Trivia
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RILEY, YOU BIG LUG
A small shrine to the dumbest man on TV. This week:
To be honest, he's really rather cool in this episode, getting to call the troops in and investigating stuff.
"I'm just going to stay here - I'm not good at research." Hang on, aren't you a Grad student, Riley?
That's not a geiger counter. It's a supermarket Barcode reader. How much for the grey slug monster, Dorris? Is it on Special?.
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Lunacy: Mental illness has long been associated with the Moon - hence 'Lunatic'. A 1995 scientific study in Russia found that in some cases "planetary locations in relation to the lunar month could be correlated with the susceptibility to bipolar manic-depressive syndrome." - so maybe there is something in the old superstition.
By the way, the mental patient who gets attacked by the Queller demon at the crash site is the night watchman brain-sucked by Glory in No Place Like Home.
Little Monster: Debbie Lee Carrington, who plays one of the Queller Demons, has also played an Emperor Penguin in Batman Returns, and (get this) an Ewok in Return of the Jedi. She has a degree in Child Psychology.
Turning Japanese: There is a Demon queller in Japanese mythology, called Shoki - pictures were hung in houses as a good luck charm. Find out more about Shoki at this .
The Name Game: The titles of both the preceding and the following episode are referenced in Listening to Fear. Giles suggests exploring further - going "Into the Woods," just after the body is discovered near the meteorite. Later on, the raving Joyce tells Dawn she’s nothing but a "Shadow."
Oops: Willow refers to the Tunguska meteor explosion in Russia of 1917. It was actually 1908.
Piñata: Xander jokes about the meteorite being a "Festive Piñata." Piñatas are often found at children's birthday parties and are papier-mache figures filled with sweets.
In something of a variation of 'pin the tail on the donkey', the idea is to blindfold a person, spin them around and get them to find and spilt open the piñata to get the sweets.
Coincidentally, it's also the name of a low-budget horror film Nicholas Brendon made with Star Trek: Voyager's Garrett (Harry Kim) Wang.
