YMMV / Buffy the Vampire Slayer S4E1 "The Freshman"

• Expy: Sunday is smart, snarky, dresses in black, murderous (well, yes, vampire, but notably so compared to her lackeys) and is named after a day of the week. This combination is at least strongly suggestive of The Addams Family's Wednesday Addams, particularly as she had been portrayed in the then-recent films. She's older and a walking corpse, but all signs seemed to indicate that our Wednesday would have wanted—or at least rolled-with—both, and probably would have liked a bit of vampire-slaying (see They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character below) along the way.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Buffy is commenting on how her mother would react to the price of her text-books, stating flippantly, "I hope it's a funny aneurysm." Next season, her mother has a brain tumor removed, and later suddenly dies of a side-effect of surgery: an aneurysm. This quote was formerly the Trope Namer for "Funny Aneurysm" Moment before it was changed/merged into this trope.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In the midst of Xander's Reference Overdosed Dare to Be Badass speech are the words "Avengers Assemble!" Joss Whedon would end up directing the first two Avengers films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Magnificent Bitch: Sunday is a pragmatic vampire who chooses UC Sunnydale as her haunting ground. Targeting the college's freshmen, Sunday's group sires the students and then steals their things from their room, leaving behind a note saying that the student simply couldn't handle the stress and dropped out to deflect suspicion from her. As Buffy learns, Sunday has been doing this for over a decade, deliberately taking enough students to establish a pattern without taking so many that police get suspicious, explaining why she has never been caught. Managing to survive a head-on confrontation with Buffy, Sunday then pulls her routine on the Slayer herself, demoralizing her to the point that she almost gives up completely. When Buffy recovers and finds her hideout, Sunday comes close to defeating her once more, showing strength and skill unmatched by other vampires.
• Retroactive Recognition: Eddie is played by Pedro Pascal (through credited as Pedro Balmaceda), whom you might recognize as Oberyn Martell a.k.a "The Red Viper" (among many others).
• Special Effect Failure: When the vamps enter Eddie's dorm room, their reflections can be seen in the mirror near the door.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Joss Whedon regretted killing off Sunday, as he felt that she had potential (she was originally supposed to be a former slayer-turned-vampire).
  • Some fans would've also liked Eddie to be a recurring character, with some suggesting he'd be a possible college love-interest for Buffy instead of Riley, but he ended up a one-shot victim-of-the-day.

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