Trivia / Buffy the Vampire Slayer S5E16 "The Body"

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Kristine Sutherland had wanted to leave the show after Season 3 but Joss Whedon told her he wanted to kill Joyce off eventually. So she featured in only a few Season 4 episodes and came back for Season 5 specifically for the arc that would result in her death.
• Completely Different Title:
  • German: Tod einer Mutter (Death of a Mother)
  • French: Orphelines (Orphan Girls)
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Joss Whedon, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan and Nicholas Brendon all named this as one of their favourite episodes. (So did James Marsters, although he didn't get any screen time in it.)
• Dueling Works: Comparing this with an episode of The X-Files, "This is Not Happening", both episodes aired in 2001, one on The WB and the other on Fox, and featured a sad plot (Joyce's death in this episode, Mulder's death in that episode), with TitleDrops said by main characters (Buffy and Anya, Scully).
• Enforced Method Acting: Emma Caulfield was asked what emotions she was feeling when she filmed her monologue on why she doesn't understand death in Willow's dorm room, and admitted that they had been filming all day without a break and the only thing she was thinking was that she really had to go to the bathroom.
• Reality Subtext: Both Sarah Michelle Gellar and Michelle Trachtenberg were raised by single women, and Gellar later spoke about the experience of acting something that was very real and close to her, stating, "you try to separate it as best you can and at the same time it adds that extra layer". As soon as the scene was finished with Gellar "at a fever pitch", they restarted it where she comes in the door happily, which Joss Whedon regretted for the emotional range Gellar was required to endure.
• Visible Boom Mic: When Buffy is in the living room with Joyce's body in the zoom up, the boom mike up in visible in the right hand corner.
• What Could Have Been: The conversation where Buffy tells Dawn was at first shot with typical over-the-shoulder and reaction shots, before deciding to shoot it from a distance.
• Write What You Know:
  • Joss Whedon's mother, a teacher, died very suddenly (in a car crash) and he drew on his own experiences, and those of friends and other writers, in constructing the episode. He tried to achieve an "unlovely physicality" to portray the upsetting minutiae involved in attempting to comprehend what is incomprehensible.
  • The scene between Willow and Tara was based off a real experience he'd had not sure what to wear to a friend's funeral.
• Written-In Infirmity: In the scene where Xander punched his hand through the wall, only a shot of Willow's left eye is shown. This is because Alyson Hannigan had experienced an allergic reaction to the dust from the plaster on the wall - a reaction that resulted in her right eye swelling badly. Because of this, she had to go to the hospital the next day to get her eye treated.

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