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| - Angel is haunted by the spirits of people he's killed, and the Scooby Gang suspect an ancient evil is involved.
* Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Fourteen million square miles of them, and that's not including a lot of natural cave formations and a gateway to Hell.
* Accidental Innuendo (In-Universe): Joyce is putting up the Christmas decorations; Buffy is thinking about her Erotic Dream.
* Actor Allusion: The maid Margaret is played by Cornelia Hayes O'Herlihy, who played Princess Margaret in Gods and Monsters.
* Always a Bigger Fish
* Blatant Lies: Faith turns down Buffy's offer of Christmas dinner, claiming she's already been invited to a big party.
* Call Back: Joyce claiming that Giles didn't want to share Christmas with them is undoubtedly due to the embarrassing events of "Band Candy".
* Chekhov's Gunman: The First would return in Season 7 as the final Big Bad of the series.
* Christmas Episode
* Christmas Miracle: It begins snowing on Sunnydale, leaving the town in total darkness, and saving Angel from burning. Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane.
* Dissonant Serenity: Giles opens the door to find Angel standing there asking for a Vampire Invitation. He keeps it together and walks into the kitchen, then comes out with a loaded crossbow. Oh Crap.
* Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Unless you're Buffy.
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* Driven to Suicide
* Eldritch Abomination: The First briefly morphs into one before disappearing.
* Eureka Moment: Buffy realising the dead Christmas trees reveal the location of the Bringers.
* Erotic Dream: The First gives Angel these to entice him into sleeping with Buffy and losing his soul.
* Evil Plan: The First wants Angel to kill the Slayer, and in the process turn him back into the evil Angelus. Angel decides to prevent this by committing suicide, but this is also acceptable to the First, as it means Angel can no longer be a weapon against evil.
* Eyeless Face: Bringers, Harbingers. They have a 'no eyes' kinda look.
* Failed Attempt At Drama: After Willow says she wants to sleep with him, Oz responds by standing up.
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* Something Else Also Rises: After Willow goes into more detail about what she wants from him, he quickly has to sit down again.
* Final Boss Preview: The First Evil will return as the Big Bad of Season 7.
* Foreshadowing: Angel drinking Buffy's blood comes to pass as the First predicts, albeit for different reasons. And we get our first mention of Xander's troubled home life in a reference to him sleeping outside to avoid their drunken squabbles.
* What Buffy says to Angel "Strong is fighting! It's hard, and it's painful, and it's every day" is what he puts into practice in the spin-off series Angel.
* Flashback Echo: Showing Angel as the drunken lout he was before being turned into a vampire.
* Frothy Mugs of Water: Played for Laughs as Willow has a couple of soda bottles in a champagne ice bucket.
* Hannibal Lecture: Plenty of these by the First to Angel.
* Hard Work Montage: The Scoobies researching the problem (and eating pizza).
* Holding Hands: Buffy and Angel at the end of the episode. Definitely not Just Friends.
* Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday
* Humanoid Abomination. The Harbingers
* I Didn't Mean to Turn You On: Angel encounters Buffy in her bedroom wearing a blood-red dress, her hair pinned up to expose her neck and her lower lip trembling from repressed emotion -- he has to jump out the window to prevent himself from jumping her.
* I Have a Family
* Inadvertent Entrance Cue: Xander asks who else could have as pathetic a social life as he does. Cue Willow walking through the door.
* Incredibly Lame Pun: In Sunnydale the Underground really is underground!
* Ironic Echo: "Cry out. Make a scene."
* Insecure Love Interest
* I Wished You Were Dead: Inverted
* No Time to Explain: Buffy to Faith -- Aesop Amnesia is averted when Buffy stresses that she will explain, all of it, remembering the lesson of "Revelations".
* Lady in Red: Invoked deliberately by Willow and accidentally by Buffy.
* Let's Wait a While: Oz turns down Willow's offer to lose her virginity, aware she's doing it just to prove she really loves him.
* Mind Rape: The First tries to pull one on Angel.
* Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The Harbingers of Death.
* Ominous Latin Chanting
* Perp Sweating: Xander isn't very good at it.
* Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Angelus bullies a servant into agreeing to have sex with him, and then shows her his Game Face.
* Ready for Lovemaking: Oz enters Willow's house to find a candle-lit room, Willow wearing a tight red dress, and Barry White's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe" playing on the stereo.
* The Reveal: We finally discover why Angel was brought out of the hell dimension; to kill Buffy. Buffy is not willing to accept this explanation, and the fact that the First is willing to settle for Angel's suicide is an indication she's right.
* Say Your Prayers: One of Angelus' victims says the Twenty-third Psalm.
* Sex for Solace: What the First tempts Angel with -- by sleeping with Buffy he can satiate his desire for her and then, by turning evil, be free of guilt forever.
* Shut UP, Hannibal: Buffy pulls one on the First Evil, which is the Buffyverse equivalent to Satan, after the latter's Hannibal Lecture.
* Talking in Your Dreams: Buffy is somehow able to see what Angel is dreaming, perhaps in order to further torment him (given that Buffy has a front-row seat on Angelus' crimes). During the Erotic Dream however it's more a case of "Screwing In Your Dreams".
* Tear Jerker: Buffy trying to talk Angel out of killing himself.
* This and That: Willow offers to "do that thing" with Oz.
* Twisted Christmas
* Two Scenes, One Dialogue
* Villains Never Lie
* Walking Wasteland: The Bringers cause the Christmas trees to wilt over their heads.
* You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: And at this point in the series, Buffy really doesn't know. Then again she doesn't really care either.
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