Trivia
Nose job, anyone?: "She came in looking for the Gwyneth Paltrow and it came out looking like the Mr Potato Head." You'll know Gwyneth as the cry baby blubberer from the 1998 Oscars and star of such hits as Sliding Doors and Shakespeare in Love. Mr Potato Head is the loveable toy consisting of arms, legs and hats that you stick into a potato. He's also a film star himself, appearing in the Toy Story movies.
Chess with Death: "If he asks you to play chess, don't even do it... guy's like a whiz!" This is a reference to Ingmar Bergman's wonderful 1957 film The Seventh Seal, in which a Knight returning from the Crusades encounters Death, and stalls the Reaper by offering to play chess with him. The famous scene was mercilessly parodied in the 1991 movie Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (amongst others).
Froggy frights: To distract the guards and Doctor Wilkinson, Willow emphasises her fear of frogs, a phobia she first mentioned in What's My Line? - Part I. In the original script it was bats that were supposed to be climbing all over her.
Date with death: There is reference to Jenny Calendar who was killed by Angel in the previous episode, Passion. Joyce tells Giles how sorry she is and hints that Buffy has been directly affected by Jenny's untimely death, probably causing her illness.
Bad hair jokes: Xander calls the security guard "Rogaine boy". Seeing as the poor chap is slightly balding it's rather insensitive of him to suggest that he needs Rogaine, an American hair growth medicine.
Buffy relatives: We learn the sad tale of Buffy’s cousin Celia who died in hospital when Buffy was eight. Interestingly enough, this is the first mention of a Buffy's family other than her mum and dad.
Ode to Buffy: When Angel arrives at the hospital he is rather unsympathetically whistling Ode to Joy from Beethoven's ninth symphony. It was the last symphony Beethoven wrote: for the last ten years of his life he was completely deaf, not particularly pleasant for such a talented composer.
Greek insults: Giles says Cordelia may be "Homerically insensitive" - Homer only wrote two books, The Iliad and The Odyssey, but they were so long and covered such vast topics that his name has become associated with things of epic proportions.
Detective banter: When Buffy says to Willow "Well, Sherlock..", she is of course referring to the world’s most famous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. He was created by author Arthur Conan Doyle and had many adventures with his sidekick, Watson.
Invisible horrors: When Buffy reveals that the creature killing the children is invisible, Xander says "Yeah, but if I see a floating pipe and a smoking jacket, he's dropped". This is a reference to the 1933 version of the H G Wells' film The Invisible Man where a floating pipe and smoking jacket was all you saw of the hero. The film starred Claude Rains.
