Dollhouse

Season 1

Echo

1. The song playing at about 4 minutes in is Front Line Assembly's "Civilization" from the album Epitaph.

Ghost

1. The tattooed fighter seen sparring in the ring with Agent Ballard is Tanoai Reed.
2. When Gabriel first meets Echo, he reveals that he had expected a fatherly character as the hostage negotiator, someone like Edward James Olmos. Olmos plays Commander Adama in Battlestar Galactica (2004) which Tahmoh Penikett (Paul Ballard) also stars in.
3. Vincent Laresca (Mr. Sunshine) also costarred with Eliza Dushku (Echo) on Tru Calling.

The Target

1. The name of the character played by Matt Keesler is "Richard Connell." The actual Richard Connell is the author of the famous 1924 short story, "The Most Dangerous Game," in which a shipwreck survivor is forced to run for his life from a murderous game hunter who has become bored with mere animal prey - the plot of this episode.
2. Adelle DeWitt (Olivia Williams) calls the Dolls' resting state the "Tabula Rasa", the blank slate. Tabula Rasa is the title of episode 6.08 of Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which Willow (Alyson Hannigan) unintentionally wipes everybody's memory with a spell.
3. Mark Sheppard & Tahmoh Penikett end up starring together in the TV Show 'Supernatural'.

Stage Fright

1. When Paul goes to investigate the building that Victor "tipped" him off about, the quick exterior shot is of the same building on Wilshire that served as the Hyperion Hotel in Joss Whedon's Angel.
2. Jewel Staite: Watch the crowd before the second failed assassination of Rayna. You'll notice a cameo of Jewel (Kaylee from Joss Whedon's Firefly (2002)) as a member of the crowd.
3. The stalker smuggles a rifle into the concert, having hidden the disassembled parts inside of a pair of crutches. This was done the in same manner as the titular character in The Day of the Jackal (1973).

Gray Hour

1. The hotel office code is 3947483

True Believer

1. The storekeeper tells Langton, "I didn't see who wrote the note - it could have been any one of them. There was a bit of a mishegoss going on up at the front of the store at the time." "Mishegoss" is a Yiddish word meaning "craziness."
2. The cult leader uses the fake name "Jonas Sparrow." Steve Martin plays a con artist posing as a revival preacher named Jonas Nightingale in the film Leap of Faith (1992).
3. Angus Sutherland, who plays Ilya, is the son of Donald Sutherland. Donald Sutherland was in the Buffy the vampire slayer movie-- another Joss Whedon project.
4. Dr. Claire Saunders, looking through the video archive for instances of Victor getting an erection in the shower, says, "If it'd been a snake... Please pretend I didn't say that." The complete adage says, "If it had been a snake, it would have bitten me" (or various words to that effect), meaning that the speaker was surprised by something that should be immediately obvious. This saying occurs often (with varied wordings) in science fiction and fantasy, as when Paradox says it in Ben 10: Alien Force (2008) and when Buckaroo says it in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984).
5. Brian Bloom (Jonas Sparrow) and Amy Acker (Claire Saunders) previously costarred on the short-lived FOX drama 'Drive'.

Man on the Street

1. In "Man on the Street" we see that it cost one of their clients $439,000,000 to engage Echo.

Echoes

1. Echo's real name is revealed to be Caroline Farrell when a college professor recognizes her.
2. The piano piece that Boyd Langton plays for Adelle DeWitt over the phone is Fantasie Impromptu by Frédéric Chopin. It is a piece noted for its unique and difficult time signature with the right hand playing semiquavers and the left hand playing triplets.
3. The campus map that Sam shows Echo is actually the campus map of The College of the Canyons, in Santa Clarita

Needs

1. At around minute 48, when Sierra walks past the room of her past trauma, and after they've gotten closure and returned to tabula rasa, the camera focuses on the glass of the doors. If you look closely, you can see subtle hand prints on the glass. Almost like a ghostly memory of what happened in there; a memory apparently from which Sierra no longer suffers.
2. In the scene were Echo is leading the actives out of dollhouse, Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker) is in the front of the group. She is the only staff member included besides Ms. DeWitt who was being held at gunpoint by Echo. Unknown to the audience at the time is that Dr. Saunders is an imprint on an active call sign "Whiskey". She was imprinted semi-permanently after the original Dr. Saunders was killed and "Whiskey" was attacked in the Alpha event.

A Spy in the House of Love

1. According to Eliza Dushku, on the day she wore her dominatrix outfit she hired a coffee truck for the cast and crew and told them they could choose between free coffee or her whip. Whilst they appreciated the free coffee it didn't stop them gawping and drooling over her. Eliza as the dominatrix received huge publicity and the clip was used extensively in advertisements for the show. This scene alone is often credited with earning the Dollhouse its second season.
2. Victor's persona for the "Miss Lonely Hearts" engagement is "Roger." As a verb, "to roger" is British slang roughly equivalent to the American "to hump", in a sexual sense (e.g. a dog may roger one's leg). Given that Victor's actual client is "very British", the persona's name may be an in-joke.

Haunted

1. The estate belonging to the dead woman Echo imprints is the same set (or possibly real building) that was used during the production of Gilmore Girls (2000), in which it was used as Rory's private school Chilton. Incidentally, Gregg Henry who plays the dead woman's brother used to play Mitchum Huntzberger on Gilmore Girls, the father of Rory's boyfriend Logan.
2. While showing Victor the horses, Jack wears tight tan pants and a maroon shirt. This is an outfit made famous by the character Captain Malcolm Reynolds in another Joss Whedon show, Firefly.
3. Mellie/November's real name is revealed to be Polly Keller when Ballard and Loomis run her fingerprints. We later learn, however, that this information is false, likely corrupted by the Dollhouse to protect themselves from investigators.
4. Topher and the geek personality imprinted on Sierra discuss classic sci-fi errors. One includes the use of 'flaming explosions and the sound in a vacuum'. This is a gentle nod to Joss Whedon's sci-fi show Firefly which famously used no corresponding sound when the spaceship Serenity was shown flying in space.

Briar Rose

1. Early in the episode, Topher uses the term "frakked." This is a made-up curse word, used frequently in Battlestar Galactica (2004). Co-star Tahmoh Penikett played "Captain Karl 'Helo' Agathon" in 64 episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Writer Jane Espenson also wrote for Battlestar Galatica.
2. First time Dr Saunders is called Whiskey when Laurence Dominic in the body of Victor, suggesting she's a Doll to the audience.

Omega

1. Alan Tudyk being cast as Alpha marks the fourth time Joss Whedon has used members of the core cast of Firefly (2002) (all performing - rather - good guys) as villains for his other shows. Previously he did the same with Nathan Fillion on the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997) and Gina Torres on the fourth season of Angel (1999) and Adam Baldwin in the 5th season of Angel (1999)

Epitaph One

1. Eliza Dushku, the main actress of the series and the top-billed in the opening credits, is first seen seventeen minutes into the episode. In total, she has less than three minutes of screen time.
2. Eliza Dushku, Reed Diamond and Adair Tishler each had to complete their filming in a single day. Due to child acting laws, Tishler had to complete her filming in only a few hours.
3. This episode takes place in 2019.