Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997) - 406 mistakes in entire show

Other: In episode "Helpless" in season 3, after the council member bitten by the crazy vampire rises, his bite marks heal. But in season 7's "Lies My Parents Told Me," it shows Spike's mother already risen and her bite marks are still there.

Deliberate "mistake": While it is established that Angel doesn't age, it's obvious across both Buffy and Angel that David Boreanaz gets older. More unavoidable than deliberate, but still worth noting.

Continuity: When Giles is giving his speech about the Hellmouth the books Buffy's holding keep changing from facing him to facing Buffy and back again.

Audio problem: When everyone is in the Bronze - just before the vamps show up - you hear the first line of a song being played, Ballad For Dead Friends by Dashboard Prophets, cut to outside and you see the vamps strolling along and killing the doorman, then cut back into the Bronze and the same line plays again. This is a total error in cutting the show, it is stated there is no live band but still the same line plays twice when that is not how the song goes.

Audio problem: When Buffy kills the vampires dragging Xander at the beginning, we hear two impact sounds but don't hear either of them turn to dust. They were only a few feet away and there was no other sound to cover it up.

Continuity: Willow fills the test tube halfway with the witch-detecting potion, but when she hands it to Buffy it is only one-quarter full.

Revealing: The edges of Cordelia's solid white contacts can be seen after she is blinded.

Continuity: At home Buffy helps her mother open a crate. She tears off the cover and leaves it hanging by the side. Next shot the lid is back on. Not nailed anymore of course, but there was no time to put it back on.

Continuity: When Cordelia gets out of the car, she shuts the door, but in the next shot the door is open and is then hit by the truck.

Continuity: When Xander and Willow are talking in the hall about his invisibility, the pen Willow toys with changes position back and forth between front and reverse shots.

Continuity: At the beginning Buffy asks Giles, "You'll be stopping me how?" and he is facing her. Cut to him and he's looking down and away.

Continuity: In the episode 'Teacher's Pet', when Ms. French is eating her bug sandwich, her sleeves go from being up in the long shots to being pulled down in the close-up of the sandwich.

Factual error: In Teacher's Pet, Doctor Gregory was giving the class a lecture about ants. But he projects an image of a beetle onto the wall behind him.

Continuity: When Buffy finds Dr. Gregory's glasses on the lab floor she places them on the table, from the long shot she places them at the left end of the table near a plastic tub with a white lid, with the glasses open. Then it cuts to a close up where they are in front of a book on the right side of the table and are closed. Then cut back to the long shot and they are in the original place.

Factual error: In the famous scene where Buffy tells Giles, "If the Apocalypse comes, beep me," she grabs her pager from out of shot. Trouble is, she's standing in the middle of her hall and there's nowhere she could have picked the gadget up from.

Continuity: When Buffy is talking to Owen at the end, there is a woman wearing a red/black checkered jacket, sometimes carrying a red bag, walking up the stairs behind Owen several times. You can also see her behind Buffy in shots facing her.

Audio problem: In the scene where Buffy and Giles are talking to the zookeeper about the hyena possessions, in the zookeeper's over-the-shoulder shots, you can see that the audio of what he says does not line up with the visual of him speaking.

Continuity: In "the pack" nearly all the supposed video clips of hyenas Willow watches on her computer monitor throughout the episode are actually of African wild dogs.

Continuity: When Willow hides under the table in the classroom after fleeing the pack, we see that it is on legs and doesn't touch the floor. Yet when Xander comes in and scans the room, he sees the table but Willow's feet aren't visible, even though they should be judging by the height of the table from the floor.

Continuity: Vampires can't enter a house unless invited. Throughout Buffy this appears to be some kind of force field, as if the vampire has run into a brick wall. But in this episode, the vampire chasing Buffy and Angel gets its arm through Buffy's front door.

Continuity: In the episode 'Angel', during the climax at the Bronze Buffy puts down her crossbow and walks towards Angel, about 5 steps. When Darla bursts in a few seconds later the crossbow is back at her feet.

Continuity: In the scene where Buffy is walking away from Willow and Xander to leave the Bronze, you see her holding a dark jacket right after she feels Angel's presence behind her. As she is walking down the street you can see she is wearing a dark jacket, either dark brown or black. The following scene, she is still walking but wearing a light baby blue colored jacket.

Continuity: When Buffy leaves the Bronze (right before the Three attack her) to go home, she passes a strange-looking green-lit window. After the attack, she and Angel run past this window again, even though they're heading in the same direction Buffy was going anyway.

Audio problem: Buffy's scream and Joyce's scream are completely identical. The same scream was obviously used for both of them.

Revealing: When Darla is spying on Buffy and Willow in the library, her reflection is seen on the side of the bookshelf.

Continuity: Buffy's birthdate starts at 1979. In "I Robot, You Jane", when the demon pulls up Buffy's file in the school system, it shows her year of birth as 1979 and that she is a senior. But when her file comes up on the student's computer screen, its changed to 1980 and sophomore. It wasn't until towards the end of season 1 in "Nightmares" that her birth year is 1981 (on her tombstone before she comes out as a vampire.)

Plot hole: In "I Robot, You Jane", how exactly does Willow scan Moloch out of his book when the scan is only about two thirds the width of it?

Visible crew/equipment: When Buffy is searching through the backstage area (before the chandelier falls on her), there is a mirror in the background. At one point in the mirror, you can see the reflection of a crew member. Pause for a better look but it can be seen at normal speed.

Continuity: In the season 1 episode "Nightmares", Buffy is talking to Willow about her mom's divorce and she shuts her locker. A few seconds later she shuts her locker again.

Revealing: When Xander punches out the evil clown if you freeze-frame you can see the punch missed the clown by quite a distance, I noticed it without freezing it but it's better to see if you do.

Revealing: The Master's artificial thumbnail is visibly falling off in a few shots of the opening teaser.

Continuity: In the scene where we see Buffy's mum drop her off at school, when Buffy is worrying that her dad will not show up, we firstly see Joyce's seatbelt is on. We then see her again and it is still on. However after the shot goes back from Buffy to herself, we can see her seatbelt is off. Then when the shot comes back to her again it is back on.

Visible crew/equipment: At the very end, as the invisible girl gets taken along a corridor by the FBI agents, check the top of the screen - a boom mike creeps in as the agent says his line, then is withdrawn.

Continuity: When the gang are in the cafeteria and Giles comes along, Buffy is holding some food in her hand and Giles sits down, but in the next shot she has her drink in her hand and the straw at her mouth.

Audio problem: When Cordelia is tied to the chair at the end of the episode from a side view you can see her mouth 'Marcie' but can't hear it and in the front shot she says 'Marcie' again.

Continuity: In the episode Prophecy Girl, during Buffy's rooftop fight with the Master, her shoes change in between shots from white heels, to black boots when she's kicking him, back to white heels.

Plot hole: Xander looks for Angel's help to save Buffy from the Master, yet, no human knew where Angel lived, so how would Xander know where Angel lived?

Continuity: When Buffy drowns in Prophecy Girl, she falls into the pool with her hair tied in a ponytail and her arms under her. When she is discovered by Angel and Xander, her arms are by her sides and her hair is loose.

Continuity: When Buffy falls down after the Master bites her, you can see her fall, then hear her hit the dry ground. But then a few shots later she falls again and this time into water.

Continuity: Joyce is driving Buffy to school and she is wearing a pink tank top. At school that day her shirt is white, but the next day at school she is back to wearing the pink outfit.

Audio problem: When Jenny and Giles are talking and Jenny is talking about the festival, they walk behind a drinks machine and then her lips don't match up with what she says.

Audio problem: When Giles and Miss Calender are walking through the halls at the beginning of the episode there's a kid at the vending machine, we hear the coins rattling but he never puts money into the slot. In fact, the money doesn't go anywhere near the slot.

Revealing: As Willow, Cordy Miss. Calendar and Giles are wheeled over the bones of the Master, Giles goes past and his hand brushes against the bones and the skeleton bends revealing that it is in fact rubber

Revealing: When Buffy sets the vampire alight, his face suddenly gets very shiny, showing the fireproof gel that was applied to the actor's skin.

Revealing: In the scene where Absalom is speaking of the Anointed one, the line can be seen where the vampire makeup meets up with his real face. This may be seen in various scenes he is in.

Continuity: At the end of the episode when Buffy is talking to Giles about how she can't face her friends, her hair is over her ears for the entire conversation, but when she is about to walk away, her hair is suddenly tucked behind her ear and she couldn't have tucked it behind as that side of her head is still in view when the camera's on Giles.

Revealing: When all the vampires are saying "for the dark", and one gets staked, there's a mark on his shirt where the stake's about to come through before it actually happens. Plus Buffy's hands are in the wrong place for her to have pushed that stake through anyway. Not only that, but the mark isn't even close to the vampire's heart to begin with.

Continuity: In the season two episode, 'When she was bad', in the scene where Buffy smashes the masters skeleton with a sledge-hammer she smashes the rib cage to pieces. Suddenly the rib cage has again become completely intact and she smashes it to hell again.

Other: In all episodes where the high school football team is mentioned, they are called the RAZORBACKS but in this episode the cheerleaders cheer for the GREENBACKS (it wouldn't even make sense if this was a nickname as SHS colours are yellow and burgandy).

Continuity: In the episode 'Some Assembly Required' Eric takes photos of Cordelia and Buffy near the start, when he's developing them later the poses in the photos are different to the way the girls were standing at the time.

Continuity: While studying at the Bronze, Buffy and Willow leave their books on the table to go and dance. Spike calls them outside to fight a vampire, and when Xander runs back inside to grab a stake the books have all been put back into Buffy's bag.

Continuity: When the Anointed One is killed by Spike, he disintegrates into dust. But in the overhead shot, there is no dust on the floor, even though it should have fallen through the bottom bars of the cage.

Continuity: In this episode, when Giles is looking for information about Spike, he finds that Spike is barely 200. But, in season four episode seven we find out that Spike is actually 126. Which would make him 124 in "School Hard."

Other: As Spike is walking down the hall, you can see a reflection of his head on a locker to his left.

Continuity: When Buffy's fighting Spike at the end of the episode, there are times when it's obvious that it's James Marsters' stunt double. Spike's hair is platinum blonde, slicked back, and all one length in the back, while the stunt double's hair is more brassy, spiked in the front, and layered in the back.

Continuity: When Cordelia comes up to Buffy talking about how "even slaves get minimum wage", in pretty much every shot her arms switch from being at her sides to crossed in front of her, held behind her or on her hips.

Continuity: When Buffy and Sheila are walking out of school after the meeting with Snyder, Xander runs up to talk to them. He mentions during this scene how Buffy will be helping out at the Parent-Teacher Night, but he shouldn't know this - Buffy only just found out about it in the meeting with Snyder.

Revealing: When Spike is talking to the Anointed One for the first time, one of the henchmen tries to rush him from behind and Spike backhands him without even looking, but Spike's hand movements, the reaction of the henchman and the sound of the punch connecting on the audio track are all out of sync.

Plot hole: Willow and Cordy disappear during a vampire attack. We later see that they spent the entire night hiding out in a closet, but wouldn't Buffy have gone looking for them once the vampires were gone? She knew they had run off somewhere (she mentions it to Giles when she gets a stake from the library). Instead she just goes home, leaving them still missing as far as anyone knows.

Audio problem: When Xander, Willow and Umpada meet up at The Bronze, the song the band is playing is at the point of a guitar solo. If you watch Oz (who has already been established as 'lead guitarist') on stage in the background; he's blatantly NOT playing that solo. The hand movements don't match up.

Continuity: When Buffy opened the trunk for the first time, the corpse of the real Ampata is lying with its head to the right of the trunk. When she opens it the second time, the corpse is lying with its head on the other side.

Plot hole: When Ampata is first released from her imprisonment, why didn't she break the seal then? She knew the only way to re-mummify her was to put the seal back together, so why not shatter it completely instead of leaving it in large fragments?

Continuity: Ampata tells Buffy she has no lipstick, but earlier that episode we saw her using lipstick, in the high school bathroom right before the bodyguard attacked her.

Continuity: When Buffy is at the party, we see that she is wearing black shoes with a high heel. But when she is fighting Machida, the heels are considerably lower.

Continuity: Willow is turned into a ghost. Throughout the entire episode, she can't touch anything (can't turn the pages of a book, etc.), yet towards the end when she and Giles go to Ethan's shop, and she leaves, you can hear that she opened and closed the door, even though she can walk through walls and can't actually touch the door. The curtain moves when she leaves too.

Continuity: The vampire Angel fights in Buffy's house was never invited in.

Character mistake: While researching Angel's past, Willow comments that he was still human in 1775. But he was already a vampire by then, having been sired in 1753.

Audio problem: Just before Willow got turned into a ghost, she started to talk, but it wasn't her voice that was talking, it sounded like Cordelia.

Other: When Buffy and Willow find the picture of the noblewoman in the Watcher's Diaries, Buffy asks "Who is she?" and Willow replies "It doesn't say", but if you watch closely you can see that during the brief shot of the book her name is visible next to her picture.

Plot hole: Giles tells Willow to leave him while he extracts information from Ethan on how to break the costume spell. By the time Giles smashes the statue Willow has already found the others, who had left the house where she thought they were and are hiding in a completely different area of the town. No matter how long it took Giles to beat the information out of Ethan, there is no way Willow could have gotten back to the house, realised they were gone and tracked them down before the spell was broken. It is also impossible she could have happened across them - they were hiding, after all.

Continuity: Buffy knew that Spike was the vampire Ford asked to come, but Ford never told her that, nor did anyone else.

Continuity: When Buffy is fighting the vampire in the alley, it's fairly obvious that it's her stunt double fighting because Sarah's hair is slightly shorter, and isn't as full at the ends.

Revealing: When Buffy and Giles are talking in the school in the final scene, the same extra (in a beige shirt and blue jeans) walks out of the room behind Buffy twice.

Continuity: When Giles is making calls in his apartment, he takes his glasses off and drops them on the desk, just above the notebook with his list of names. But in the close up of the notebook, the glasses are now on the top of the notebook.

Continuity: Cordelia tells the Scoobies that Giles was talking to the police about a homicide, but this wasn't mentioned in the time that she was in the room.

Continuity: At the end of the episode, Buffy complains to Willow and Xander that she will have to blow her allowance on getting the tattoo removed before her Mom sees it. Moments later when Buffy is talking to Giles, the tattoo is gone.

Continuity: If Spike and his gang only take a few hours to break through the door to Ford's club in 'Lie To Me' (which we are told is six feet of solid steel), why can't Angel break through a thin wire door that visibly shakes every time he hits it, given the same amount of time, in the episode 'What's My Line? Part 1'?

Continuity: When Buffy is fighting Kendra the fragments of the table she is thrown onto have disappeared when she stands up again.

Revealing: Although the mirror in Buffy's room is mostly covered by photos, Angel's reflection can be seen for a split second as he walks past it to pick up the photo of Buffy ice-skating.

Continuity: When they ask about the demon that Xander and Cordelia encountered in Buffy's basement, Xander points to the bug that Cordelia threw from her hair onto the open book. He then slams it shut. A shot later, the book is gone.

Revealing: At the very beginning of the episode, Lyle's reflection can be seen in the tiles on the floor in the shopping mall.

Continuity: When Buffy puts her egg down, the position of the chain and pen she sets it down by change depending on whether the shot's from Willow's side or Buffy's.

Continuity: Near the beginning when Buffy and Willow are talking about Willow getting together with Oz, Buffy's hair is in front of her ears. Then she turns to face Willow to say, "You think he's too old 'cause he's a senior? My boyfriend had a bicentennial," and in that shot change, her hair switches to behind her ear then goes back to being in front of her ears in the next shot without her every touching her hair.

Other: In this episode, Buffy says that Drusilla could be alive because they 'never saw her body'. Drusilla is a vampire; if she was dead, there wouldn't be a body to see - as the slayer, Buffy knows this.

Factual error: When Buffy and Angel escape from Spike, Dru and the Judge they jump down into the sewer, then run all of five metres before going up the ladder to escape. When they come out of the sewer they are in a very open area with the factory nowhere in sight. They have not travelled far enough for this to be the case.

Continuity: The book that Cordelia replaced sideways in the bookshelf behind her disappears, and then reappears just before she and Xander kiss.

Continuity: In Innocence, when the Scoobies are in the library, Oz (I think) says for the crew to meet outside Xander's house a half hour later. Then we cut to Buffy strolling through Sunnydale High in broad daylight, then back to Oz's van outside the military base and it's last night again.

Continuity: When the Judge is blown up, Drusilla and Angel leap from the balcony. In mid-air, they somersault and their backs are facing the ground as they fall, but a second later they land on their stomachs.

Revealing: Drusilla's reflection can be seen in the metal part of what appears to be the base of a shopping mall map just as she's getting up after the Judge has been blown up.

Revealing: In the scene where Drusilla and the new reformed Angelus are in the shopping mall and they got blown over the side after Buffy fires the grenade launcher at the Judge, you can tell that it was Mike Mass and not David Boreanaz that got blown over the side.

Continuity: When Buffy is told that Angel has become Angelus, she mentions "I should have known. When I saw him at the house he was different", but her earlier conversation with him took place not at the house but at his apartment. This isn't just a strange turn of phrase - the scene was originally shot at the Summers house, but was changed to Angel's apartment for more emotional resonance.

Continuity: When Buffy wakes up she is wearing metallic nail polish, yet when she went to sleep previously, she has no nail polish on. Later in a scene where Buffy is dreaming about her night with Angel she has the nail polish on again, even though that took place the night before when she did not have her nails painted.

Plot hole: After losing his soul, Angelus kills Jenny Calender's uncle, who is a descendant of the gypsy clan who cursed him. But, since there is nothing to suggest the uncle's room is in a public location, Angelus couldn't have gotten in the room without an invitation.

Continuity: When Willow is running from the werewolf she falls and there's a big mud stain on her pants. In the next scene when she runs into the library it's gone.

Continuity: When Willow is escaping from Oz the werewolf she runs into the library, where Giles is. In the first shot, he isn't wearing his glasses, then in the next shot he is, then he isn't, then again in the next shot he is.

Revealing: In the scene where Giles is driving Buffy to the Bronze if you look closely you can see people's heads pushing the car because it had broken down.

Visible crew/equipment: Right after Kane and Buffy's fight in the woods, in the shot right after Kane leaves, you can see set-lights above the clearing where they fought.

Deliberate "mistake": After Jenny pushes the janitor's cart into Angelus and runs up the stairs, there's no physical way he could be waiting for her at the top of the stairs (even with vampiric speed). Joss Whedon has admitted in interviews that he put in this blatant continuity error as the situation is a staple of the horror genre (girl runs from villain, only to find him standing right in front of her).

Continuity: In the computer room, Jenny asks Angel how he got into the school. Earlier in the series, Spike's gang attacked the school without being invited in. Jenny would have known about this and therefore should have known that vampires can get in.

Continuity: When Buffy looks into the childrens' ward the sign on the door saying 'Basement Access' disappears and reappears between shots.

Continuity: After drinking the water with the virus, Buffy looks into a room and her hair is damp and brushed back. In the next shot, it's dry and parted down the middle.

Factual error: In the episode 'I Only Have Eyes For You', during the flashbacks to 1955 James and Grace dance, and James later shoots himself, to the song 'I Only Have Eyes For You', which wasn't released until 1959.

Audio problem: When Giles looks through the window of a door at the high school and sees the janitor yelling at the teacher, the janitor's lips don't match with what he is yelling.

Continuity: When Buffy is waiting in Principal Snyder's office, the 1955 year book slides off the bookshelf and lands open, but when Buffy walks over to pick it up, the book is closed.

Visible crew/equipment: When Xander opens his locker and the gross hand grabs him, if you use slow-mo when the shot is inside the locker looking out, you can see the white t-shirt of the man whose arm it is.

Revealing: After Buffy has entered the wasp-filled school there's a shot of the others standing outside waiting for her. In the establishing long shot if you look closely you can see they used the same shot as earlier in the episode - Buffy is standing there with them.

Continuity: Drusilla kills Kendra by cutting open her jugular artery and leaving her to bleed to death. When Buffy enters a while later, there is not a drop of blood anywhere.

Plot hole: In the flashback to Buffy in L.A., how did Angel get there with the front windshield of his car blacked out? Being a vampire, he obviously needs it during the day, but he also wouldn't be able to see traffic. And it just seems to be too much of hassle for him to remove it at sunset, just to reapply it at sunrise, just to remove it again, etc.

Continuity: In 'Becoming, part 1' as Buffy kneels over Kendra's corpse you can see the door over her shoulder, it stays closed all the time. There is a cut to a shot of Buffy from behind showing a cop raising his gun, but he couldn't have come through the door without us seeing him in the last shot.

Continuity: According to Giles in 'Revelations' there are 12 cemeteries in Sunnydale, but in 'Becoming Part 1', amongst others, Buffy agrees to meet someone (Angelus in this case) in 'the cemetery'. If there are 12 in the city, how would they know which one she means?

Other: When Willow is attempting the spell in the hospital, the subtitles state that Xander is speaking a line of the incantation. It is actually Oz speaking - Xander is off rescuing Giles, as we see in the very next shot.

Continuity: When Joyce is being interviewed by the policemen at the house, you can see the number outside the house, but it says 163 instead of 1630, the number on which Buffy lives.

Continuity: In "Becoming Part 2" At the end when Spike chokes Drusilla unconscious, he picks her up, one of her hands is resting on her stomach and the other is hanging to her side. It cuts to a shot of Spike looking at Angel and Buffy fighting then to Spike leaving with his back facing the camera. You can see that the hand resting on Drusilla's stomach moved to Spike's shoulder.

Plot hole: Spike makes it clear when talking to Buffy that he wants Angel dead. Yet later on, when Buffy confronts Angel and says she doesn't think she can take them all on alone, Spike only knocks Angel down when he easily could have staked or beheaded him.

Revealing: Throughout almost the entire sword fight between Buffy and Angel, from the far away shots, its clear that the actors are stunt doubles. It's very visible when there is a shot from the top.

Plot hole: In 'Becoming, part 2' Spike decides he doesn't want to see the world end and makes an alliance with Buffy. Later on, however, he helps Angel get the information he need from Giles to end the world. If he's trying to save the world, why help Angel destroy it even faster? He didn't need to buy Giles any time - he had already convinced Angelus to keep Giles alive for the time being. If he had truly reached breaking point later on Spike could have called in Drusilla then, but as it is he helped Angelus way too early and nearly cost Buffy her life. [Some people disagree at great length, others don't - I haven't seen the episode myself, and the explanation of the mistake and the corrections just make my brain melt. File this under "make up your own mind and just let it go"].

Revealing: During the fight scene at the end when Buffy is fighting the demons you see her throw one of the demons off the platform. If you watch him fall you can see him land safely on a conveniently placed mat.

Continuity: In episode 'Anne', when fighting the hell dimension demons Buffy's shoes change from trainers to plain pumps in different shots.

Other: In the episode 'Anne' Kenn tells Buffy that time in his hell dimension passes more quickly, that one day on Earth is the same as 100 years in his dimension. This means time goes roughly 36,000 times quicker. When Lily falls into the portal, it's at least 10 seconds until Buffy jumps in after her, but Lily is still just sitting there looking stunned. If times moves that much faster, 10 seconds would become over 4 days. Would Lily still have been just sitting there?

Revealing: When Buffy runs in front of the car you can see knee pads on her knees. You have to look quite closely because they are the same colour as her tights.

Visible crew/equipment: During one of the fight scenes in the demon dimension, there is a stunt mat visible on the left side of the screen, and a whole group of crew members visible in the background.

Continuity: When Buffy fights the guards and says, "Anyone who isn't having any fun here follow me," the top under her jacket is purple. In the next shot, when she turns to walk out, it is green, then back to purple when we see her again.

Continuity: In the scene where Buffy has just finished fighting the demons, she begins climbing up chains and if you look at her shoes, they continue to change until she reaches the ground above the chains and runs off.

Continuity: In the episode 'Anne' when the latest people to be brought into hell are lined up with a demon talking to them, there are 3 or 4 people standing between Buffy and Lily. When the demon asks them all in turn 'Who are you?' we see him asking Lily and after that the shot rests on Buffy, but in the background we only hear him ask one more person before he gets to Buffy.

Continuity: Lily's boyfriend is taken into an alternate dimension, where time moves quicker than ours, and is kept there until he is an old man. But when Buffy finds him, she realizes who he is because of his tattoo - which has not faded or aged in any way.

Continuity: When Joyce throws the bag with the stray cat into it into the hole, the bag lands with the knot at the top right, and shows no signs of moving. They chat for a few seconds about something to say, then when Buffy starts filling in the hole (with no sound of a moving bag), the bag's now lying with the knot on the left.

Continuity: After Buffy is supposed to meet Willow and she is walking home you can see she is wearing light blue wedge heels but when she is down in the basement she is wearing completely different purple heels.

Plot hole: When Giles calls Buffy's house, Joyce is in the kitchen, where in other episodes we see there is a telephone. Yet she doesn't answer it.

Revealing: During Faith's fight outside the Bronze in 'Faith, Hope and Trick' when she stakes the vampire, if you watch carefully, you can see the rubber stake bending.

Other: When Angel fights with Buffy in the forest you can see that he hasn't got shoes on, just socks. Later, when Buffy goes back to the mansion and Angel is chained up, he's wearing shoes. How did he manage to put them on, if he was in chains?

Revealing: In the teaser of "Beauty And The Beasts", when Jeff is running through the woods, you can see in the top left corner of several shots a lamp being used to light the scene.

Continuity: When Buffy is in the counsellor's office she is wearing a yellow kind of gauzey cardigan which alternates between being completely buttoned up to unbuttoned between shots.

Continuity: In numerous episodes, including 'Homecoming', we see vampires being killed when they weren't stabbed through the heart (the Texan girl vampire in this episode is stabbed practically in the stomach). But the show also makes an issue of the fact you have to stab a vampire directly in the heart to kill it (think the flashback in 'the Becoming, Part 2' where Buffy misses the vampire's heart, or 'Pangs' where Spike gets staked several times).

Continuity: The tattoo on Giles' arm is reversed compared to the way it was facing in the "Dark Age" in season 2.

Other: When the female watcher is being destroyed after Buffy cuts off her arm. Her sleeve is empty, which is not possible, as Buffy could not have removed the arm but not the sleeve. Also the arm on the floor is removed at the elbow, but the watcher has lost the entire arm in a previous shot.

Revealing: When Gwendolyn Post fights Angel in the mansion, she breaks a long-handled shovel over her knee to create a stake. If you watch in slow motion, the handle of the shovel is pre-broken (she simply holds the two pieces together tightly), and the pieces separate just before they actually make contact with her knee.

Visible crew/equipment: In the Buffy/Faith fight right around when Buffy says "We can work this out..." You can see what appears to be a boom mike bob in and out of the frame in top left.

Revealing: In 'Revelations' when Buffy and Faith are fighting, the kick Faith aims at Buffy's face right after she says 'We can work this out' very noticeably misses, but Buffy still reacts as though it landed.

Continuity: In the episode Lover's Walk, when Spike is threatening Willow at the factory, in the long shots Willow's hair is up over her face, and in the close-ups it isn't. The pointed bit of the bottle is at the top or bottom in different shots too.

Other: In the final scene, where Spike drives down the road while singing 'My Way' he turns the steering wheel significantly, but in the external shots the car is travelling down a straight road, with no bends. He is turning it sharply to the right as the camera cuts to outside, but the car continues straight ahead.

Continuity: In the scene when Spike was in Buffy's kitchen with Joyce, Buffy keeps him down on the table and grips Spike by the throat. She uses her left hand (in the close shot it is also the left hand) but in the next scene when Angel is also in the kitchen and Spike hits Buffy's hand, she uses her right hand (Spike hits her right hand).

Continuity: In the scene where Xander and Willow are stuck in the factory Xander wakes up you'll notice that the blood on his side burn closest to his ear constantly changes lengths from shot to shot. It goes from under the chin to slightly below where the blood on the other side of his side burn is.

Revealing: Early on, Spike falls down drunk. He wakes up because his hand is on fire from the sunlight. When he runs away, a little bit of fire stays on the stones where his hand was when it started.

Continuity: When Buffy is walking forwards through Angel's dust in 'The Wish' there's a vampire running towards her, only a few steps behind. Then there's a shot of her walking forwards taken from another angle, then when we can see behind her again the same vampire hasn't moved forwards at all, he's still running from 3 steps behind her.

Continuity: Near the start of 'The Wish', the scene where Cordelia is talking to the Cordettes and meets Anya. During the close-ups of Harmony, Anya is standing to camera right of the brunette Cordette behind her. A few seconds later when the shot is further away Anya is standing camera left of the Cordette.

Continuity: Anyanka's demon face in "The Wish" is very different to her demon face any of the other times we see her ("Entropy", "Selfless" etc).

Continuity: In the episode 'The Wish', when Xander stakes Angel he is thrown to Buffy's left, away from the machine. Seconds later as Buffy walks forward it cuts to a shot of Xander fighting to her right, on the other side of the machine.

Continuity: At the beginning of the episode when Buffy is fighting the demon, she stabs it and the demon lands half on top of her. When they fall to the ground, you can see a big stain on her pants where the demon touched her. But when she stands up, her pants are clean.

Continuity: In 'The Wish', when Cordelia is cutting up the photo of Xander at the start she chops his head off high up on the neck. When she sets fire to the remains it shows a piece of the photo burning, and the cut is around shoulder level.

Visible crew/equipment: Just after Cordelia says "let's go to the Bronze", check the top of the screen - a microphone drops into shot for Harmony's line "is that a joke?"

Continuity: In 'The Wish' when Xander has killed Cordelia and throws her corpse down she falls at a definite angle, which makes it look like she should have landed on her side. When Giles breaks out of the cage, however, she's lying flat on her back.

Audio problem: When Cordelia is murdered, her body falls off-screen with no sound of it hitting the ground. Seconds later, Vamp Willow drops the key to the book cage and we hear the noise of it clinking on the ground.

Factual error: In Amends, season three, one of the movies playing at the theater is 'Abilene,' which was not released until March 13, 1999 ; three months after this episode was aired (and probably five months after it was filmed, which is interesting).

Revealing: In the shot with Buffy and Angel on the hill when it first starts snowing, the snow appears much more dense in the middle of the shot, over the characters, than it does on either side, showing where they centred the machine they used.

Continuity: During season 7 we are told several times that the First cannot take corporeal form, ie. it cannot touch things. However, in its first appearance in the season 3 episode 'Amends', when it manifests as Jenny Calender and runs its fingers through Angel's hair you can see his hair moving underneath her fingers. It wouldn't be able to do this if it weren't corporeal.

Continuity: In the previous episode 'Amends', Buffy was sporting a brand new short fringe. In this episode it has grown out. Completely.

Factual error: There is a short picture of a 17th century German newspaper. The actual text however not only is written in modern High German as opposed to Mid-High German, but also is full of errors (mixing female articles with male nouns is only one example). Funnily enough, Giles' incantation at the end of the episode is in correct German.

Factual error: When Giles and Cordelia are driving to save the girls from getting burned at the stake and are making the potion to make the demon show his true face Giles tells Cordelia to shred the Wolfsbane. This is a huge mistake as any Witch will know (my sister pointed this out to me) that Wolfsbane is highly poisonous and should never be touched with bare hands and Cordelia didn't have gloves or anything.

Continuity: In the library, a book in front of Buffy begins to slide off of a stack of books. Change of camera and book is back on top of stack.

Visible crew/equipment: Near the start, just after Buffy kicks the vampire onto the roundabout, check the top left corner of the screen as she says her line - boom in shot.

Visible crew/equipment: While Buffy, Giles, and the gang are in the library fighting the demon that came out of the Hellmouth, the camera zooms toward the door that leads into the hall, where you can see Xander being chased by the dead guys. As the camera zooms in closer towards the round window in the door, you can see its reflection in the glass when the strobe light flashes.

Continuity: In the basement scene, with Jack and Xander, the bomb counts down from 13 to 10 seconds. Then after Xander says his line, the bomb again shows 13 seconds.

Continuity: In the school near the end, one of the dead guys looks through the round window into the library and says 'wow'. In the long shot from within the library, his face isn't in the window. Back to the shot of the window, he's still there.

Continuity: In the basement scene, when Jack and Xander face off over the ticking bomb, the number of beeps is hugely disproportionate to the seconds ticking down.

Continuity: When Xander's being threatened, the knife moves from under his chin to the side of his neck between shots.

Continuity: In the police car, Buffy is on the left hand side of the car and Faith is on the right, but after they make it crash, they open the right hand door and Buffy is the first to get out.

Continuity: When the detective is interviewing the woman in the alley, he mentions that the murder took place "last night". In "Bad Girls", we see Buffy visiting Faith the day after the murder, and that night is presumably when she has the dream about drowning, so by the time the detective is asking this question it is actually two nights after the murder, not one.

Other: When the detective is interviewing the woman in the alley he says "So you heard the man scream about what time?", but Finch didn't scream as he died.

Continuity: In 'Consequences' Buffy says to Faith 'Less that 24 hours ago you killed a man'. In 'Bad Girls', Faith kills Finch in the alley on the first night. One night later Buffy and Angel are attacking Belthazor, the night after that is the night when Buffy dreams about drowning, so the night when Buffy says this is actually about 72 hours after the murder.

Other: In "Doppelgangland", Vampire Willow struggles to remember Cordelia's name. However, it is still Willow, she knew Cordelia from being human (we see this in The Wish as well).

Continuity: Whenever we see the two Willows together in this episode we see that Vampire Willow is understandably very pale in comparison to the living Willow. However, in the library with Cordelia, when Vampire Willow says 'How about dinner?' her face is no longer pale.

Continuity: Willow's hair changes position between shots when the vampire brushes her hair back and kisses her.

Audio problem: While Faith is stabbing the demon in his apartment, we hear the sound of her knife going through, and him yelling in pain. However, the last sound of her stabbing him comes a little late: The knife isn't even touching him.

Revealing: Watch Xander's right leg as Angelus punches him onto the sidewalk - it bends the wrong way at the knee and flies up to his waist, showing that it's a dummy.

Revealing: After Faith brings Angelus back, when she goes to punch him and he blocks, the stuntman switch is very obvious - he's noticeably taller, has different hair and doesn't even seem to be wearing any vampire make-up.

Continuity: The time on the clock, when Buffy spots Jonathan, changes dramatically between shots.

Revealing: In the scene where Buffy is fighting the big scary lunch lady, look closely in the far away shots because you can see that the big lunch lady is now a skinny little stunt double.

Other: When Angel is in Buffy's room, feeding her the potion, the window is curtain-free, allowing the room to fill with sunshine which can be seen on Angel's back.

Continuity: When Buffy is trying to read Angel's mind, his chain goes from being inside to outside his vest between shots.

Continuity: In "Choices", Faith threatens Willow with her knife. The mayor says 'girls', change of shot and the knife goes from being across Willow's face and by her ear to under her chin.

Continuity: When Willow hands Giles the pages she stole from the books of ascension, initially the folded side faces to the left, with loose edges of pages to the right, then in the next shot the folded edge is now on the right.

Continuity: After Buffy slams the Gavrok spider thing on the ground with her back, she gets pulled up by Angel. We see this shot from the back, and we see that the Gavrok is no longer on the floor or on her jacket. In the very next shot, we see Angel kick it across the floor. Where did it come from?

Continuity: In 'Graduation Day, Part 1' when Buffy and Faith are fighting Faith falls into a table, knocking all the comics on it onto the floor. In one or two later shots you can see (on the very edge of the screen) that there's still a comic on it.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Buffy is packing Joyce's clothes into a suitcase you can see a mic moving at the top of the shot as they walk through the door.

Continuity: In Graduation Day Part 1, when Faith and Buffy are fighting, Faith throws Buffy into the wall near the TV, but the TV is intact. A few shots later, there is debris on the floor, glass and such, from the TV, and when it's shown again, the TV is unbroken. This happens a few times. In Graduation Day Part 2, when Faith and Buffy are talking in the apartment, the TV is broken again.

Revealing: In Graduation Day Part One, when Faith shoots Angel with the longbow, you can see the false point spring out as if it were on a hinge from inside his jacket.

Continuity: In 'Graduation Day, Part 1' when Giles stabs the Mayor, as he takes the foil out of his chest you can see a wound on his shirt. When the shot changes it has disappeared. I know the Mayor is invincible and his wound heal in seconds, but it still takes a second or two for his wounds to close up, they don't just disappear.

Plot hole: In 'Graduation Day pt 2' the Mayor has his vampires stand at the bottom of the steps leading out of the school to stop any escaping students. The thing is, all the parents managed to escape out the side exits. Since the Mayor was expecting all the students to try and run too, why didn't he have these exits covered?

Continuity: When Buffy wakes up in the hospital bed you can you can see the black strap of her tank top underneath the gown. Then when she gets out of bed on walk to Faith, and it shows her walking through the hall you can see a white spaghetti top through the gown.

Continuity: When Wesley and Cordelia kiss, after a few seconds they freeze in place. Cordelia has her left arm around his waist, we see a shot of her face for about a second with her arm definitely angled downwards, then we cut to Wes' face and her hand's now on his neck.

Deliberate "mistake": Every time the commandos are seen in the early episodes of this season (The Freshman and Fear, Itself) they wear ski masks to protect their identities. Starting in The Initiative, they stop doing this. The reason is that the audience needs to be able to identify the different commando characters, but it's still a discontinuity.

Continuity: When Buffy is fighting the vampires at the end of the episode, she grabs a tennis racket and smashes the brunette vampire over the head. She falls over the back of the couch and we hear the thud of her landing, however in the wide shot of the couch the vampire has just started to go over the back.

Visible crew/equipment: When Buffy and Xander are doing some research, check the left side of the screen in a wide shot, when Xander asks "how far back do the disappearances go?" You may need to turn the brightness up, but there's a boom mike bobbing around.

Continuity: In the scene where Buffy and Kathy are deliberately infuriating each other (tapping pencils and cracking eggs) there are several lights on throughout the room (on Buffy's desk, above Kathy's computer, in the kitchenette) yet when Buffy turns out her bedside lamp, the entire area is thrown into darkness.

Continuity: When the portal is opened Buffy crawls around to the other side of her bed yet just as the portal closes there is a wide shot and she isn't next to the bed.

Continuity: When Spike finally gets into the area where the gem is and Harmony follows him up there, he puts on that necklace thinking it's the gem. When he realizes Harmony has the gem it shows him taking off the necklace. It cuts to another shot and then shows him again with the necklace, but minus the charm.

Continuity: When Spike pins Harmony to the wall, his hands change from flat against her to grasping her shoulders, depending on the angle.

Other: We've seen before that vampires are fine as long as they aren't in direct sunlight, yet in this episode Spike is in the shade when Buffy removes the ring and he still starts fizzling.

Continuity: When Spike and Harmony find the treasure room containing the Jewel or Ring of Amarah, after Spike stakes Harmony he removes the necklace he had on, but in the next shot he's wearing the necklace again.

Continuity: When Buffy catches Parker talking to another girl he stands up to leave and slings his backpack over one shoulder. In the next shot it's over both shoulders.

Continuity: When Spike is in the area where the gem is located, he walks to the right of entry hole, where he finds the gem. Then Harmony appears from the right side of the screen, where there's obviously no entrance.

Revealing: When Buffy is fighting Spike, she throws him against a table and then runs over it; you can see this is her body double. It is extremely obvious.

Continuity: When Buffy and Spike are fighting on campus during the day, Xander tries to help Buffy but Spike throws him against a lamppost. When he lands in the ground he falls completely on the grass on his side but if you look behind Spike in the next shot he lies half on and half on the grass on his front.

Continuity: When Xander is showing Willow and Buffy his fake ID and the view of the shot is from behind Xander, he is holding the card with his thumb and middle finger. Switch to the view from behind Willow and it's being held with his thumb and index finger. Then it switches to behind Xander again and it's back to thumb and middle finger.

Visible crew/equipment: At the very end of the scene where Buffy and Giles discuss what happened (including the Initiative), you can see the microphone at the top of the screen.

Continuity: When Veruca comes to Oz's cage to spend the night there, she tosses her jacket onto the round stone thingie (knob?) at the end of the stairs, and it covers the whole thing. However, when Willow discovers them in the morning and Veruca goes to pick up her jacket, you can see that it has moved. Willow didn't touch it when she entered, and both Oz and Veruca were locked up so they couldn't get anywhere near it.

Revealing: In the scene when Oz stops the female wolf from attacking Willow, and they both change and Oz tears her neck out, if you look closely, you can see the actor's real skin at the neck.

Continuity: When we see Veruca eating at the table, she reaches for a cup as we see Oz coming up behind her. The shot changes and we see her turning around and reaching for the same cup again, though she never had time to put it down.

Visible crew/equipment: In the scene where Willow visits Xander to discuss what may be going on with Oz; towards the end of the scene, when the camera is on Willow, you can see the sound mike at the top left of the screen next to the green crate in two different shots.