Bye, Dru

The final appearance of Juliet Landau as Drusilla on Buffy was in Lies My Parents Told Me (though she was actually portraying the First Evil at the time!).

Mariachi

When filming the scene in Lie My Parents Told Me, in which Giles and Buffy are in the graveyard, there was a huge party going on nearby so they could only shoot takes in between loud blasts of Mariachi music.

Naming Spike

This exchange between Spike and Dru was deleted from the episode Lies My Parents Told Me:

Pep talks

Buffy writers realised that Buffy’s inspirational speeches in season seven were becoming annoying for fans. They began to make fun of her pep talks. In Storyteller, Andrew indicated that he felt they were dull, and once Buffy started she’d only stop when she had to go to work. He also made fun of them saying Willow had a high threshold for speech-making, but even she looked bored. In Lies My Parents Told Me, Buffy says, “Have you heard my speeches?” and “The other day I gave an inspirational speech to the telephone repair man”, showing again that Buffy writers can parody themselves - and that they pay attention to what the fans think.

Rain

In Lies My Parents Told Me, we see a scene set in New York, where Spike and Nikki are fighting in the rain. Fake rain was added digitally to the shots but it looked terrible so the graphics had to be removed just the day before the episode aired.

Robin’s vest

David Fury and D. B. Woodside note in the DVD commentary for Lies My Parents Told Me that they both wanted Robin Wood to wear his green vest in the scenes with Spike, but they had to put him in a harness for a stunt later in that scene, which would have been seen under the vest. They eventually had him wear a shirt, then strip down to his vest before putting the shirt on in time for the stunt, when Spike hits him across the room.

Spilliam

In the audio commentary for the episode Lies My Parents Told Me, David Fury, the director and co-writer, referred to Spike as “Spilliam” when he had just been turned into a vampire, between his human (William) life and vampire (Spike) existence.

The end is near

UPN advertised the fact that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was ending, and the final hour was coming, during the episode Lies My Parents Told Me.

Woodside and Aubert

D. B. Woodside (who played Principal Robin Wood) noted in his DVD commentary for Lies My Parents Tolde Me that he and K. D. Aubert, who played his mother in the episode, had worked together that year before. In an interview in the official Buffy Magazine (#68), D. B. says, “that was actually a lot of fun, because I knew K.D Aubert, the actress who was playing my mother from an independent movie, Easy, that we had shot a few months earlier.”

Caroline Lagerfelt

Caroline Lagerfelt played Spike’s mother in Lies My Parents Told Me. She’s had a varied career and has been in other TV shows including The X Files, Nash Bridges, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Beverly Hills, 90210, Picket Fences, The Drew Carey Show, Chicago Hope, ER, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, NYPD Blue, Law & Order and Ghostwriter. She has also been in several movies including Minority Report, Father of the Bride 2 and Bye Bye, Love (which also starred Amber Benson and Eliza Dushku).

Damani Roberts

Damani Roberts, who played the young Robin Wood in Lies My Parents Told Me was born in 1996. He has been in episodes of Charmed, ER, Finders Keepers and The King of Queens. He played Tuga Anderson in All About the Andersons and was in the movie Daddy Day Care as ‘German speaking boy’.

Ira Streck

Ira Streck, who played the vampire called Richard in Lies My Parents Told Me, has also appeared in Joss Whedon’s Firefly, in the episode ‘Ariel’.

K. D. Aubert

K. D. Aubert played Robin Wood’s mother, Nikki Wood, in season seven. The character was played by April Wheedon-Washington in Fool For Love. K.D. Aubert co-hosted the MTV show Kidnapped before playing a Harem Girl in the 2002 movie Scorpion King, which starred wrestler, the Rock. K.D. was also in the 2003 movie DysEnchanted, in which she played Red Riding Hood. K.D. ranked number 91 in Maxim’s Hot 100 2003, ahead of Avril Lavigne and behind Jennifer Sky (who played Heidi in The Pack).

Thom Williams

Thom Williams, who played a vampire in Lies My Parents Told Me, has also been in the Angel episode ‘The Magic Bullet‘ as a ‘Possessed Human’. He is a regular Angel stuntman.

Anne

Spike’s mother’s first name was Anne, seen in Lies My Parents Told Me. She was a sickly woman who doted on her only son. When Spike was sired by Drusilla, he immediately brought the vampire home so they could sire Anne and become a group. Spike’s intention was to aid his mother and stop her from suffering, but she turned on him, forcing Spike to stake her.

Bernard Crowley

Bernard Crowley was Nikki Wood’s Watcher. He took her son, Robin Wood, in and raised him after Nikki was killed by Spike. Robin related this tale in Lies My Parents Told Me.

Principal Robin Wood

Robin Wood was Principal at the newly-rebuilt (and short-lived) Sunnydale High. Wood was the son of a Vampire Slayer named Nikki, who was killed by Spike in New York (seen in Fool For Love). He employed Buffy as a student counsellor at his school, though he knew she was really the Slayer. When he discovered that Spike was the one who killed his mother, he tried to kill him, but Spike overpowered him. Wood teamed up with the Scoobies to fight the final fight, which he survived. He was last seen charming Faith in Chosen.

Crossovertastic

The Angel episode Destiny is a sequel to the Buffy episode Lies My Parenmts Told Me, in which we see Spike being sired by Drusilla. In Destiny, we see a flashback to Spike’s first meeting with Angelus. Back in present time, Spike references the events seen in Lies My Parents Told Me when he says, “Yeah, right. Boo-hoo. Thought he killed his bloody father.Try staking your mother when she’s coming on to you!”

Dead and buried?

In After Life, Spike empathises with Buffy as he says he knows how it feels to dig your way out of your own grave. Many people have felt that his comment was made defunct in the episode Lies My Parents Told Me. In that episode, Spike was sired by Drusilla and returned home to his mother - who did not know he was dead and so therefore had not buried him. This seeming mistake can be explained by the mythology seen in Angel - in the episode ‘Reunion‘, it’s mentioned that Drusilla’s a traditionalist. She takes away the bodies of those she’s sired (such as Spike and Darla) and buries them. Therefore it makes sense that Spike would have dug out of his grave. Drusilla had put him there, not his family. Also, in the Angel episode, ‘Not Fade Away‘, Spike says in response to the line, “It’s your funeral” that “It’s okay. I never had a proper one.”

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.”

Frat boy slaughter

In Lies My Parents Told Me, Anya references the time in Selfless when she she had a group of frat boys slaughtered: “I mean, he could slaughter a hundred frat boys…”

Giles’s personal library

In Lies My Parents Told Me, Giles says he has a personal library which could be used as a school library. It must consist of the books saved in Graduation Day before the school was blown up. He says, “Well, I can have my backup library sent from home in the mean time. It’s not much but…”

Hark! The lark!

William reads his poem to his mother in Lies My Parent’s Told Me. It goes:

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.

Missing Willow

Willow heads off early in the episode Lies My Parents Told Me and doesn’t tell Buffy why. She actually goes to L.A. after a phone call from Fred, to help with a little ‘Angelus’ problem that they have at Angel Investigations. This can be seen in the Angel episode ‘Orpheus‘. The timing of these episodes was a little off as ‘Orpheus‘ was shown before Lies My Parents told Me in the U.S and in the U.K.

Niblet

Spike’s pet name for Dawn is “Niblet”, heard in Blood Ties, Seeing Red, Beneath You and Lies My Parents Told Me.

Slamming doors

Buffy and Giles both slam a door in the face of the other at some point in the series: Giles does it to her in The Dark Age and Buffy does it to him in Lies My Parents Told Me.

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.

Viscera

In Lies My Parents Told Me, Drusilla says, “Ooh, such a pretty house you have, sweet William. It smells of daffodils… and viscera.” Dawn told Xander and Buffy in Same Time, Same Place that viscera is guts.

Early One Morning

Early One Morning is the song which the First uses to trigger evil Spike in season seven. It is an old folk song famously sung by Sarah Brightman, who released it on her album ‘The Trees They Grow So High’ (Released in 1988, 1995 and 1998). The song was also used as the theme song to a Canadian kid’s TV show called The Friendly Giant that ran from 1958-1985. The original lyrics of Early One Morning are:

Early one morning,
Just as the sun was rising,
I heard a maid sing,
In the valley below.

O, don’t deceive me,
O, never leave me,
How could you use
A poor maiden so?

(Chorus)

Remember the vows,
That you made to your Mary,
Remember the bower,
Where you vowed to be true,

(Chorus)

Thus sang the poor maiden,
Her sorrows bewailing,
Thus sang the poor maid,
In the valley below.

(Chorus)

Prokaryote Stone

A Prokaryote Stone reveals memories that are subconsciously affecting a person’s behaviour. It is a small, hard stone which enters the cerebral cortex through the optic nerve. A spell is said to make the stone soften and move towards it’s target, where it unleashes visions of the past:

The First Evil brainwashed Spike to kill on command, using the song “Early One Morning” as a trigger. The Scoobies used the Prokaryote Stone in Lies My Parents Told Me to discover this

Anne Rice

Anne Rice was the author of a popular best-selling series of vampire novels, including Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned. In School Hard, Spike says to Angel, “People still fall for that old Anne Rice routine?”
In Buffy vs Dracula, Buffy tells Dracula, “I’ve fought more than a couple pimply, overweight vamps that called themselves Lestat.” She’s referring to the main charismatic vampire character of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles.
The story in Lies My Parents Told Me of Spike siring his mother as a vampire may come from Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. In the book, the character Lestat sired his mother Gabrielle, because she was ill and to prevent her from dying.
When Darla tries to get a vampire to sire her in The Trial, they have the following conversation:

Darla: “Weird?! It’s mythic!”
Shempire: “No, you been reading too much Anne Rice, lady. You got no idea how this thing works.”

In Origin, Connor asks Angel, “Do you spend all your time making out with other vampires, like in Anne Rice novels?”

Dr. Gull

In Lies My Parents Told Me, William and his mother’s doctor was called Dr. Gull. This could be a reference to Dr. William Gull (1816-1890). He was a doctor in service to the Royal Family at that time, and there are theories that say he may have been Jack The Ripper.

Hamlet

In Lies My Parents Told Me, Spike says, “There’s the rub, isn’t it?” This is a paraphrase from a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Ay there’s the rub”. It comes from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, when he feels suicidal but worries about what comes after death.
In the same episode, during her unholy vampire advances upon her son, Anne (Spike/William’s mother), calls him her Prince. In Shakespeare’s play, Prince Hamlet also had an interesting (to say the least!) relationship with his mother.

Monopoly

Faith says in Beauty and the Beasts, “Get out of jail free, huh?” This is a reference to the board game Monopoly, which has a card which allows the player to leave jail. In Blood Ties, Buffy tells Dawn she has a “get-out-of-jail-free card”, and in Lies My Parents Told Me, Anya says, “Spike’s got some sort of ‘get out of jail free’ card that doesn’t apply to the rest of us”.
In Real me, Monopoly is one of the games that Anya brings when she and Xander babysit Dawn.

Pink

In Lies My Parents Told Me, Buffy says, “I’m coming up so you better get this party started.” This is a reference to the Pink song ‘Get the Party Started’.

Yul Brynner

In Lies My Parents Told Me, Buffy says to Giles, “It was boring, old, and British… like you… le Brynner.” Yul Brynner (1915-1985) was a Russian/American actor, notable for his role as the King in the 1956 movie The King and I.

Seen at 08.00 minutes:

David Fury notes in his DVD commentary for this episode that when Robin, Giles and Buffy are talking in the school, Giles’s eyeline does not meet up with Buffy’s, though he is supposed to be looking at her. This occurs as Giles stands near the window.

Seen at 10.14 minutes:

Giles says the device will enter Spike’s brain through the optic nerve. It enters his eye but then moves up his forehead: the optic nerve goes straight back into the brain, not over the skull. This may be an in-joke as the company Optic Nerve Studios did a lot of the special make-up effects on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Seen at 11.10 minutes:

Spike/William’s hair is different to his hair in Fool For Love, though it was supposed to be the same time period. This is mentioned also in the DVD commentary.