Referenced By / Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Comic Books

• The Chick Tract "The Devil's Night" has a girl named Buffy who's afraid of vampires and monsters.
• In a Hack/Slash story set at a comic convention, Cassie gets sarcastically asked if she's a Buffy cosplayer (of course, Buffy would never wear the kind of thing Cassie usually does).
• In The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl V1 #6, Doreen's friend Nancy, on discovering that two more of her fellow students have animal-themed powers, laments "I'm the Xander".
• Young Justice: Superboy is a huge fan of a Buffy pastiche titled Wendy the Werewolf Stalker, and the rest of the team also watches it with varying degrees of interest, Robin for instance thinks it's rather cheesy but enjoys watching it with friends. Their former teammate Cissie King-Jones starts guest starring on the show after leaving costumed heroics behind and turning to competition archery and acting.

Fan Works

• Captain Proton and the Planet of Lesbians. Princess Aylarna sardonically refers to Constance Goodheart as "Busty the Vamp Layer".

Film

• My Name is Bruce has Ash, the original Deadpan Snarker demon hunter, horror's OG, feeling that the forces of darkness are just about beyond him and, after winning the day, humbly asking that Buffy get the call should this happen again.
• In The New Mutants, the teens watch two episodes. Scenes from the episodes in question ("The Body" and "Hush" respectively) serve as foreshadowing for later events in the movie.
• Veronica Mars; when Piz visits Veronica's ten-year high school reunion, and sees the tape of him and Veronica having sex (from back in college, in the third season of the series), we get this exchange:
  Veronica: Neptune High. What do you think of it so far?
  Piz: It actually does sit on a Hellmouth.
• Emily from Snatched (2017) has a Buffy the Vampire Slayer poster in her childhood bedroom.

Literature

• In Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series, Barbi Winters in Johnny Alucard is a parody of Buffy and Drusilla Zark, the vampire Mad Prophet from One Thousand Monsters, is blatantly inspired by Drusilla.
• The Dresden Files:
  • In the short "Something Borrowed" the short, blonde demon fighter, Karrin Murphy, says, "you have fruit punch mouth." In the season 1 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the short, blonde demon fighter, Buffy Summers, says the exact same phrase, albeit under very different contexts.
  • Battle Ground: Murphy taking out a Jotnar with a bazooka immediately brings to mind Buffy killing The Judge with a rocket launcher.
• Hard Time, one of Sara Paretsky's VI Warshawski feminist private-eye novels, partly involves a series of action-horror films called Mad Virgin, which appears to be a very hostile parody of Buffy. The films are described as wallowing in constant physical and emotional abuse of their heroine under a veneer of depicting her as a "strong female character" Action Girl, and their merchandise is made by horribly abused female prison labour.
• At one point in M John Harrison's SF novel Light, one of the PoV characters (who is a misogynistic serial killer) is upset by the fact that there's nothing to watch on TV except Buffy reruns.
• In Love Over Gold, Diane's dad is a fan of the show, as is Katrien, and they both persuade Diane to start watching it. Diane likes the show, although she doesn't become an obsessive fan like the other two. She cries when Jenny Calendar is killed.

Live-Action TV

• Naturally, Angel included numerous references to the show, even after the Channel Hop reduced the possibility of overt crossovers.
• Big Wolf on Campus: One episode is titled "Muffy the Werewolf Slayer" and focuses on Merton falling in love with a girl named Vesper, who turns out to be a werewolf slayer whose real name is Muffy. At the end, she becomes the star of a TV show whose title is the same as this episode.
• Russell T Davies cited the series as a big influence on the revival of Doctor Who. "School Reunion" even cast Tony Head in an episode with weird goings-on in a school, complete with Buffy Speak.
  • The Spin-Off Torchwood, clearly inspired by Angel, cast James Marsters as Captain John Hart, who is clearly Spike to Captain Jack Harkness' Angel.
  • In the first episode of Class (2016), April compares the school to the Hellmouth.
• Douglas of Eureka is actually a huge fan of the show, going as far as to call his house Sarah.
• Farscape
  • In "Look at the Princess", John Crichton is going to be Taken for Granite for eighty cycles, and starts ranting about how everyone from his friends to Buffy the Vampire Slayer will be dead by the time he gets back to Earth.
  • In "Promises", John discovers that Scorpius is Not Quite Dead and, because he Looks Like Orlock, throws in the obligatory vampire reference.
    "Kryptonite, silver bullet, Buffy—what's it gonna take to keep you in the grave?"
• In Friends, Phoebe Buffay's twin sister Ursula appears in a porn parody of the show titled "Buffay the Vampire Layer".
• Gilmore Girls: When Paris suddenly decides to start dating very late one night, Rory lampshades the randomness. These cross-references were fairly common for the teen shows as they all aired on The WB
  Rory: It's eleven o'clock at night. Who are you hoping to hook up with now? Spike and Drusilla?
• Similarly with Alyson Hannigan where, if a reference or Actor Allusion on How I Met Your Mother was not to American Pie, then it would riff Dark!Willow, the fact her character was gay, or just the show in general. They even got Seth Green in the show.
• MADtv (1995) gives us Nicole Sullivan playing...wait for it, Buffy the Umpire Slayer. Buffy fighting blood sucking baseball umpires. Michelle Trachtenberg herself would later appear for a spoof of the show.
• As well as many fans noting that the relationship between Emma and Hook in Once Upon a Time is very obviously inspired by Buffy/Spike, in a blink and you'll miss it scene it turns out Rumpelstiltskin has the Slayer Scythe in his antique shop. Both series have some of the same writers so it's only natural some elements would filter in.
• Sarah Michelle Gellar parodied her role on Saturday Night Live, in a sketch fusing Seinfeld with Buffy.
• Smallville had a vampire named Buffy Sanders.
• In the Supernatural episode "Hell House", Ed asks "WWBD What Would Buffy do?". In "Bloodlines", a shapeshifter nicknames Dean "Buffy". "Shut Up, Dr. Phil" has Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters playing a couple of witches. "Bloodlust" and "Mommy Dearest" have Amber Benson playing a vampire character called Lenore.
• Anthony Stewart Head took the piss out of the show on V Graham Norton. Many shows in which he later appeared threw in at least one Buffy gag.
• Will & Grace has one episode where Jack says "Oh for the love of Buffy and Angel, just tell us!"
• Xena: Warrior Princess has the mention of a play titled "Buffus, the Bacchae Slayer".

Magazines

• MAD gives us an Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny example with Buffy hunting Edward Cullen, fulfilling many a fan's wish.

Music

• Ed Sheeran, who's a fan of the show, sampled the track "Remembering Jenny" in his song "Afire Love". The music video of "Bad Habits" is also loosely inspired by Buffy.
• The British dance group Basement Jaxx did several live and TV performances of their track "Where's Your Head At?" with a dancer who was dressed and painted exactly like the First Slayer.

Tabletop Games

• In the action-horror RPG Monster of the Week, all of the player-character classes are transparently based on characters from popular action-horror works. For this page, "The Chosen" is Buffy, "The Expert" is Giles, and "The Mundane" is Xander.

Video Games

• Heroes of Dragon Age, a smart phone spinoff of Dragon Age, could not resist making a reference with two epic nugs (think a cross between a rabbit and a pig) being named Fluffy and Spike.
• Fable II has a farmer named Giles whose wife Jennifer was murdered by a bandit named Ethan. Giles and Jennifer also have a son named Rupert and Ethan works for the bandit Ripper. Those names are references to Rupert "Ripper" Giles, Jennifer Calendar and Ethan Rayne.
• Spike's crypt makes an appearance in the cemetery of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. There is also a stand in for Winifred called... Winifred, whose employers are far more moral than Wolfram & Hart.
• Max Payne is on the run from police after being framed for the murder of his partner. Breaking into an abandoned building he finds a body with a stake through the heart, the victim having been able to write, Buff...before he died.
• One level of Monster Hunter (PC) have the player fighting three vampires - the Elite Mooks of the game - at the same time. Said level is appropriately titled "Where's Buffy when you need her?"
• Saints Row 4 gives us Josh Birk, an actor who plays a character called Nyteblade, who is a homage or parody of modern vampire fiction including Angel. Well there is a Streets of Rage homage as well, and on the Winners Don't Use Drugs message it's given by Nyteblade, Vampire Slayer.
• Secret of Mana gave us a boss battle against a vampire bat named Buffy, in tribute to the film.
• The X-Files has surprisingly resisted making any shout-outs to the show in the main TV series, but the opening for The X-Files: Resist or Serve has Mulder suggest that he watches the show, and seeing Willow and Tara do magic is where the persecuted girls they are investigating got the idea to get into witchcraft.

Webcomics

• In Charby the Vampirate, the vampire hunter Victor evidently dreams of Buffy.
• In The Bare Pit, the first of the three "Tales to Scare Your Pants Off!" is "Fluffy the Vampire Nudist".

Web Videos

• Outside Xbox are clearly fans of the show, from saying how The Iron Bull is made hotter by being voiced by Mr. Buffy Summers (sploosh) to Ellen wearing a Sunnydale High top.

Western Animation

• Kim Possible could be considered a Spiritual Successor to the show and includes a couple of sly references (such as combusting cheerleaders), Buffy Speak including Kim doing a spot on Buffy impression, and funnily enough her default civilian outfit looking like a carbon copy of one of Buffy's costumes in "The Dark Age".
• As well as making up action figures of his co stars as gifts, Seth Green also got Gellar to reprise her role on Robot Chicken. The series would also use numerous people and riffs from the show, up to and including Joss Whedon himself.
  • One of the earliest examples from the first season has Gellar explaining to a friend with the hypothetical eighth season would've been, which involves killer doll Chucky being ripped apart by the soul hungry "Lettuce-Head Kids". Gellar's friend can only respond "Holy shit, no wonder you quit."
• After getting a freaky science partner who goes off the deep end in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, Peter complains that he has the partner from Sunnydale.
• The X-Men: Evolution episode Spyke Cam aired not long after Dirty Girls with the infamous Buffy/Faith dance. Word of God is they loved that scene so much they copied it verbatim for Kitty/Rogue.

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