From beneath you it devours: It�s the season�s big catchphrase. Prepare to hear it endlessly from now on, and listen out for an hilariously wrong translation in a future episode. Here, it's sneakily used in the German-set sequence: 'Von der Tiefe verschlingt es' go the techno lyrics on the soundtrack. No prizes for guessing how that can be translated. Being 'Beneath You' has been a significant sentiment before: in Fool For Love, both Cicely and Buffy tell Spike that he is beneath them.

Connected to the visions: Buffy has a vision of the fate of the girl in Frankfurt, and knows it's not an isolated case. Again this is a throwback to Buffy's year one, when she had premonitions of meeting the Master long before doing so (indeed, of the whole season in its opening minutes!). This rare ability has been largely untapped in recent years.

Tremors: The Sluggoth demon looks remarkably similar to the giant Graboid worms from the Tremors movie franchise. Sadly Kevin Bacon fails to show up with a big stick of dynamite to sort it out. Looking for a 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' link between Buffy's Jenny Calendar and Angel's Lindsey McDonald? The USA's Sci-Fi network started broadcasting a Tremors series in March 2003. The Tremors series stars Victor Browne, who played the fire-fighting boyfriend of Robia La Morte's character Megan on Rescue 77. This short-lived 1999 series on the WB also starred Christian Kane (as the splendidly named fireman Wick Lobo), who Angel viewers know better as legal Lindsey. Voila!

The whole dating demons thing: Lots of below-the-belt material on this theme, introduced as Xander drives Buffy and Dawn to school. When Xander laments how things turned out with Anya and Dawn offers her demon exclusion-zone advice, Buffy refers cattily to Dawn's 'smoochathon with teen vampire' in season six's All The Way. More on this story later.

New broom, this room, sweep it clean: Why does the basement of the brand spanking new Sunnydale High School look such a total mess? It�s as though bits of old junk have been piling up there for years.

Sole-destroying: A Bastinada, or bastinado, is - as Buffy rightly points out - a wooden torture device used for the beating of feet. Bastinado is considered to be extremely painful and has long been used in interrogation and torture activities as a means to elicit information from the victim. Does the Principal bone up on wood-related objects because of his name?

Niblet: Another of Spike's morsel-related nicknames for the very slim Dawn (who's now taller than Buffy, and not the little sister). See also sweet bit, snack size, platelette.

Spike / Xander: When Nancy asks the gang in the Bronze "Is there anyone here that hasn't slept together?", there's a priceless exhange of glances - wordless but worried - between Spike and Xander. Fuel for a lot of adults-only fanfic there, or the series making another knowing response to its diverse fanbase? As for Buffy and Anya, we presume not.

Different class: Anya casually says she created something that wasn't a Sluggoth demon as such. "Same phylum... I just embellished." A phylum is a high-ranking level of the organisation of all animal species. All mammals are part of the phylum Chordata, which is part of the animal kingdom, for example. Which phylum demon worms would belong to is not recorded.

Loose end or plot trend?
Moments when we thought, "Now, where's that leading?"
Warning, may contain Spoilers.