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alt title(s): Buffy; Bt Vs; Rhonda The Immortal Waitress 
"In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer."
"Don't you ever think about anything besides boys and clothes?"
"Saving the world from vampires?"
In 1992, Joss Whedon wrote what turned out to be an amusing film with a central idea he was so attached to that he jumped at the chance to re-visit it on television.
In 1997, with an abbreviated first season, Buffy The Vampire Slayer was raised from the dead on the fledgling network The WB. At its core was a subversion of the horror movie trope of the fragile and doomed Southern Californian cheerleader attacked by a monster in a dark alley. Buffy was snappy, petite, blonde, and instead monsters would be afraid of meeting with her in dark alleys.
The TV show took the first movie as originally scripted as canon, not the film that resulted. The show established Buffy in an isolated city in Southern California called Sunnydale. Initially wanting to escape the responsibilities of being The Slayer, she forms a tight-knit group of friends. An Ancient Conspiracy who has been responsible for training Slayers for millennia sends her a mentor named Giles to prepare her for some nasty things that are going down in Sunnydale, which happens to be the location of a Hellmouth.
Joss and his team of merry writers at Mutant Enemy took many standard teenaged issues ("high school is hell", "why is my boyfriend acting weird now that I've slept with him?", "now we're at college, and all my best friend wants to do is hang out with her boy/girlfriend"...) and explored them with a supernatural, self-knowing, but emotional eye. Most people miss this entirely, and think that the supernatural events are meant as near-literal moral consequences, rather than metaphors.
While not a smash hit at first, critical acclaim was rampant and by the second season a devoted fanbase developed. Part of its success is the very clever writing that involves what is now famously named Buffy Speak. The characters were prone to subvert a wide variety of tropes as being at least partially Genre Savvy and there is very clear, deliberate Character Development for everyone. The storyline was also notable for how well-planned out the stories were, many plot points were foreshadowed several seasons in advance.
In 1999, Buffy's Love Interest Angel was spun off into his own series set in nearby LA. Crossovers and cross-references between the two shows persisted until Buffy ended in 2003. In many ways the Angel series provides a contrast to Buffy themes as Angel was about dealing with an Adult Life and past mistakes in comparison to the "growing up is hard" notes hit by Buffy over its seven season span.
In 2007, "season eight" began, in a series of comics produced by Joss Whedon and declared as official series canon.
The influence of this show on later TV, within its genre and elsewhere, is plain to see. Modern Myth Arc and Story Arc based television owe at least some inspiration to this series, as well as the "superhero with high school problems" theme. As several commentators have observed, Russell T Davies had at least one eye on this show when he revived Doctor Who.
This series is one of the single most Trope Overdosed and Lampshade Hanging shows in existence (the term Lampshade Hanging was invented by the show's creators), with over a thousand references strewn across this wiki. In fact this wiki originally began with a focus on Buffy before branching out to all of TV and eventually all of everything.
This series also has its own Analysis page, Character Page, Fetish Fuel Page, Crowning Moments of Awesome, Wild Mass Guessing, Ho Yay and (of course) Just Bugs Me pages. Sadly, it has no Congressional pages. (That we know of.)
Meta Tropes
General Tropes
Archetypes include:
Character tropes include:
Tropes:
- Above Good And Evil
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer
- Accidental Murder: The launching event for both Faith and Willow's face heel turns.
- Acceptable Targets: Wiccans, rather surprisingly, are portrayed quite negatively, at least by "real" witch Willow.
- Adaptation Displacement
- All Bikers Are Hells Angels
- The Alleged Car: Giles' first car.
- All Love Is Unrequited: initially.
- All Psychology Is Freudian
- Always Chaotic Evil: Vampires and, initially, demons.
- Anvilicious: Willow's storyline in season six, the season four beer episode.
- Anyone Can Die: Ms. Calendar, Joyce, Tara, etc.
- Applied Phlebotinum
- Bad Guy Bar: Willy's.
- Bad Guys Play Pool
- Bandaged Face
- Because Destiny Says So
- Bechdel Test, although Joss was disappointed critics couldn't see the value of this trope over Girls Need Role Models.
- Becoming The Costume: "Halloween".
- Beethoven Was An Alien Spy: Caligula and Jack the Ripper were the same vampire, and Anya was partially responsible for the Russian Revolution.
- Beware The Nice Ones: when Willow snaps in season six, she snaps.
- Subverted in that she could be underhanded from time to time.
- Blessed Are The Cheesemakers: The Cheese Man.
- Bloodless Carnage: Lots of death, lots of vampires sucking blood out of people, a few plain old slit throats, very little red.
- Broad Strokes: Between this series and the original movie.
- By The Eyes Of The Blind
- California University
- Can't Catch Up
- Carnival Of Killers
- Character Magnetic Team
- Character Overlap
- Chop Sockey
- Clipped Wing Angel: The Mayor.
- Collectible Card Game
- Conflict Killer: Spike then Angelus in Season 2, Adam in Season 4, and Willow in Season 6.
- Conspiracy Redemption: The Initiative.
- Cosmic Retcon: Dawn.
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: That opening theme.
- Cuckoo Nest: "Normal Again", very scarily played.
- Curse Escape Clause: Angel is cursed with a soul until he has a moment of perfect happiness. Buffy helps break the curse, and then needs to find a way to repair it...
- The Danza: Larry Bagby III as Larry.
- Date Rape Averted: Violently.
- Deadly Guest: Good lord, by this point someone should have slapped Sunnydale with the label "Death Trap" with all the times this trope is invoked.
- Dead Mans Chest: In "Inca Mummy Girl" the mummy hid the body of the real Ampata in one of his trunks.
- Dead Man Writing: The Mayor's video for Faith.
- Dead Star Walking: Amber Benson as Tara.
- Deconstructor Fleet: The blond girl doesn't die, even after having sex — she instead turns out to be Genre Savvy and an Action Girl and proceeds to kick vampire butt.
- Defied Trope
- Did Not Do The Research: Whenever the military or large scale combat appears.
- Disney Death: Buffy's death in "Prophecy Girl".
- Doomed Appointment: Ms. Calendar.
- Easy Amnesia: in the episode "Tabula Rasa".
- Embarrassing Cover Up
- The End Of The World As We Know It: "I suddenly find myself needing to know the plural of apocalypse".
- Epic Song: "Walk Through the Fire", from the Musical Episode, "Once More With Feeling".
- Estranged Soap Family: Hank Summers, who was gradually retconned into being a deadbeat dad. He made one reappearance in later seasons, but as part of the Cuckoo Nest.
- Evil Is Not A Toy: When you've just de-powered the big bad, it's generally best to just subdue him and be done with it. Whatever you do, do not use him as a punching bag, to get out your frustrations because your blond-vampire-ex-boyfriend just tried to rape you, as you're bound to get careless, and allow him to escape, plus you've probably just humiliated him, and he'll come back with a gun.
- Evil Me Scares Me: The way Willow feels about the Doppelgangland Willow.
- Faith In Leather Pants: Those pants are personally responsible for most symapathetic views of Faith in fanfic. And many, many squiggly feelings in this female troper.
- Spike gets a lot of this as well.
- Fantastic Religious Weirdness: Willow nailing crosses to her bedroom as well as more general cosmology.
- Finding Judas: The musical episode.
- Fish People: The mutated swim team in "Go Fish".
- Freeze Ray: Warren's got one.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampires: but not very many.
- Fridge Logic: In the first-season episode "The Pack", Giles and Xander reveal to the audience that Xander remembers everything from being possessed by hyenas. Xander wasn't the only one who got possessed— which means the evil clique at school still remembers being turned into hyenas and eating the principal. This is never dealt with.
- Future Badass
- Geographic Flexibility: Riley: "I've lived in Sunnydale a couple of years now. You know what I've never noticed before? This big honkin' castle."
- Glory Days: A witch switches places with her cheerleader daughter because she misses being a cheerleader.
- Gondor Calls For Aid
- Good Feels Good: Faith, when she was in Buffy's body masquerading as her.
- Also Anya, concerning the incident where she loses her demon status for the second time, though that would be more appropriately characterized as Bad Feels Bad.
- Gosh Dang It To Heck: The Mayor.
- G Rated Drug: Magic during season 6, especially during the episode "Wrecked".
- Gratuitous German: In the episode "Gingerbread", the newspaper article the gang looks up and the chant Giles is doing at the end of the episode qualifies for this.
- Grave Clouds: In a first-season episode, it is always night in a graveyard that had been magically relocated next to Sunnydale High.
- Groundhog Day Loop: In "Life Serial."
- Groupie Brigade: "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered".
- Guarding The Portal: A major part of the series premise.
- Guns Are Useless
- The Gwen Stacy: Many characters, since this is a Joss Whedon show after all; Tara may be the most notable.
- Hair Raising Hare: To Anya, anyway.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Amy's motivation for hating uber witch Willow by the seventh season.
- Haunted Technology: "I Robot, You Jane".
- Have You Tried Not Being A Monster: One of the trope namers. Done twice, with Buffy coming out to her mother as a Slayer and Willow coming out to her mother as a witch. Then Willow just plain comes out. So Yeah.
- Hell Bent For Leather: Spike, Faith, and especially Vampire Willow.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Now with its own page.
- Hidden Depths: Cordelia, Oz.
- Human Sacrifice
- I Hate You Vampire Dad
- I Just Want To Be Special: Xander and Dawn.
- Impaled With Extreme Prejudice
- Inverse Dialogue Death Rule
- I Want Song: "Going Through the Motions" from "Once More With Feeling" is referred to as this by Whedon himself in the commentary.
- I Work Alone
- Jumped At The Call: Faith.
- Just A Kid
- Lampshade Hanging: Whedon appears to have bought up an entire IKEA worth of lampshades, here and in his other work.
- Magic Floppy Disk: Ms. Calendar's spell, Maggie Walsh's data.
- Magnetic Plot Device: The only reason the Hellmouth existed was as a perpetual handwave, only a few villains are directly connected to it.
- Make Out Point: Oz goes when he's a werewolf; Dawn goes with two vampires.
- Mask Of Power: "Dead Man's Party" and the Nigerian zombie mask. Note a Mask Of Power that does not need to be worn.
- Maybe Magic Maybe Mundane: Done at least twice, first with the episode that leaves us unsure if Buffy is actually in a mental institution and the whole show has been dreamed up by her, and also with the blizzard that prevents Angel from killing himself.
- Mayincatec: "Inca Mummy Girl" where the titular mummy was a victim of human sacrifice.
- A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Read: In the episode "Earshot."
- The Minnesota Fats: Subverted in "Superstar".
- Monster Of The Week
- Musical Episode: "Once More, With Feeling".
- My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels: "The cow should touch me from Thursday."
- Also, "Debase the beef canoe".
- Never Bring A Knife To A Fistfight
- Never Say That Again
- Not So Invincible After All
- Offscreen Afterlife: Twice — Buffy in Heaven and Angel in Hell.
- Old Shame: The unaired series pilot. It's on Youtube if anyone's interested.
- Opt Out: Anya got the hell out of Dodge before Graduation Day. Contrast with fifth and seventh season finales.
- Our Vampires Are Different
- Pick On Someone Your Own Size: Buffy gets this a lot, from both male and female villains.
- Put On A Bus: Oz, Faith, Angel, and Cordy; of course, we know where the latter two went (Faith too, actually.)
- Don't forget about Amy, who spent three years as a rat.
- The Bus Came Back: Oz and Riley both get episodes like this.
- Retroactive Wish: In "Triangle".
- Robocam: Buffybot POV.
- Romance On The Set: Here's an odd one: Amber Bensen & Adam Busch... known as Tara and Warren respectively.
- Scapegoat Creator: Marti Noxon.
- Screaming Woman: Subverted in "Hush".
- Season Finale
- Series Fauxnale
- Shutting Up Now: Xander, when singing about witches.
- Sick Episode: "Killed by Death".
- Smash To Black
- Sorting Algorithm Of Evil
- Spoilers Off: This show is at the top of the list. Remember that, tropers.
- Staking The Loved One: Several times, most notably with Angelus.
- Story Arc
- Superpowered Evil Side: Willow during early Season 7, especially the scene in "Selfless" where she reverts to her evil personality for a few seconds while fending off a spider demon.
- Sword Fight: Becoming, Part 2. Hell yes.
- Team Rocket Wins: Vampires — run of the mill, common vampires, under no leadership but their own — have bested Buffy on a couple of occasions and are among the most common sources of Slayer overall deaths in the series.
- Tears Of Remorse
- Technicolor Death: Halfrek's fiery death in the episode "Selfless" is like this.
- Terrible Ticking
- There Is Another
- This Is Your Brain On Evil
- Tome Of Eldritch Lore
- Trash The Set: many times.
- Trojan Prisoner
- Trope Overdosed: Dear lord...
- Truce Zone: Willy's Bar. Later subverted in The Zeppo when it gets trashed and Willy is beaten to a pulp by a bunch of demons.
- Try Not To Die
- Ultimate Evil
- Undead Child: The Anointed One in seasons 1 and 2.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: "Graduation Day, Part Two".
- Vampire Hunter: No shit Sherlock.
- Vampires Prefer Brunettes: Inverted.
- Vanity License Plate: Cordelia's car has QUEEN C for its plates.
- Video Wills: Mayor Wilkins.
- Villain On A Bus: The First Evil & (to a lesser extent) Spike.
- Villain Pedigree: Vampires, the Big Bads for the first two seasons, are little more than no-name Mooks by the end.
- Villain Song: "What You Feel".
- The Virus: Vampirism.
- Wake Up Go To School Save The World
- Wall Glower: Spike.
- Wangst
- What Kind Of Lame Power Is Heart Anyway
- What Now Ending
- What You Are In The Dark
- Year Inside Hour Outside
- You Have Failed Me: The Master kills one of his minions in episode 2. "You have something in your eye."
- Your Vampires Suck: Aimed at Anne Rice a few times, but Buffy's also been on the receiving end.
- You Should Know This Already: Just about everything on the show, really, on for years and on years ago, most of the major plot points have leaked into the collective consciousness.
- Youth Is Wasted On The Dumb
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