Hilarious In Hindsight / Buffy the Vampire Slayer

• "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" (Season 1, Ep 11): Willow presents Buffy with a list of missing students, and Buffy remarks that the most recent student's only activity was band - and that she played the flute. Willow's reaction was intended as confused, but anybody who's seen American Pie can't help but think that her "...So?" looks quite shameful and guilty.
  • The same missing student in that ep was a girl who was so ignored by her fellow students that she became invisible. The final scene of the episode shows the girl being recruited by the FBI for a special unit using people with special powers such as invisibility as assassins and other secret agents. Fast forward a few years, and that same actress is on Heroes as an FBI agent, recruiting psychic Matt Parkman to help catch superpowered multiple murderer Sylar.
• In season 3, episode 16: "Doppelgangland". An evil vampire version of Willow arrives from an alternate dimension, threatening the real Willow while acting rather sultry all around. Willow describes the vampire-Willow as "kind of gay." Buffy assures her that a vampire's personality has nothing to do with that of the original human. Angel replies "Well, actually...[Buffy glares] That's a good point." Less than a year later, Willow discovered that she herself was gay.
  • This is made worse because Willow uses the exact same words in the episode "Tabula Rasa" from Season 6 when she realizes (once more) her sexual preference after having wiped clean the memory of the whole cast due to a spell misfire.
  • Joss was trying to decide which of Xander and Willow would come out. If you look at vamp-Xander's behavior, especially to "puppy" Angel, it feels they were going for Depraved Bisexual. (It falls a little short, but then, this was ten years ago and Most Writers Are Male.)
  • Some of "Doppelgangland" passes into Harsher in Hindsight. The two most horrific words in Buffy are "Bored Now".
• And again from "Dopplegangland", after Willow hears about her double being a dominatrix scoffs at the thought of her and Oz playing Mistress of Pain games. Alyson Hannigan ad-libbed the femdom scene in the first American Pie and in the second it turns out she's flanderized into a super crazy hot evil male dom chick.
  • In a season five episode of How I Met Your Mother, the gang see a "doppelganger" of Lily, the character played by Alyson Hannigan. The doppelganger is a rather nasty stripper with a European accent. Unfortunately, the writers didn't go with a quote of the Buffy line.
• In "Becoming, Part 2", Spike's claim to be a fan of Manchester United is hilariously appropriate given the later retcon that he's an upper-middle-class gentleman pretending to be a working-class Cockney hooligan. ^note Any real working-class Londoner would view an accusation of supporting Manchester United as a death-worthy insult, but it's a common stereotype in British football culture that many MU supporters are middle-class people from Southern England with little knowledge of football who only like them because of their fame and record of success.
• In the first season, there's a brief one of these when investigating a monster butchering kids for their organs. Willow mentions that she and Giles are just going to "do some research into organ harvesting" or the like. Made funny years later with Anthony Stewart Head taking the role of the Repo Man in Repo! The Genetic Opera - a character who works - yes - as an organ harvester.
• Anthony Head plays Giles, a skilled magician. Years later, he would play the fanatically anti-magic King Uther on Merlin. After a brief stint as stage magician Adam Klaus in the pilot of Jonathan Creek.
• The episode "Superstar" revolves around minor character Jonathan becoming a massively successful, famous, and wealthy celebrity due to a magic spell. Danny Strong, the actor who played Jonathan, won not one but two Emmy Awards in 2012 for writing the movie Game Change, and was announced as the writer for the film adaptation of Mockingjay.
• The Twilight Saga has one of the books titled Breaking Dawn. This happened in Buffy at least every other week where they would...well, break Dawn.
• The season 4 episode "Something Blue" portrays Spike and Buffy in an exaggerated, Sickeningly Sweethearts romance as the result of a spell. The whole thing is Played for Laughs for being (at the time) an extremely absurd Crack Pairing. Down the line, Spike and Buffy end up in a tumultuous affair that ends in Spike earning a soul, them forgiving each other for said toxic affair, and eventually developing a relatively healthy and lasting romantic relationship in the comic continuation of the canon.
  • Even more funnily, all of the Scoobies regard them under the spell in disgust. Come season 10 of the comics, those same Scoobies are playing Shipper on Deck for the pairing, with Xander of all people actively trying to encourage them together.
• Riley's many similarities to Captain America after Joss Whedon's involvement with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially considering that Whedon himself wrote the script for Cap's movie.
• Spike's speech about Angel and Buffy's doomed relationship in "Lover's Walk" is a far better description of Spike and Buffy's future (tumultuous) relationship than it is of any other relationship on the show.

  "You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love till it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends. Love isn't brains, children, it's blood...blood screaming inside you to work its will. I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it."

  • Can double as Harsher in Hindsight after the episode "Seeing Red", when Spike almost rapes Buffy, saying that love is passion and fire, not trust, and that clearly means she loves him back.
• Christianity Today has an article saying "Don't let your kids watch Buffy". Come Season 3 of LazyTown, "Don't let your kids watch it" became a major meme after Robbie Rotten said not to let your kids watch LazyTown.
• Willow's "Did I fall asleep?" from "Conversations With Dead People ".
• This conversation from "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", years before the revelation that Spike was a bad poet:

  Angelus: Dear Buffy. I'm still trying to decide the best way to send my regards.
  Spike: Why don't you rip her lungs out? It might make an impression.
  Angelus: Lacks... poetry.
  Spike: It doesn't have to. What rhymes with lungs?

• In Season 5's "The Replacement", Riley remarks to Buffy that he appreciates her "bad ice-skating movie obsession." This comes two episodes after the introduction of Dawn, played by Michelle Trachtenberg, who, 5 years later, would star in Ice Princess.
• There was a Porn Parody of The Movie called Buffy the Vampire Layer. Buffy has sex with two vampires over the course of the television show, and they make up Buffy's two most prominent Love Interests—overshadowing every human romance she has, including seasons 4-5 mainstay Riley. Even funnier, it becomes a very common in-universe Running Gag (especially in the comics) that Buffy has grown a reputation for a supposed "vampire fetish'', with strangers and friends alike cracking wise on her apparent affinity for the undead.
• The traditional nickname for Buffy's horde of sidekicks was "the Scoobies", after the group in Scooby-Doo. Several years later Sarah Michelle Gellar, Buffy's actress, would go on to play Daphne in the Scooby-Doo Live-Action Adaptation. Oz's actor Seth Green would also show up as a minor character and Velma's love interest (which is also inadvertently amusing, given that Velma is sometimes theorized to be a lesbian, and is like Willow in character).
• In the Season Two episode "Phases", Larry Blaisdell believes that Willow being an innocent schoolgirl is an act.
• There's an episode where Buffy tells Angel that "being stalked^note  by a broody vampire, no less isn't really a turn-on for a girl." Uh...
• Way back in the first episode, Buffy is freaked out to discover a vampire victim, so she approaches Giles and asks, "Okay, what's the sitch?" Kim Possible did for the spy theme what Buffy did for horror, and would adopt this as a Catchphrase.
  • Cordelia says she'd kill to live in L.A.. Give it time.
• In "As You Were" Spike is illegally selling demon eggs on the black market using the alias "The Doctor." Years later, James Marsters would get a recurring role on Torchwood, a spinoff of Doctor Who.
• During career day, Willow questions out loud if she likes tress or shrubs (another word for bushes) more. Xander replies, "That's between you and your god." and that he definitely likes shrubs, while Buffy says "No shrubs for me!" Willow turns out to be a lesbian.
• In "The Harsh Light of Day", Buffy laughs when Parker asks her if she and Spike used to date. Come season 6 and the idea of Buffy and Spike being in a relationship doesn't seem so ridiculous.
• In "Help", Willow questions if she's the only one who reads Doogie Howser, M.D. Fan Fic. Guess who stars alongside Willow's actress on How I Met Your Mother, and played the lead in another Joss Whedon project?
• Although no viewer could have known it at the time, the whole plot where if Angel experienced one moment of true happiness, he would lose his soul turns out to be a pretty good metaphor for any fan of anything Joss Whedon has written since ever. (Although most of us tend to be more "constantly depressed" than "irredeemably evil.")
• Season 8's Big Bad was named "Twilight" before Joss learned about a popular new vampire series by the same name which is considered by some to be BtVS's polar opposite. This gives a double meaning to some of the comics' dialogue.
  Spike: You wanna put these demons down and end this Twilight crap once and for all?
• Another Twilight example comes from the first season when Angel is in Buffy's room (It Makes Sense in Context) he mentions how great she would look when she sleeps. It gets even better when all he does is sleep on her floor.
• Twilight is so RICH for this. "When She Was Bad" has Buffy telling Angel that girls don't think stalking is sexy. Apparently, Buffy is very atypical. And forgetting her own romantic history of indeed finding Angel's stalking sexy.
• And one of the final issues of Season 8 aped ''Twilight: New Moon''.
• One more, Breaking Dawn. This was like, standard operating procedure for Buffy's sister.
• "Doomed" had a scene where Xander said this to a freeloading Spike:

  "You're a waste of space! MySpace!

• "Nightmares", when Willow says they're facing their dreams. Giles corrects her that it's nightmares. "Dreams would be a musical comedy version of this." This of course gets a Shout-Out in "Once More, With Feeling", when Willow sings "I've got a theory, some kid is dreaming, and we're all trapped inside his whacky Broadway nightmare."
• A somewhat unfortunate one in "The Body" that kills the mood when Xander says something that reminds of something else Joss has done recently.

  Xander: The Avengers gotta get with the assembling.

• Another Avengers-related thing comes from one of Xander's lines in "Teacher's Pet".

  Xander: Do you like Greek food? I'm exempting shawarma, of course, I mean, what's that all about? It's a big meat hive.

• Yet another Avengers-related thing is the plot of "I Robot, You Jane", which involves a villain who controls the internet and makes a metal body for himself. Sound familiar?
• The show had a Running Gag where Xander would keep accidentally making sexual or romantic comments about Dawn. It just seems like a way to poke fun at Xander and Dawn's crush on him. Of course, after Season 8...
• After she first meets Angel, Buffy says she really didn't like him. Over eight seasons the two had enough UST to detonate a sun and she is still obsessed with him in Season 9, some thirteen years later, where the mere mention of his names makes her all warm and gooey.
• The Gentlemen from "Hush" are considered to be influential to The Slender Man Mythos, and, on their own, can be considered Hilarious In Hindsight in that they sort of predicted the phenomenon. However, what's really interesting is that the person who played the 'Lead' Gentleman will be playing the Slender Man himself in the Marble Hornets movie.
• In the comics Faith suggests there is little that she can be taught in the wonderful world of wetworks. Then we get WET, which not only has Eliza Dushku the character she plays could easily be Faith with even more bad language. Conducting wetworks.
• In "Earshot", Buffy is frustrated that her telepathy doesn't allow her to read Angel's mind. That's pretty much the exact opposite of Sookie Stackhouse's opinion.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic features a major character named Spike, and a recurring one named Angel. They despise each other.
• Spike being a fan of Manchester United in "Becoming, Part 2", but supposedly being a Cockney, puzzled many British fans. The later revelation that he was actually a middle-class mummy's boy from London pretending to be working class made him fit perfectly into a common derogatory British stereotype of Man United fans.
• Buffy and co had the Fan Nickname of the "Scooby Gang"... then Sarah Michelle Gellar played Daphne in Scooby-Doo. She even had to miss the Buffy wrap party because she was busy filming said movie.
• "The Wish" is Anya's debut episode and features her trying to get Cordelia to wish vengeance upon Xander. Anyone who has seen the two of them as a long-running couple will find those lines hilarious. What's more is that one of Cordelia's wishes at the end is for Xander "to never again know the touch of a woman". Not only does she say this to his future fiancee, but he loses his virginity only a couple of episodes later.
• A younger Michael Cudlitz guest stars in "The Zeppo" as one of Jack's friends, a zombie who is first shown rising from the grave and who is killed by Xander when his head is crushed. Years later, Cudlitz played Abraham on The Walking Dead, who fights zombies and dies when his head is crushed, though given the circumstances of his death he does not reanimate as a zombie.
• The series referencing Dragon Ball Z in "Potential" is particularly funny in light of James Marsters' involvement with the franchise. Especially since the one who makes the reference is Andrew, who crushes on/idolizes Spike.
  • Trunks kills Merged Zamasu in the exact same way as Buffy kills Caleb: By slicing him in half from the groin up.
• During the Scooby Gang's argument in "The Yoko Factor," Xander refers to Giles as "crusty old Alfred." Almost twenty years later, Anthony Head voiced Alfred in Batman: Gotham by Gaslight.
• Dracula's attempt at seducing Buffy becomes this to All My Children fans, given that Dracula is played by Rudolf Martin, who played Anton Marrick, the husband and major love interest of the obsessive Kendall Hart, aka. Sarah Michelle Gellar.
• Any Star Wars references became this when Sarah Michelle Gellar was cast in Star Wars Rebels. Plus, the original name for Yoda was Buffy.
• The handful of times The Lord of the Rings is referenced becomes this when Sean Astin directed the Angel episode "Soulless".
• This isn't the last time that Emma Caulfield antagonises a red-headed witch.
• In Masters of the Universe: Revelation, it is now Sarah Michelle Gellar's turn to play a redheaded witch who serves as an ally to a blonde, superstrong hero.
• Any reference to DC Comics and/or Marvel Comics became this when Joss Whedon wrote and directed The Avengers (2012), Avengers: Age of Ultron and Justice League (2017), in addition to writing X-Men comics.
• The Running Gag about Dracula owing Spike 11 pounds is even more amusing when compared to the much later popular jokes about Moon Knight trying to track down Dracula because he owes him money. Maybe they could have an Intercontinuity Crossover and team up to shake down Dracula for the cash?
• In "Seeing Red", Buffy finds a Vampirella figurine in the Trio's abandoned hideout. In 2012, Dyanamite released a one-shot Vampirella comic in which she teamed up with a Captain Ersatz of Buffy named Fluffy the Vampire Killer.

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