SEVENTH SEAL. BtVS Intertext/Allusion.
In "Killed by Death" the Scoobies talk about Buffy's vision of the perpetrator who may be killing children in the hospital.
XANDER: Flu doesn't exactly sound monsterrific.
BUFFY: I know. But there's this Dr. Backer, and he's been giving them these experimental treatments. I-I'm not sure what he's up to, but he's a little creepy. A-and then there was this kid, Ryan. He said he saw something.
GILES: Saw what?
BUFFY: Death.
CORDELIA: Death?
WILLOW: The Death? As in, "it is your time"?
GILES: Buffy, a-a-a frightened child . . .
BUFFY: Yeah, but I thought I saw something. I'm not sure, I was really out of it, but . . .
CORDELIA: But you do know that you saw death.
WILLOW: Did it have an hourglass?
XANDER: Ooo, if he asks you to play chess, don't even do it. The guy's, like, a whiz.
BUFFY: Maybe it wasn't death. Maybe it was something else.
Xander is thinking of Ingmar Bergman's classic film The Seventh Seal, in which Antonius Block, a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) returning from The Crusades, delays his fate by engaging Death in a chess match.
