I bought into Xander having brown eyes at first because the fanon on the eye color is so fixed as to be nearly gospel.

I think I was looking up relative heights of the actors (something totally unrelated to eyes) when I stumbled across that weird bit of trivia about NB's eye color.

I don't know if it was the lighting on Buffy or what, but NB's eyes do, in fact, look darker. I think you could see on Kitchen Confidential (maybe because the lighting on that set was a lot brighter) that his eyes are not quite as brown as you'd think.

In all honesty, I think it's a matter of degrees of color shade because it really does depend on the lighting in pictures of him whether you notice.

Then again, my mother has hazel eyes and they do fluctuate in color depending on ambient lighting, her mood, and sometimes the color of her shirt. *shrug* When compared to things like "Buffy's real name is Elizabeth," or misspelling the characters' names, "Xander's" eye color is not a huge deal at all. It's just a strange bit of trivia.

I just think it's interesting that fanon is so fixed on "dark" or "chocolate" brown eyes that I've been corrected on the "hazel" eyes several times.