D’Hoffryn. We discover in Entropy that she was made into a vengeance demon again.

End of the tunnel

Both Angel and Buffy paraphrase the sentence “Light at the end of the tunnel”:
In Hell’s Bells, whilst tying Xander’s tie, Buffy says, “You and Anya give me hope. It’s like… you two are proof that there’s light at the end of this very long, long, nasty tunnel.” Then, when Xander leaves Anya, she says, “They were supposed to be my light at the end of the tunnel. I guess they were a train.”

In Judgement, a moody Angel says:

Angel: “I thought I was out of the tunnel.”
Cordelia: “Sure you did… because the tunnel is - you know, it’s something we all… Are we talking real tunnel or symbolic? Just give me that much.”
Angel: “I saw the light at the end of the tunnel - that some day I might become human. That light was so bright, I thought I was already out.”

Formal wear

Willow tells Xander in Hell’s Bells, “It’s a good thing I realized I was gay because…here we are in formal wear…” This is a reference to their attraction to each other in season three, which was first realized (for Xander, anyway) while they were trying on their evening outfits in Homecoming. The two subsequently kissed, which was seen by their partners (Cordelia and Oz), and the two couples broke up.

No warning

In Triangle, Anya told Xander that if he ever decided to leave her she wanted a warning (such as a big bomb-clock) and some way of preventing it (such as cutting the right wire). When he did leave her, in Hell’s Bells, he had obviously forgotten this conversation. Anya got no warning, and had no way of preventing Xander from leaving, which was exactly what she’d feared.

The wedding party

At Anya and Xander’s wedding in Hell’s Bells, held at the Sunnydale Bison’s Lodge, Willow is Xander’s best “man”. Buffy, Dawn, Halfrek and Tara are bridesmaids, wearing hideous green dresses (”look at it’s arms!”). No one appears to have been there to give Anya away.

Who’s your daddy?

In Hell’s Bells, Xander is shown a vision of his future that terrifies him to the core, even after he learns that it was only smoke and mirrors. His future kids, Josh and Sara, are unremarkable, except perhaps for the question of his daughter’s ears. On the surface it seems a consequence of her part demon parentage, but is there more to it? Sara says, “you’re not even my real father” to Xander in a moment of loathing.
So who is her daddy? Compare her ears with the ears of Clem, and join with me in some wild speculation.

Xander’s cummerbund

In As You Were, Anya says to Xander, “Will you stop wolfing down those chips? One more bag and you’ll pop right out of your cummerbund.” We see Buffy struggling to get Xander into his cummerbund in Hell’s Bells.

Bach

In the episode Storyteller, the classical piece playing at the beginning of the episode, in Andrew’s fantasy, is Brandenburg Concerto 3, Movement 1, by Johann Sebastian Bach. The same piece can be heard in Hell’s Bells, being played by the quartet at Anya’s wedding.
In Out of Mind, Out of Sight, Marcie repeatedly plays Bach’s “Siciliano” on her flute.

Anyanka’s power centre

In The Wish’s alternate reality Giles states that, “In order to defeat Anyanka, one must destroy her power centre. This should reverse all the wishes she’s granted, rendering her mortal and powerless again.” However, that turns out not to be the case. While, indeed, Cordelia’s wish is revoked and Sunnydale returns to its former condition, we later learn of at least one of Anyanka’s prior wishes that was not revoked, i.e., the demon who appears on Anya and Xander’s wedding day and shows Xander the bogus vision of his life with Anya. Presumably, if Giles was correct, that vengenge spell/wish she used to turn that philanderer into a demon would have been revoked, and the demon would have returned to a human and never have arrived to disrupt their wedding.

Burlap

In Wrecked, Anya says the traditional dress for demon bridesmaids is “burlap with blood larva”. In Hell’s Bells, Willow wonders whether burlap and blood larva might be better than their actual green bridesmaid’s dresses.

AC/DC

Hell’s Bells, the title of a season six episode, is an AC/DC song from their album ‘Back in Black’.

Back to the Future

Andrew says “Think McFly” in Conversations with Dead People. He’s referring to the movie trilogy Back to the Future, made in the 1980s in which McFly is the last name of the main character, Marty (Michael J. Fox). More specifically, he’s using the phrase Biff (the thug/bully) used to use to intimidate Marty’s father, the hapless George McFly (played, memorably, by Crispin Glover in the first movie).
The building used as Buffy’s old school Hemery High (in Becoming (Part 1)) was the clocktower from the Back to the Future trilogy.
The demon who pretends to be Future Xander visiting his younger self in Hell’s Bells is reminiscent of Back to the Future II in which Biff time-travels back to visit himself when he was young to tip him about betting.

Manic Panic

In Hell’s Bells, Dawn tells Buffy that Spike’s date is “A Manic-Panicked freak”. Manic Panic is a brand of temporary hair dye which comes in unusual colours such as pink, blue and green.

Marlene Dietrich

In Hell’s Bells, Willow says, “I’m supposed to be best man. Shouldn’t I be all Marlene Dietrichey in a dashing tuxedo number?” Marlene Dietrich (1900-1992) was a singer/actress with a deep voice who appeared in the movies The Scarlet Empress, Shanghai Express, Destry Rides Again, A Foreign Affair and Touch of Evil. She famously wore a tuxedo.

Mary Kay Cosmetics

In Hell’s Bells, the future Anya says she’s doing a make-over party and Xander says, “I hope you crash in your stupid pink car! ” These are references to Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc., a company which was founded in 1963. Mary Kay began issuing pink Cadillacs to its top ‘Independent Beauty Consultants’ in 1969. More than 80,000 cars have been issued internationally.
When Xander and Cordelia met the Bugman (posing as Mr. Pfister from a cosmetics company) in What’s My Line, Part Two, Xander says, “Okay, Mary Kay, time to…”.

Seen at 26.09 minutes:

It’s very bright outside, considering that it’s been raining so heavily all day.

Seen at 32.02 minutes:

The demon pretending to be Xander says that he was a victim of one of Anyanka’s spells many years ago. In The Wish, when Giles destroyed Anyanka’s power centre necklace, he said it would return her to human form and reverse all the spells she has granted - so the spell on the faux-Xander should have been reversed too.