Episode Quotes

Mistakes/Goofs

• Goof (incorrectly regarded as a mistake): When The First (masquerading as Drusilla) speaks to Spike, she touches his hair and cheek, but The First is unable to touch anything. However, since Spike is still mentally unstable after getting his soul back, it is possible that he's just imagining Drusilla is touching him.
• Goof (revealing mistake): When Buffy rolls backwards with the zombie woman on top of her, the zombie woman's top moves up to reveal her very non-dead regular person stomach.

Trivia

• Harry Groener (Mayor) filmed his moment with Spike weeks after the episode itself was shot. You can tell there's a cut when the First change from Adam to the Mayor.
• The First appears to Spike in the form of the Big Bads of the past seasons in reverse order -- Warren (Season 6), Glory (Season 5), Adam (Season 4), Mayor Wilkins (Season 3), Drusilla (Season 2), The Master (Season 1) -- and finally as Buffy. This shot of pseudo-Buffy is used as the last shot of the opening titles for season 7.
• In the coffee shop scene, when Halfrek is advising Anya to improve her vengeance, Halfrek warns Anya to remember what happened with "Mr. Czolgosz" (phonetically spelled "Cholgosh" in the captions for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers). This is a reference to a moment in the episode "Superstar" in which Anya, while explaining what she used to do as a vengeance demon, said, "Vengeance wishes, on ex-boyfriends. I'd wish he was a dog, or ugly, or in love with President McKinley, or something." On September 6, 1901, a fanatical fringe Anarchist named Leon Czolgosz shot President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. Czolgosz is one of the main characters depicted in the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical "Assassins;" Joss Whedon, the writer of this episode, has given many interviews (mostly in conjunction with "Buffy"'s musical episode) in which he has expressed his admiration for the works of Stephen Sondheim.
• When the writers first came up with the character of Robin Wood, they weren't definite on whether it would be a man or a woman, so they picked a name that could apply to either gender.
• When the First states that they are going "Right back to the beginning. Not the bang, not the word, the true beginning..." it is a statement that the speaker predates the existence of the earth. "The Bang" is a reference to the theory of evolution. "The Word" is a probable allusion to a Bible passage about creation: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." (John 1:1-3, NIV)