Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an American comedy-horror series created by Joss Whedon and based on his 1992 feature film of the same name. It ran for seven seasons and spawned one spin-off, Angel. It ran on The WB from March 10, 1997 to May 22, 2001; it then ran on UPN from October 2, 2001 to May 20, 2003.
Series summary[]
Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is an ordinary Californian girl... well, except for the fact that she is The Chosen One, given supernatural strength and agility by an ancient curse to make her the latest warrior in an eternal fight against vampires, demons and all manner of evil. After burning down the gymnasium at her last school - to be fair, it was full of vampires - Buffy and her mother move to Sunnydale, California. There she discovers that her school is built on a Hellmouth, a portal of evil that attracts all kinds of terrible strangeness from around the globe. Joined by geeky Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon), hacker and trainee Wiccan Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan), bitchy alpha-cheerleader Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), mysterious vampire with a soul Angel, and Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), a representative of the Watchers that keep an eye on all Slayers, Buffy battles the twin evils of the Hellmouth and chemistry homework.
Spin-off[]
- The series is a spin-off of the film, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- At the end of Buffy's third season, the characters of Angel and Cordelia were spun off into Angel. There were multiple crossover storylines between the two series, and two other Buffy regulars eventually became regulars on Angel: Wesley Wyndham-Price and Spike.
Westphall connections in Buffy the Vampire Slayer[]
Incidental Connections in Buffy the Vampire Slayer[]
- Tobin's Spirit Guide from Ghostbusters appears in "Revelations".
Westphall connections to Buffy the Vampire Slayer[]
- "Doublemeat Palace" introduced a restaurant chain of the same name. The chain was mentioned in Dexter "Truth Be Told". The murder of Guy Halveston, the owner of the chain, was investigated in Andy Barker, P.I. "Fairway, My Lovely".
- Sunnydale High School is mentioned as being the high school attended by a suspect in the Criminal Minds episode "Hashtag".
- Sunnydale, California is visited in Cold Case "Family 8108".
- An Orb of Thesulah from this series appeared as a minor plot point in Supernatural "The Mentalists".
Westphall connections in Buffy the Vampire Slayer[]
- Wally World, the fictional theme park from National Lampoon's Vacation is mentioned in "Listening to Fear".
- Lector and Tyler Gorch from The Wild Bunch appear as vampires in "Bad Eggs".
- In "Anne", Lily wears a shirt that reads "Denton: The Home of Happiness", this is the fictional town and town slogan from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Brand connections in Buffy the Vampire Slayer[]
- Red box Morley cigarettes, first smoked by Brenda Walsh in Beverly Hills, 90210 and then by the Cigarette Smoking Man in The X-Files, are also smoked by Spike as seen in "School Hard". They are also smoked by characters in several other shows: Lois in Malcolm in the Middle, Warwick Brown in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, and Madeline Westen on Burn Notice. They appeared in Nash Bridges next.