The age of an angel: Giles suggestion that Angel may have been in Hell for hundreds of years – given that time in that dimension moves at a different rate (see Anne) - now makes precisely pinpointing Angel's age rather difficult.
Wild dogs: The episode opens and closes with readings from Call of the Wild, a classic novel by Jack London about a dog who is sold off to pull sledges in the frozen north, but escapes to lead a wolf pack.
Pop culture: Several movies are mentioned or quoted, including The Full Monty (Xander's "I can handle the Oz Full Monty"); The English Patient (Faith's "Every guy from Manimal down to Mr. I-Love-The-English-Patient has beast in him") and The Sound of Music (Buffy's reference to its title song: "Three-dimensional, Sensurround, The Hills Are Alive..."). Coincidentally all of them were Academy Award winners, and all won Oscars for their music.
Sensurround was created by Universal in 1974, to give extra bass rumble to the disaster epic Earthquake. Manimal was an awful TV series about a college professor who could change into any type of animal. It ran for eight episodes in 1983.
