Series / Sabrina the Teenage Witch

The cast of season 2. From left to right: Libby, Valerie, Mr. Kraft, Harvey, Sabrina, Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda (holding Salem), and Albert the Quizmaster.

"I guess every school needs a weird kid. It might as well be me."

—Sabrina Spellman

That Sabrina character certainly gets around, doesn't she?

Sabrina the Teenage Witch (aired 1996-2003) is a live-action sitcom based on the Archie comic book by Dan DeCarlo and George Gladir. It was created by Nell Scovell, who also served as the showrunner.

On her 16th birthday, Sabrina Spellman (Melissa Joan Hart), resident of Westbridge, Massachusetts, discovers that she is a witch and has magical powers. She moves in with her witch aunts Zelda (Beth Broderick) and Hilda (Caroline Rhea), and learns to survive the pratfalls of high school with a little magic on her side. Other fixtures in her life were her talking cat Salem (a warlock punished for his megalomania by being trapped in an animal body, voiced by Nick Bakay), her oblivious love interest Harvey Kinkel (Nate Richert), and her mortal enemy Libby Chissler (Jenna Leigh Green).

Sabrina the Teenage Witch began with a Pilot Movie set in an Alternate Continuity that aired on Showtime on April 7, 1996, and premiered on ABC's TGIF line-up on September 27, 1996. The series switched to The WB with its fifth season premiere on September 22, 2000, and aired for two more seasons on that network before it concluded on April 24, 2003. It was the most successful series from Viacom Productions that did not involve either Fred Silverman or Dean Hargrove, the engineers of the longer-lasting Matlock, Diagnosis: Murder, and the series of Perry Mason telefilms from 1985-95. This was even more remarkable considering Viacom Productions had become a subsidiary of Paramount Television before the series began, and the series had more seasons (4) on ABC than any show from the main Paramount banner within the 1990s; MacGyver, the last series in Paramount's string of hits on ABC that started in 1969, ended its run after seven seasons in 1992, with only all or part of 3 seasons airing in the 1990s.

The show was extremely similar in characterization and plot-structure to Out of This World (1987), but was in fact based on material which predated that show by several decades: the same Archie Comics as the series Sabrina and The Groovie Goolies — though the animated show went in a very different direction. There were also two additional TV movies, Sabrina Goes to Rome and Sabrina Down Under featuring Tara Strong in a very rare live action role as a movie-exclusive character Gwen.

Notable for its frequent guest stars, including Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne, Tara Lipinski, Daniel Bedingfield, *NSYNC, Usher, Backstreet Boys, Johnny Mathis, Dick Van Dyke, and Barbara Eden. While the show was airing, it received an Animated Adaptation in Sabrina: The Animated Series - produced by DIC Entertainment, this time with Melissa Joan Hart voicing the two aunts and her sister Emily Hart (who had a recurring role on the sitcom as Sabrina's bratty cousin Amanda) voicing Sabrina. There were also several novelizations, some of which tended to be more action-packed and adventure themed. Salem also received his own series of books where he would get on his own adventures.

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Sabrina the Teenage Tropes:

A-M

• Actor Allusion:
  • When Mike, played by George Wendt of Cheers fame, walks into Hilda's coffee shop in a later episode, everyone raises their mugs and greets him, "Mike!".
  • Aunt Irma is played by Barbara Eden, who also played in another supernatural sitcom. Her magical gesture in both? Crossing her arms.
  • Robin Ricker plays Cousin Marigold, the mother of a bratty witch daughter. Around the same time she also starred in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Witch", where she also played the mother of a witch daughter or so we think as the episode goes on. Buffy even says during the episode "she's our Sabrina".
  • David Lascher previously played a character called Josh in Clueless - which had a crossover with this, featuring Sabrina.
  • This is not the first time Phil Fondacaro has played a troll.
  • Robbie Benson just had to do The Beast's voice when he showed up.
  • Britney Spears guest stars in the Season 4 premiere to perform "(You Drive Me) Crazy". Melissa Joan Hart had a movie coming out at the time that was titled Drive Me Crazy after the song - and she and Adrian Grenier appeared in the video as a tie-in. Clips of the video are shown in The Stinger for the episode too.
  • Penn Jillette plays Drell, head of the Witches' Council. In real life he performs as part of a magic duo Penn & Teller.
  • When Dick Van Dyke guest starred, he conjured up an ottoman by the front door, which Sabrina then tripped over upon entering - recalling the opening of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
• Aborted Arc: Dreama is introduced in Season 4 as a student that Sabrina must help get her Witch's Licence. Dreama disappears from the show during the shift from Seasons 4 to 5 and there's never any mention of her again, possibly having gained her witch's licence a lot faster than Sabrina did.
• Adaptational Location Change: The show is set in the fictional Boston suburb of Westbridge, but the comic book it was based on was set in Greendale, a neighboring town of Riverdale.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The witches as a whole, especially Aunt Hilda. In most early comics, Sabrina's supposed to use her magic to cause trouble. In fact, when Sabrina tries to use her powers to help people, and it backfires horribly, just like in the show, the other witches are proud because they mistakenly think she's finally acting like a real witch.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Just about every main character, compared to the original comics. Sabrina herself had white-blonde hair in the comics but is a more normal blonde in this series. Her aunts are blonde as well, despite having respectively red (Hilda) and green (Zelda) in the comics. Harvey had black hair in the comics, but here his hair is brown. And Salem had black and white fur in the original comics, but here it looks completely black.
• Adaptation Expansion: The novelizations featured more of other characters who only appeared in one or two episodes; Aunt Vesta for example appears more often there.
• Adaptation Personality Change: In the comics Zelda was the ditzy aunt and Hilda the responsible one (and the Pilot Movie had this). The show swaps them around, with Hilda as the ditz and Zelda the responsible one.
• Aesop Amnesia: Parodied in "Sabrina and the Beanstalk" where Sabrina preaches against the dangers of procrastination at the end - only for Harvey to distract her from working on their project by baking brownies.
• Aesop Collateral Damage: Harvey gets turned into a beast (complete with tusks and fur) by Sabrina's ugly cousin to teach her a lesson about shallowness.
• Aesop Enforcer: Hilda and Zelda tend to play Enforcer to teach Sabrina An Aesop.
• Affably Evil: Salem.
• Affectionate Nickname: Salem's for Sabrina is apparently "Sabriny" - which has a Running Gag of the others reacting with a Flat "What" whenever they hear it. Zelda is also referred to as "Zelly" and by Willard Kraft as "Zuzoo" whilst she calls him "Monkey".
• Affectionate Parody: Several episodes would involve Sabrina (usually accidentally) casting a spell that lands her and her friends in a parody of certain things. Said parodies would usually be affectionate though.
  • "As Westbridge Turns" - soap operas. Harvey gets Easy Amnesia when hit with a ladder, Libby convinces him she's his girlfriend and frames Sabrina for stealing an engagement ring Mr Pool bought for the Hospital Hottie. Naturally the school becomes a World of Ham and the climax involves a Cat Fight.
  • "The Crucible" - the Salem Witch Trials. Despite the title, it's not a Whole-Plot Reference to the play itself; the history class spend a weekend in Salem roleplaying Puritan life, and Libby accuses Jenny and later Sabrina of being witches.
  • "Troll Bride" - the second half of the episode is Fractured Fairy Tale involving Sabrina trapped in a tower (at one point conjuring long hair), being forced to marry a troll, and Harvey having to be the Prince Charming. It contains several nods to The Princess Bride.
  • "Sabrina the Teenage Writer" - Sabrina writes a spy story for English class, not knowing it will come to life. Harvey is the womanizing Sharp-Dressed Man spy, Valerie the beautiful sidekick in a Spy Catsuit, Mrs Quick the spy gadget supplier and Mr Kraft the Big Bad with an Eyepatch of Power, and plenty of puns to go around.
  • "Silent Movie" - after casting a silence spell, the Spellman house becomes a silent movie. Sabrina resembles Mary Pickford, and it's full of Shout Outs to Dudley Do-Right.
  • "Wild Wild Witch" - the aunts cast a spell to send Sabrina to the Wild West, where she has to become sheriff and deal with 'The Petulant Kid'.
  • "Murder on the Halloween Express" - a Halloween train ride turns out to be an Agatha Christie style murder mystery, where Josh is the murder victim, Sabrina is the detective and her friends the suspects.
• All Witches Have Cats: Sabrina has Salem — though in seasons 1 - 5 he technically belongs to Hilda, before she is pardoned by the Witches' Council and is no longer charged with taking care of him. After that he gradually becomes Sabrina's cat, and in Season 7 he lives with her after Hilda and Zelda have left the show.
• Alpha Bitch: Libby was the former Trope Namer for a very long time because she was such a striking example of this. Oddly enough she doesn't fit a lot of the stereotypical requirements - she's not blonde, she's not dumb (although she's more Book Dumb than Sabrina), and she's not vastly richer than the protagonists (although she acts like a Rich Bitch, like in the episode where her dad buys her a new car and she mocks Sabrina because "the school bus is for losers"). She is a cheerleader though.
• Ambiguously Jewish:
  • Salem Saberhagen mentions his niece having had a Bat Mitzvah, indicating the Saberhagens are a Jewish (witch) family, or leastways that Salem has some Jewish relatives.
  • To a lesser extent, Aaron Jacobs, Sabrina's Disposable Fiancé in the last season. Aaron Jacobs, for those who don't know, is a very Jewish name. His mother is a psychiatrist, a stereotypically Jewish profession, who wrote a book called "Not With My Son You Don't". His father is a nuclear physicist.
• And I Must Scream: Hilda has imprisoned a man who did not love her within the gemstone on her ring. He appears to have been there since the Renaissance and can't age or die. He is also fully conscious and is aware of what's happened to him and he begs to be let out. Hilda seems content with keeping him in there.
• And Starring:
  • The cast roll for the fifth and sixth season openings end with "and Nick Bakay as the voice of Salem."
  • For the final season, the roll ends with "and Soleil Moon Frye as Roxie."
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: In an episode where Sabrina uses magical products to make Harvey more ambitious, to the point where he's alienated from Sabrina and only cares about his ambitions of being a money-making businessman, she shows him what could happen if he continues (a la A Christmas Carol). At the end of the montage they see a party which is Harvey's funeral. They're happy because he was a jerk who didn't spend time with his family and cut down all of the trees (except one) in Westbridge.
• Animated Adaptation: Sabrina: The Animated Series, which received its own sequels in the forms of an OVA (Friends Forever) and a sequel series, Sabrina's Secret Life. Although it was a cartoon first, then a live series, then a cartoon again.
• Anti-Magic:
  • Witches' magic doesn't work on vampires in this series.
  • There's also a magical quota when magic is used on mortals, exceed it and magic won't work on that particular person any more. This is how Harvey discovers Sabrina's secret at the end of Season 4.
• Arc Words: Season one. Say it with us now: "Mitosis is..." the process of cell division.
• Artifact Title: Archie Comics kept the production team from revising it when Sabrina got older. Sabrina is nineteen in Season 5 and in her mid-twenties by the series finale.
• Artistic License: In "Tick Tock, Hilda's Clock", Zelda is seen reading Valley of the Dolls and exclaiming "the things that go on in that valley". The 'valley' in the title does not refer to a physical place, but is a metaphor for withdrawals from drugs, which is what the 'dolls' refer to. This indicates that the episode's writer didn't know what the story was about and assumed it took place in a specific valley.
• Artistic License – Geography: One episode had lines placed Westbridge nearly 200 miles west of Boston, which in real life is far west of the Hudson River in New York. Another episode said that the same town is about an hour's drive from Salem, Massachusetts, which itself in real life is about 10 miles north of Boston. The fifth series and on also said that Westbridge is very close into Boston, and heavily urbanised, but it's a small town to this day.
• Artistic License – History: When trying to dissuade her friend from trying out for the cheerleading squad, Sabrina blurts out that no cheerleader was ever elected president...except that Dwight D. Eisenhower had been cheerleader. Excusable as it's a throwaway line. Hilarious in Hindsight as George W. Bush was also a cheerleader, but was not yet president at the time of the episode airing.
• Assembly Line Fast-Forward: One episode has Sabrina at a job at a pizzeria and dreams this happening.
• Bad Job, Worse Uniform: The episode "Sandman" features a brief appearance by the truly hideous uniform worn by employees of "Pork on a Pole" (an orange, black and yellow uniform, including a three-quarter length smock and a large peaked hat that she's expected to keep her hair stuffed up under). And they make the wearers buy the outfit. The same episode features the Warning Man and his uniform, a large fluorescent cone over most of him and an orange flashing light on his head. As he admits near the end of the episode, "I had to pay for that uniform".
• Balloon Belly: Happens to Sabrina a couple of times in the series.
  • In season three Sabrina becomes addicted to pancakes and eats so much that she gets stuck in a doorway... while claiming she's still sucking it in.
  Doctor: How many pancakes did you eat?
  Sabrina: I don't know, I lost count after the first five-hundred...
  • In season four this happens off screen after her picture is taken by a magic camera that makes people gain a hundred pounds, though there is a brief moment where she looks very fat in her mirror after it became enchanted.
• Be Careful What You Say: Good advice when doing magic. The Literal Genie trope runs rampant in the other realm, so when casting a spell a witch has to say exactly what he or she means. Sabrina occasionally lands herself in trouble for failing to make her spells precise enough.
• Be Careful What You Wish For : One episode had Sabrina babysitting a 2-year-old. At one point he is constantly crying until she picks him up and holds him saying, "Be a big boy, be a big boy, be a big boy..." inadvertently casting a spell which turns the toddler into a 40-ish looking man who still has the mind of a toddler.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Parodied in the penultimate episode. When a tidal wave hits the beach Sabrina and her friends are staying at, Sabrina and Roxie emerge with messy hair, dirt on their faces and covered in seaweed. Morgan is still fine and we get this exchange.
  Sabrina: Morgan, how did you learn to scale a palm tree like that?
  Morgan: Do you have any idea what a twenty-foot wall of water would do to my hair?
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Several guest stars from the Other Realm have appeared as themselves, including Jerry Springer and the Car Talk guys.
• The Bermuda Triangle: In an episode when Sabrina is on a cruise ship that enters the Bermuda Triangle, she discovers that her powers no longer work but can instead make wishes that are instantly granted.
• Berserk Button: Amanda, several times. When she was young, it was being denied things. When she was older, well:
  Aaron's Mother: "It's so hard to find a bridesmaids dress that looks good on everyone."
  Amanda: Oh, I have melted people for less than that!
• Big Beautiful Woman: Hilda had a very full figure and had a more active love life than Zelda.
• Big "NO!": Salem has plenty of those for almost every season.
• Bitch Alert:
  • Libby is introduced stopping Harvey from being Sabrina's lab partner, and then telling Sabrina to use "the freaks' bathroom", establishing her as a rival.
  • Amanda in her first scene casually tells Sabrina that she puts people in jars when they disagree with her, telling us that she'll be a Bratty Half-Pint extraordinaire. Amanda however does mellow out a little in Season 5.
  • Roxie in her debut episode pretty much excludes Sabrina from sharing a dorm room with her. Like Amanda, she undergoes Character Development and ends the series as one of Sabrina's closest friends.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: From season 5 onwards - Sabrina (blonde), Roxie (brunette) and Morgan (redhead). The traditional roles are palette swapped with Sabrina as the Brainy Blonde, Roxie as the Fiery Brunette and Morgan as the Dumb Redhead. Alternately season 1 could also count with Libby and Jenny filling the brunette and redhead roles respectively - though without the personality types as Jenny was brainy too and Libby wasn't dumb, just mean.
• Body Horror: Hilda prepares a spell for a man she dated that will "make him a better listener". The spell causes the man in question to sprout ears all over his head, causing him much distress.
• Book Dumb:
  • Aunt Hilda is notably less knowledgeable about science and other academic stuff than Zelda, but she does possess some street smarts.
  • Harvey, and one episode has Sabrina fretting over this and worrying he won't get into a good college.
• Boot Camp Episode: An episode had Sabrina get sent there by her Quizmaster for crashing a train into the living room, and thus failing her first quiz.
• Bowdlerization: In some UK airings of "Third Aunt From The Song", the lyrics to the fictional 'Funky Song' are changed. The lyrics say "shake your whammy fanny". In America 'fanny' is just a tamer word for ass. In the UK it's a slang word for vagina.
• The Brainless Beauty: Morgan. Sabrina herself temporarily became one in 'Deliver Us From Email' after catching a magical computer virus.
• Brain with a Manual Control: In the episode "Nobody Nose Libby Like Sabrina Knows Libby", Sabrina and Salem are magically shrunk and trapped inside a tiny rocket ship, which (accidentally) flies up the nose of the local Alpha Bitch and lands in her brain. There is no control room in there per se, but Sabrina has plenty of space to walk around inside, see out of Libby's eyes, and after pressing a nerve to the forehead, she gains total control over Libby's body and speech.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Sabrina has her moments, although she's a niece rather than a daughter.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Jenny contemplating what Harvey might be thinking about:
  Jenny: Do you ever wonder what Harvey's thinking about when he's looking out the window?
  Sabrina: Probably football?
  Jenny: No, no, I bet he's thinking about nature. Or poetry. Or the poetry of nature.
  Sabrina: I'm sticking with football.
• Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: Between Sabrina and Harvey, first when he sees her with Josh, then when he learns (permanently) that she is a witch. Uncommon for a sitcom of that period, both times lasted several episodes.
• Breast Expansion:
  • In the episode "Sabrina Unplugged", Sabrina accidentally has her breasts enlarged by Leonard when he alters her body through a magical photoshop-like program she was trapped in, thinking it's just a picture of her. Undoubtedly, her new bosom leads to a lot of Male Gaze moments and gets a lot of attention.
  • In "Hilda and Zelda: The Teenage Years", Hilda borrows one of Zelda's sweaters without asking and her chest swells up to an enormous size when she puts it on. Zelda then reveals that she put a booby-trap spell on all of her clothes to make Hilda stop borrowing them. After Zelda frees Hilda from the sweater, Sabrina walks in and tries it on because she didn't know about the spell, so her chest swells up too.
    Sabrina: Why can’t I just live in a normal house? Why can’t a sweater just be a sweater?
• Brick Joke:
  • Morgan says that Harvey helped her decide between a tiger print and zebra print blouse, and Harvey says (to get rid of her) that everyone is wearing them at Wal-Mart. Morgan reappears towards the end of the episode now wearing a zebra print.
  • In the pilot episode, Sabrina's aunts give her a tiny cauldron for her birthday (before they tell her she's a witch) and she says - clearly trying not to hurt their feelings- that she can keep pens in it. Later episodes throughout the season do in fact reveal her using it as a pen-holder.
  • In the season 2 episode "Sabrina and the Beanstalk", Salem is sent up the beanstalk to stand guard in case the giant tries to come down (turns out there isn't one, but there is a wicked witch). While on his way up, he calls down to let Sabrina and the others know that "Harvey's at the front door. And send me a sandwich!" Later, after he gets back down, he trots off asking "Where's that sandwich?"
• Bridezilla: Sabrina became a literal bridezilla in one episode, when, following the advice of Cinderella, she became extremely demanding, causing her lower body to change into that of a dragon.
• Broken Aesop:
  • Some people think this applies to the final episode when Sabrina ends up choosing her (magically) destined partner Harvey over her fiancee, despite the fact that several characters tell her that even though their soul crystals do not match, what matters is what the heart wants. Of course the characters' conjectures still hold true, since Sabrina spends half her engagement questioning her feelings towards the groom in favour of Harvey. It's made blatantly obvious that Sabrina and her high-school sweetie are not only destined partners by magic, but actually love each other more than anything.
  • In the episode “The Competition”, Sabrina is upset when her boyfriend Josh claims women can’t play sports as well as men. She then proceeds to enlist a Male tennis star (Andy Roddick) for help learning to play better. If women play as well as men, shouldn’t you prove it by learning from a fellow woman?
• Bubble Pipe:
  • The episode where Sabrina's friend ends up in the Other Realm has the woman who reads out the laws of said realm blow on a bubble pipe when she's having her conversation with Sabrina. She says that she's trying to quit but needs the pipe to cope with her stressful job.
  • Also the episode of the murder mystery party, where Salem plays a detective. Leading to this hilarious bit with a suspect:
  Salem: The body was covered with pipe smoke!
  Suspect: But zat means nozing! You have a pipe too.
  Salem: Yes, but mine only blows bubbles! *does just that*
• Buffy Speak:
  Sabrina: Uh... "Dr. Bad's wheelchair started spinning out of control like— Like a wheelchair spinning out of control."
• Burn the Witch!:
  • Played for Laughs - Most witches are Nigh-Invulnerable and burning them doesn't do a thing, but they are obviously irritated when people try to do it to them. Hilda and Zelda don't practice Thanksgiving because, while the Puritans may not have actually burnt witches, they still were not very "witch-friendly".
  • It's also worth noting that when Jenny is "found guilty" of being a witch in "The Crucible", Mr. Pool says "you can pretend we hanged her" instead of burning. He was with the history teacher after all.
  • Subverted again in a later episode with a flashback to Zelda telling a friend she was a witch - the villagers duck her down a well instead of burning her.
• Call-Back: In the finale, to the very first season— the "something old" bracelet that Morgan gets out of Sabrina's jewelry box is the bracelet that Harvey gave her during "As Westbridge Turns", and Sabrina running away with Harvey happens at exactly 12:36, which is engraved on the bracelet because it's the exact time they met.
• Can't Believe I Said That: In "Sabrina Through The Looking Glass", Baltimore Oriole star Brady Anderson stars As Himself and serves as Sabrina's spirit guide when she becomes trapped inside a mirror world. As she's leaving, he advises her to remember that "life is a team sport." After she goes back, Brady delivers the following line:
  Brady: Life is a team sport? How stupid does that sound?
• Casting Gag:
  • In one episode, it is revealed that Aunt Hilda (played by Quebec-born Caroline Rhea) failed to fill out her immigration paperwork, and when tested on the legality of her citizenship by reading a sentence, she reads it in an exaggerated Canadian accent. She is then promptly deported to "the Northern Sector of the Other Realm, where she came from." Subsequently, she is traded for badger pelts.
  • Drell, the head of the Witches Council and an extremely powerful warlock, is played by Penn Jillette, one of the world's most famous and talented illusionists. His partner Teller also appears as a member of the Council in another episode, where his quiet nature is explained by having a literal frog in his throat.
  • Sabrina's Aunt Irma is played by Barbara Eden, who starred in the title role in I Dream of Jeannie. One of Western media's first Magical Girls gets to play the matriarch of the Spellman family.
  • Alice Ghostley made an apperance as Sabrina's great-grandmother. Ghostley played the Inept Mage Esmeralda on Bewitched.
• Catchphrase: "Gotta go!" "Gross gross gross gross!"
• Cats Are Magic: Played with. Punishment for trying to take over the world for witches is to be turned into a cat. They're still able to talk but have no magic. Witches can also voluntarily turn themselves into cats, such as Salem's old flame Sally at the end of a Season 5 episode.
• Cats Are Mean: Explained in that witches that try to take over the world, like Salem (or anything larger like "the universe", like one of Salem's dates) are punished by being turned into a cat for 100 years. This doesn't happen to everyone though; Hilda, who followed Salem because she thought he would succeed, only had to keep him worm free until the end of his sentence... until she's freed from it that is.
• Cats Are Snarkers: Salem. Of course he was a witch first though.
• Chained to a Railway: Parodied: Sabrina even does the scream-and-struggle seizure, but quickly stops as she realizes that screaming is pretty pointless if you're in a silent movie.
• Character Development: Over the course of seven seasons, Amanda goes from being a Bratty Half-Pint to a decent person, and her and Sabrina are on much better terms. Roxie also starts season 5 as an anti-social moody bitch and ends the series as one of Sabrina's closest friends.
• Chekhov's Gun: The bracelet engraved "12:36" that Harvey gives Sabrina in "As Westbridge Turns".
  • It first appears to be merely a slightly eccentric gift from Harvey (12:36 is the time Harvey and Sabrina first spoke back in the "Pilot" episode). However, when Libby steals Mr. Pool's engagement ring and attempts to frame Sabrina for the crime, the bracelet turns out to be key to establishing an alibi for Sabrina's.
  • The bracelet finds a place in Sabrina's jewelry box, and it isn't seen again until the series finale, "Soul Mates". Morgan swiped it from the box and gives it to Sabrina as her "something old" for her wedding to Aaron. Sabrina recognizes it as a gift from Harvey, and remembers the significance of the inscription 12:36. This prompts her to call off her wedding to Aaron. At 12:36 exactly, she leaves the church to find Harvey waiting outside, realizing that he's her soul mate.
• Comic-Book Time: Season 3 is the odd one out. Sabrina is sixteen in Season 1 and Season 2 opens with her turning seventeen. She turns eighteen in the premiere of Season 4, making Season 3's timeline hard to figure out. Further head-scratching ensues when you realise that season also features Christmas, Valentine's Day and Halloween episodes - and Season 3's Halloween Episode references Season 2's!
  • It's implied that Season 3 and 4 take place over one school year; as stated above, Season 1 starts with Sabrina as 16 and she's said to be 17 in Season 2; she turns 18 at the beginning of Season 4 as she gets her Witch's License on her 18th birthday, so it seems that Season three is the first half of the school year (September - February) and Season 4 is the second half and over the rest of that school year (March - July), then she and Harvey break up before the summer begins as at the start of Season five Sabrina has had "the summer" to get over Harvey.
• Continuity Nod: In Season 1 Harvey tries to prove that Sabrina isn't a witch by throwing water on her. In Season 2 when they're attacked by the Wicked Witch, Harvey throws water on her.
• Continuity Porn: The novel Witch Way Did She Go? is set in the fifth season and features Sabrina getting trapped in a maze in the Other Realm - where it conjures up apparitions of cast members from previous seasons. Mr Kraft, Libby, Skippy, Jenny, Valerie, Dreama and Drell all make appearances.
• Continuity Snarl: Seasons 2 and 3 must take place in different years because they have their own Halloween and Christmas episodes, yet Sabrina and her peers are high school juniors in both seasons. In one episode of Season 3, Harvey references having been a freshman in the first episode of Season 1, which is a Retcon as the characters were actually sophomores in that season.
• Cute and Psycho:
  • Ms. Quick certainly shows shades of this. It's usually a spell that's bringing out the psycho side, but a Season 4 episode shows her snapping at Sabrina's lack of responsibility with the school newspaper of her own accord.
  • Some fans will agree that Miles does too.
• Characterization Marches On:
  • Harvey was more of a Dumb Jock in Season 1 and it was a Running Gag that he thought Libby was a nice person just because she was nice to him. He gets a bit more intelligent in Season 2.
  • Sabrina was much shyer and more nervous about fitting in when the first season started - and Jenny's role was to be the confident friend to her. Sabrina herself became the competent friend in Season 2, with Valerie now being the needy one.
  • Zelda was a strict disciplinarian in Season 1 and easily the most serious out of the main cast. Season 2 softened her a lot and added many Not So Above It All moments. Her status as the responsible one was also Played for Laughs much more.
• Christmas Elves:
  • Subverted in an early episode, where all of Santa's elves are regular human-sized except one.
  Elf: We're Santa's elves!
  Sabrina: But you're huge!
  Elf: Yeah, guess who always gets in the pictures...
• Christmas Episode:
  • Season 1 - Salem gets kidnapped by another child and Sabrina has to rescue him by disguising herself as Santa.
  • Season 2 - Sabrina has to fill in for Santa when she injures him.
  • Season 3 - Christmas gets accidentally erased from the Mortal Realm, and Sabrina must remind everyone of it.
  • Season 4 - Sabrina is forced to remind Mr Kraft about the joy of Christmas.
  • Season 5 - Sabrina desires to have a normal Christmas and spends it with Morgan's family.
  • Season 7 - Sabrina, Morgan and Roxie go on a vacation to Miami where they meet Roxie's mother.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome:
  • Principal LaRue was featured in Season 1 and demoted to The Ghost in Season 2, with Mr Kraft taking the helm as an antagonist.
  • Mr Pool vanishes in Season 2, his spot as the Cool Teacher being filled by Mrs Quick.
  • Jenny abruptly disappears to be replaced by Valerie. A novelization lampshades this when Sabrina encounters fantasy versions of her three high school best friends - saying Jenny "just sort of went away", implying she and Sabrina drifted apart.
  • All the high school characters with the switch from Season 4 to 5, where Sabrina is now attending college.
  • Miles is nowhere to be found in Season 7.
• College Radio: Sabrina and Roxie get their own show, but Sabrina quickly steps down when she realizes she's not a very good host.
• Color Me Black: Subverted. The morning after receiving a lecture from one of her relatives about the importance of not judging by appearance, Sabrina checks herself in the mirror and is grateful that her appearance wasn't modified in the night. Harvey, however, spends the episode transformed into a beast-man, and Sabrina has to accept him before the curse is undone.
• Comes Great Responsibility: The reason why Sabrina ends up in trouble every episode.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Miles believes in alien conspiracies.
• Continuity Drift:
  • The punishment in series for telling a mortal about one's witch powers is that they are stripped of them if the mortal tells anyone. The movie Sabrina Goes To Rome also adds that a depowered witch is also cast out if she doesn't turn said mortal into a pile of stone within 12 hours. Especially Egregious because Cousin Marigold lost her powers the instant Emile told someone about them.
  • "Jenny's Non Dream" has Sabrina making Salem practice sounding like a regular cat. This seems to ignore that Salem pretended to be one perfectly before Sabrina knew she was a witch.
• Continuity Nod: In "The Crucible" Sabrina says to ask Jill if that's her real nose - referencing Libby revealing Jill had a nose job in "Bundt Friday".
• Contrived Clumsiness: In the pilot episode, the Alpha Bitch performs the drink spill variant to Sabrina. Later, when she does it again, Sabrina uses her magic to make the drink tilt back towards her. Libby commonly tries to pull this off on Sabrina or her friends, but almost never succeeds or goes unpunished.
• Convenience Store Gift Shopping: Roxie unexpectedly ends up spending Christmas with Hilda and Zelda, so she goes out to buy some last-minute gifts. She buys the aunts lottery tickets and Gatorade because 7-11 is the only open store she can find.
• Cool Aunt:
  • Hilda would fill this role, as the more fun aunt in comparison to Zelda.
  • Subverted with Aunt Vesta, who appears to be more fun than either of her sisters. But it's soon shown that she's quite lonely and empty in her lifestyle (though she herself doesn't mind it much).
• Cool Cat: Salem is almost as cool as he thinks he is.
• Costumer: There were a couple:
  • Season 1's finale "Troll Bride" puts Sabrina and Harvey in medieval costumes for the sake of Fairy Tale Motifs.
  • Season 2's "Inna Gadda Sabrina" traps the Spellmans in the middle of the 1960s.
  • Season 3's "Silent Movie" traps everyone in a silent film with fashions from the 1910s.
  • Season 4's "Wild Wild Witch" sends Sabrina to an alternate reality in the Wild West.
  • Season 6's Halloween Episode is murder mystery themed with the cast all in outfits of The Roaring '20s.
• Couch Gag: The first three seasons of the show had Sabrina changing into four different outfits in front of her mirror, the fourth always being different. She would then make a quick pun or observation based on the outfit in question.
• Cousin Oliver: A season 3 episode reveals Marigold has a second daughter Allie that wasn't seen at the Halloween family gathering back in season 1. Also one wonders why she didn't need to be babysat in season 2 when Sabrina did it for Amanda. The character appeared as one who could star in a potential Amanda spin-off - played by another Hart sibling - but was never seen again afterwards.
• Crack Defeat: When trying to find actresses to play cheerleaders in a student film, Roxie gives a sarcastic audition and gets the part.
  "I guess all those years of making fun of cheerleaders finally paid off."
• Creepy Doll: Two words: Molly Dolly.
• Crossover:
  • Done with both the live action series and the comic.
  • Also did one with Clueless, even if it's only for about thirty seconds. When Cher meets Sabrina, she's confused that she had never seen her, despite that Cher knew everyone at school. Sabrina then disappears when Cher's back is turned, leaving Cher baffled.
  • As part of a night where in Sabrina, Salem had swallowed a ball that allowed the holder to travel to a different time period, the night saw Salem turn up in the other shows on the TGIF lineup at the time, Boy Meets World, Teen Angel and You Wish. This didn't translate well when going overseas, as not every show was exported to the channel - For example, in the UK Sabrina aired on Nickelodeon, but Teen Angel (Which featured the end of the event) and Boy Meets World aired on the Disney Channel.
• Cult: Had a cult around a fake "witch" who also hoarded its members' worldly possessions. (And made them eat mungbeans)
• Crystal Prison: When Sabrina is told she cannot use her powers to make Harvey love her, Aunt Hilda offers an alternative: Imprison him within a ring. She holds up her ring and sure enough Sabrina can see a young man from the Renaissance Era trapped within the stone and she can hear him pleading with Hilda to release him. Fortunately for Harvey, Sabrina choses not to subject him to this fate.
  Aunt Hilda: You can't make someone love you. But you can imprison him in a ring for not loving you. See?
  Man In Ring: Hilda, let me out! Thou art starting to grow upon me!
  Aunt Hilda: I love the way he catches the light.
• Cute Witch: Sabrina of course, as she's a sixteen-year-old witch who's shy about fitting in.
• Damsel in Distress: Sabrina in the first episode featuring Roland. Also in several episodes involving Harvey, like when Sabrina conjures a silent spell that winds up turning the evening into a silent movie or when she turns the boy into a superhero.
• Dating Do-Si-Do: Mr. Kraft dated both Hilda and Zelda at different times. Sure it's dramatic, but it would sure suck to be in Sabrina's position on that one.
• Deadpan Snarker: Salem. Sabrina and both aunts also snark on the occasion.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Roxie over the course of three seasons, to the point where she's Sabrina's bridesmaid in the finale.
• Did You Get a New Haircut?: Played with in an episode. Jenny really does get a horrible (and dramatically shorter) new haircut:
  Harvey: You look different. Are those new earrings?
  Jenny: Actually they are.
  Harvey: People tell me I'm not perceptive!
• Disproportionate Retribution:
  • Sabrina calls her Aunt Dorma to ask about the family secret, only to learn too late that she takes ten-year naps and hates to be woken up. Aunt Dorma retaliates by filling the whole house with magical and irremovable poppies that poison full witches like Aunt Hilda and Zelda into an Age Without Youth eternal sleep till their bodies rot away to nothingness, and half-witches like Sabrina to feel drowsy for the rest of their lives. She apologizes during the end credits (it's implied she's a Nice Gal that's just Not a Morning Person), but is Easily Forgiven for trying to poison the whole family into a Fate Worse than Death.
  • In the same episode, Salem responds to neighbor Tobias running over their trashcans and mailbox with death threats over the phone and catapulted water balloons that shatter all his windows. Naturally, the police are called.
  • In an earlier episode, Cousin (and Emperor) Larry declares open war on Zelda for politely declining to hand over a small country (of three people) she just found out she is a princess of to him.
  • Hilda once imprisoned a man in a ring because he didn't love her.
• Dream Deception: One episode sees Sabrina's muggle friend Jenny wander into the Other Realm by accident. In order to get Jenny out without her figuring out that they're witches, Sabrina and her aunts convince her that she's just having a very vivid dream.
• Dumb Blonde:
  • Episode "Deliver Us From E-Mail", where Katrina sends Sabrina an "airhead virus", which lets Katrina absorb all of Sabrina's intelligence, turning her into a blonde bimbo.
  • In the Cold Open of "Five Easy Pieces of Libby", Salem is accidentally turned blonde and remarks "I'm blonde! My IQ just dropped 20 points." Then he lets out one of his characteristic "Gyehhh?!" sounds when Zelda points out that he just said that in front of three blond witches.
• Dumb Jock: There is an episode where Sabrina writes an article for the school paper exposing the preferential treatment given to school athletes and gets the star pitcher for the baseball team benched until he finishes his assignments. She goes to help him and he has doodled that he hates her and wrote her names with three "n"s.
• Ear Worm: A Running Gag in Season 1 is Sabrina and friends having the fictional Brothers Junk song 'Funky Song' stuck in their heads.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Pilot Movie took place in Riverdale, Michelle Beaudoin's character was called Marnie, Sabrina's romantic rival was a blonde called Katie, it was Harvey that pined after Sabrina (rather than the other way round in season 1) and there was a Romantic False Lead called Seth. Additionally Zelda was the ditzy aunt and Hilda was the responsible one. Salem also had a British accent. Also a similar plot to the first episode has time being reset to save Sabrina being humiliated by the Alpha Bitch. In the show, she has to appeal to the Witches' Council. In the movie, the aunts are able to do it themselves.
  • Season 1 of the show had several character differences:
    • Sabrina was a lot more shy and desperate about fitting in - often needing reassurance from the more confident Jenny. In season 2 Sabrina became the confident best friend to the neurotic and needy Valerie.
    • The first episode has Sabrina instinctively know that Libby wears aftershave "to remind me of a boy who dumped me last summer". Her magic doesn't give her any such psychic abilities from then on.
    • Harvey was initially oblivious to Libby's Alpha Bitch ways - mistakenly thinking she was actually nice. Eventually he was fully aware of what a nasty piece of work she was. Additionally he was a bit dumber and Oblivious to Love in season 1, before becoming a little smarter in season 2.
    • Libby was simply just mean to her lower classmates in season 1. When Mr Kraft is introduced in season 2, Libby is seen less with her Girl Posse and is much more manipulative - often using Mr Kraft to cause trouble for Sabrina.
    • Zelda in the first season was more of an Only Sane Woman and a strict disciplinarian. In season 2 her overall character became much softer; while still the responsible aunt, she got a lot more Not So Above It All moments and took part in more slapstick.
    • Salem's first few appearances in Season 1 portrayed him as much more sinister (his attempt to Take Over the World being treated as a serious threat instead of being Played for Laughs in later seasons) and with a much flatter voice. This gradually gave away to the more snarky and goofier persona he became famous for.
    • Mr Pool filled the role of the Cool Teacher in season 1 before being replaced by Mrs Quick in season 2 - who was presented as a Foil for Mr Kraft.
    • Hilda's on-off relationship with Drell was a Running Gag in season 1. Drell was demoted to The Ghost in season 2 and - while still referenced - Hilda became more of a Serial Romeo.
• Elemental Shapeshifter: One episode has Sabrina struggling with trying to learn this technique; it finally clicks for her by the end of the episode in a moment of anger and frustration, and she easily turns into wind and then fire.
• Enslaved Tongue: Sabrina puts a spell on Hilda so that she'll say whatever Sabrina says, so she can make her go on a date with Mr. Kraft. While that is going on, Valerie shows up and Sabrina starts having a conversation with her while Hilda keeps repeating everything Sabrina is saying to Valerie. Eventually the spell breaks and Hilda drags Sabrina off to Zelda to figure out an appropriate punishment.
• Evil Matriarch: Aunt Irma. Technically, she's not evil—she just likes to get her own way and does, in her own crazy way, care for Sabrina; she even hugs her in Series 7 when she thinks Harvey and Sabrina are getting married. She openly admits that she dislikes Sabrina's intention to marry a mortal, but understands that Harvey is "the least offensive" of them all (probably because of his loyalty to Sabrina). Word of God later states that Irma presided over Sabrina's common-law marriage to Harvey. (This used to be in an X-Files related document, but has since been erased; the document, not the information.) So, Irma simply cares that her family marry the best person available and do the best they can. However, she's still not above using her powers for punishment, either. If a member of her family decides to marry a mortal that Irma doesn't approve of, she turns the mortal into a fish or some other household knickknack. And family isn't spared, either: Irma transforms her own daughter into a ballerina porcelain figure, Hilda into a dried fruit basket (repeatedly), and Hilda, Zelda, and Salem into pigs when they insult her.
• Evil Twin: Katrina, Jezebelda and all the Spellman twins. Combined with Always Chaotic Evil.
• Exact Words:
  • Spells, especially ones spoken in rhyme, will always take extremely literal effects based on the caster's word choice. There's an entire episode dedicated to this trope—"Oh What a Tangled Spells She Weaves." In it, Sabrina tries to make it warmer in school—the place becomes blisteringly hot. She attempts to cool it down—an indoor blizzard begins. She casts a spell to make Harvey a Hall of Fame-caliber football player—he bulks up into a musclebound giant. She sends her aunts to the location of a rug that she already made disappear with a spell—Hilda and Zelda end up in Merlin's castle, where the rug came from. And that's just one episode!
  • In "Whose So-Called Life is it Anyway?", Sabrina tries to liven up Valerie's extremely dull family dinner by allowing whatever Mr. and Mrs. Birkhead wish for on a wishbone to come true. Mrs. Birkhead wishes that "our Valerie could be just like Sabrina." Cue Valerie slowly transforming into an actual copy of Sabrina, complete with confidence, blonde hair, and magical powers.
• Expansion Pack Past: Hilda and Zelda's Historical In Jokes make their lives two of these. It doesn't help that the women seem to have moved not only through space, but also time, so despite being only around 600 years old they lived through much older times. Note, Hilda is 652 and Zelda is 659, so they've lived rather a long time; this raises the question of just how old Sabrina's father, Aunt Vesta and Aunt Sophia actually are? Irma's over 1,000, so they can't be that old... can they? As time travel is possible to an extent, this also involves going to the future too.
  Hilda: I've been to the end of the world. This isn't it.
• Exposition of Immortality: Hilda and Zelda mention that they had all the money because they kept a lot of common items over the time of their extended lifespans and sold them when they found they'd become valuable antiques.
• Expository Hairstyle Change:
  • Hilda mainly wears her hair short or bobbed for most of the series. When she comes Back for the Finale after about a year of being Happily Married, her hair is long.
  • Sabrina dyes her hair red during Season 5 while trying to find herself during college. She reverts to blonde as soon as she enters a relationship with Josh.
• Expository Theme Tune: The second OP intimates that Sabrina has moved out of her aunts' house, and leads a busy life.
• Facepalm: In the season 3 finale, Harvey falls for one of Salem's pranks (he was under a "Doctor Dolittle spell" to let him talk to animals, and at one point, Salem tricks Harvey into looking at his butt, then says "Made you look!"), and does this in response.
• Fallen Princess:
  • Deconstructed in the episode "Geek Like Me". Sabrina uses her magic to turn Libby into a geek, hoping it will encourage her to change her ways and become nicer when she sees how hard it is. It doesn't work as Libby instead becomes the leader of the geeks and turns them into an elite clique that the cheerleading squad originally was.
  • Played straight when Cousin Marigold is depowered and hooks up with a mortal man. She says she was never happy with magic but is happier now.
• Familiar: In the Pilot Movie, Salem is one for Sabrina and her aunts, helping them perform magic as part of his punishment. In the sitcom he has no/limited magic but often acts as an adviser on the subject, particularly for Sabrina.
• Fanservice:
  • The teenage girl characters often donned short skirts and form fitting clothes, which the network admitted was deliberate to snare more more male viewers.
  • The episode "Third Aunt From The Sun" features 60s sex symbol Raquel Welch as Sabrina's Aunt Vesta. Throughout the episode she wears several tight outfits (one of which is very low cut) and a bath robe at one point, and at the end both she and Sabrina are in tight black leather for the sake of a music video.
  • Season 3's "Silent Movie" gets Zelda, Hilda and Sabrina into flattering mini-dresses for the sake of a dinner party.
  • The Season 3 finale takes the Spellmans to a family reunion in Hawaii. The women either wear bikinis or flattering sun dresses. Zelda even has one scene where she's bent over a sink, giving the audience an eyeful.
  • "The Band Episode" gets Sabrina, Valerie and Libby into sexy stage costumes - as well as featuring a Fanservice Extra called Sunset who wears a tight silver mini-dress.
  • "Sabrina Unplugged" has a subplot where Sabrina gets Breast Expansion and is stuck in a very skimpy pink dress.
• Fantastic Aesop:
  • Zelda convinces Hilda to hire someone to clean the house rather than using magic to do it themselves - because witches who do that get lazy.
  • The same lesson is subverted when Sabrina uses her powers to do three nice things for her peers: injuring a first-string football player so Harvey can play in the game, rigging a class election so Jenny will become president and making Mr Pool discover a way to turn lead into gold. Sabrina gets in trouble with the Witches Council for the third one because she altered the laws of the universe. But reality takes care of the other two: Harvey gets injured on the pitch due to inexperience and Jenny realises she has no real power as Class President. But then again Harvey uses his extra time from the injury to make more of an effort with his schoolwork - and Jenny happily hands over the job to Libby.
  • A justified example in Season 3. Zelda warns Sabrina against 'charitable magic' because there could be bad long term consequences. She uses an example of a witch who got rid of her best friend's acne - when her friend was destined to one day discover a cure for teen acne. But the episode plays it straight anyway as Sabrina casts a spell to grant whatever wish Valerie's mother makes. This turns out to be "I wish Valerie would be exactly like Sabrina". Hilarity Ensues naturally.
• Fantastic Racism: Witches think of themselves as superior to mortals. Some refuse to associate with mortals, and some extend this dislike to witches with mortal ancestry.
• "Fantastic Voyage" Plot:
  • Sabrina enters Libby's brain.
  • Later, Sabrina went inside herself to make room in her heart for a new beau.
• Fictional Holiday:
  • Bobunk. It's too bad that Salem accidentally deleted it... Only Father Christmas, and Salem himself, remember Bobunk.
  • Christmas later almost became this due to a mistake by Sabrina.
  • Witches seem to have their own traditions for holidays, even the ones mortals celebrate. Halloween for example has carols.
• Firemen Are Hot: Aunt Zelda had a thing for milk-drinking firemen, to the point of making one out of magical dough for a perfect date. Hilda also sometimes asks Salem to "trap himself" in a tree so that a fireman can rescue him and give Hilda a chance for a date (Apparently, this is a regular thing as Salem later refuses, only to be persuaded by food).
• First Girl Wins: Spear Counterpart - Harvey is Sabrina's first major love interest on the show. They elope together at the end of the series.
• Flanderization:
  • When we meet Morgan in season 5 she is of course shallow and a bit spacey but completely capable and in control of herself. But then in season 7 she is a complete ditz.
  • Aunt Hilda gets Flanderized from being the slightly more easy going of the two aunts to being a ditzy slacker. The best example is her music career: she goes from being a skilled orchestral violinist in the first season to having to be nagged into doing any practicing at all by her sister in the third. Though a recurring gag in the early episodes had people be very unappreciative or outright dismissive of her music talents. It makes sense as to why she would lose interest.
  • An in-universe example in the episode "When Teens Collide". Sabrina and Libby end up swapping personalities due to molecular instability. They both end up as exaggerated versions of the other. Libby becomes a sickeningly sweet Pollyanna and Friend to All Living Things while Sabrina becomes cartoonishly evil and tries to take over the world.
• Flying Broomstick: Flying vacuum cleaners, actually- they work just as well, but one crashed when it sucked up a penny.
• Forced Transformation: Happens all the time. Salem is the most visible example, having been changed into a cat for one hundred years as punishment for attempting world conquest, and in one episode, an old member of Salem's gang who's had his sentence commuted visits, and he's still just getting the hang of being human again. This punishment seems fairly standard among witches, as other characters suffer or nearly suffer similar fates, or had in the past.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Or rather, the house. When Valerie invites the entire student body over to Sabrina's for a Halloween party, the latter spends the entire episode trying to keep people from seeing the house being... well, the house. When her cover is finally blown, everyone assumes the talking cat and furniture, river of candy corn, and monster Halloween carolers from the Other Realm are props and people in costumes.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Aaron and Sabrina meet. Three episodes later they tell each other they love each other...okay. Then in the next episode Aaron proposes and she accepts. Finally in the season finale, only four episodes later Aaron and Sabrina are about to get married. This is partly because Josh was meant to feature in Season 7, but his actor quit the show.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: "Sabrina and the Beanstalk" has a Wicked Witch living at the top of a beanstalk who feasts on mortals. Sabrina also conjures up a gingerbread wall.
• Free the Frogs: Sabrina and class have to dissect frogs, and it seems to follow real life in that the frogs seemed to come pre-killed. Sabrina and her partner express some disgust over it, though they do it with no big drama. The subversion happens when Sabrina accidentally uses her magic to reanimate the frog, and it jumps off the lab table. The frog was pretty much forgotten about for the rest of the episode, since the plot of it was more about Sabrina learning to control her powers and not about saving a frog.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • In "Five Easy Pieces of Libby", it's strongly implied that the reason Libby doesn't show compassion for other people is because it's never been shown to her.
  Quizmaster: "Don't worry, that piece doesn't exist yet. It's Libby's compassion for others. You'll have to gradually fill that space by showing compassion for Libby, even when she doesn't show it for you. In other words, learn to work together."
  Sabrina: "I get it. By the way, could this lesson be any more heavy handed?"
  • Roxie being the way she is gets explained in seasons 6 and 7 when we find out her mother was in prison for theft and her father and stepmother pay her no attention, resulting in her never even having a proper Christmas.
• Freudian Slip:
  • Used as a plot device, near the end of the series, Sabrina has a Freudian Slip when she meant to say "I love Aaron." What she ended up saying is "I love Harvey!" And she does it again later with "I love you, Billy. Did I say Billy?"
  • One of Hilda's stories from her Expansion Pack Past ends in a literal example. (She trips Sigmund Freud. She even jokes that it was "the first Freudian Slip".)
• "Friends" Rent Control: Lampshaded somewhat by Zelda as she remarks that the neighbours find it suspicious that she and Hilda are able to own such a nice Victorian style home - when Hilda is a struggling violinist and Zelda doesn't actually work in the first few seasons. In-universe it's explained that the sisters held onto lots of antiques over the years and have made a fortune by selling them.
• Friendly Zombie: The zombies that invade the coffeehouse on Halloween night while Sabrina and Dreama are working there. They don't want to kill or maim anyone, they just want to have a party. They're still annoying to Sabrina though since she has to clean up after them.
• The Fair Folk: Witches don't think highly of mortals and a few are not above pulling cruel pranks on them for amusement. Heck Sabrina can't even see her mother because of the Witches Council making a rule that'll turn her into a candle if she stays with her (this actually became a minor plot point in the series finale).
• Gasshole: A side effect of drinking "Boy Brew"
• Gender Bender: In one episode Sabrina, Hilda and Zelda all become male, though Zelda only briefly.
• Genre Throwback: The series was conceived as a throwback to the fantasy sitcoms of the 60s like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.
• Genre Savvy: By Season Three, Sabrina wises up to the nature of her various magical punishments and their attempts to teach her lessons, which leads to her commenting on and trying to weasel out of them. To give but one example: in an episode where she complains about various rules, she's sent to an Old Western town, becomes sheriff, and declares that the only law is no laws. Things naturally get out of hand, especially when the "Petulant Kid"—who turns out to be an Evil Twin—comes in for a showdown. When Sabrina first sees the Petulant Kid, she sighs and says "How ironic, I'm my own worst enemy, can I go home now?" Later, when the Kid has her outgunned, Sabrina desperately tries to summarize what she's learned about the importance of rules, remarking that making such a speech is usually enough to break whatever enchantment she's currently under.
• Gift Shake:
  • In the Season 2 Christmas Episode, Sabrina is suffering from a condition called "egotitis", due to the fact that she still has a somewhat childish and selfish view of Christmas. Because she suffers this, she's forbidden to receive presents on Christmas. When her presents disappear as she was about to open one, she gives the following lament:
    "Awww, I shook that one last night. It was good."
  • Sabrina's roommate, Morgan, has the ability to determine the contents of any gift by shaking it.
• Green-Eyed Monster: In the season 4 episode "Jealousy", Sabrina starts acting jealous when Harvey begins hanging out with other people and her jealousy magically consumes her, causing her to become jealous with people even over petty things like somebody getting a good grade on an assignment in class (a class that Sabrina wasn't even in, no less.) She even comes complete with green eyes. Salem helps by transporting her to the "Jealous Sea", where no one but her is successful.
• Go Among Mad People: Aunt Beulah's party. Somewhat subverted, as it turns out that the whole event was a theme party.
• God of Fire: The Season Three finale is a Vacation Episode where the Spellmans head to Hawaii for a family reunion. Sabrina can't participate until she finishes decoding the family secret (which has taken her all season). To help, Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire ("Cousin Pele to you") shows up in a burst of flame to give her the final clue to the secret, a ball of twine; she remarks that this is the first time in a while that the twine hasn't incinerated.
• Gonky Femme: In one episode, Sabrina's Cousin Susie turns out to be a stereotypical ugly witch, complete with green face, stringy black hair, and warts. However, she was a total sweetie that helped people in need and taught Sabrina a lesson about not judging people over their appearances.
• Half-Hour Comedy
• Halloween Cosplay: Harvey as James Dean in the first Halloween episode. The party shows all the other boys dressed the same too. In the same episode Libby dresses as Jackie Kennedy Onasis.
• Halloween Episode:
  • Season 1 - Sabrina is forced to attend a family gathering and conjures up a double to go to Harvey's Halloween party.
  • Season 2 - Sabrina throws a party while the house is infested with Other Realm termites.
  • Season 3 - Sabrina gets a Creepy Doll gift from a relative that traps them in the house and unleashes monsters to scare them.
  • Season 4 - an army of zombies trash the coffee house when Sabrina tries to avoid the fun side of Halloween.
  • Season 5 - Sabrina throws another party, this time without telling her aunts, where Roxie falls for Frankenstein.
  • Season 6 - Sabrina and friends are trapped in a murder mystery scenario.
• Hates Small Talk: When Sabrina meets Aaron's parents:

  Sabrina: Hi, Aaron's told me so much about you.

  Aaron's Dad: Then he obviously didn't tell you I hate small talk.

• Heart Beats out of Chest: One of the symptoms of Candy Heart Syndrome, along with hiccuping pink bubbles and the affected witch's heart becoming a candy heart (hence the name); it also beats loud enough to be heard by anyone.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X": Salem loved doing this.
  Hilda: Now, obvious fact number one. Willard hasn't asked you to marry him yet and obvious fact number two...
  Salem: Hee hee hee! You said 'number two'!
  • Another example:
  Sabrina: Nothing like being embraced in the bosom of your family on the most special day of the year.
  Salem: Hee Hee Hee! Bosom! You said 'bosom'! Ha ha ha ha!
• Hell-Bent for Leather: Not unusual in later seasons. The opening montage for Season 5 has Sabrina changing into 5 different outfits, exactly 5 of which feature either leather trousers, a leather top or, uh, duster coat. Then again, isn't that what Turn of the Millennium fashion was about?
• Hereditary Twinhood: The "Family Secret" that Sabrina has to learn to earn her Witch's License is that every member of the Spellman family is born with a twin, and one of them is inevitably the Evil Twin.
• Heroic Bystander: In "Jenny's Non-Dream", the Rule Bearer of the Other Realm seems to be one of Drell's flunkies, and mostly stays out of the action—but when Drell transforms Jenny into a grasshopper (per the rules of mortals entering the witch world), the Rule Bearer decides to help Sabrina by teaching her about the loopholes found in every magical law.
• Heroic Sacrifice: When Zelda's actress, Beth Broderick, left the show in the sixth season. The writers wrote her out of it by having her sacrifice age and be reduced to a child to cure Sabrina from becoming a stone before Hilda and she moved out. She does it again in the series finale by allowing herself to (temporarily) become a candle so Sabrina's mother can attend her wedding without worrying about the Council's rules. Word of God says that by agreeing to be a candle for the duration of the wedding, allows Aunt Zelda's adult years to be restored and forever removes the prohibition on Sabrina seeing her mother.
• High School: The first four seasons take place in high school.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Maw Maw Spellman was named "Maw Maw" at birth.
• Historical In-Joke:
  • The Parthenon is in ruins because Hilda was sad about being jilted by Drell on their wedding day.
  • Hilda's bad eavesdropping started the American Revolution.
  • The song "Greensleeves" was written for Zelda.
  • Hilda says that if the people had listened to her, Rome would have been built in a day.
  • In one of the novelizations Sabrina gives L Frank Baum the idea for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
  • America was discovered because Hilda casted a spell to make everything round.
• Homework Slave: In the Season 5 episode "House of Pi's", student journalists Sabrina and Roxy uncover that the Mu Pi sorority is forcing all recruits to do the sorority sisters' homework in order to get into the sorority. Once in, the junior sisters are still forced to do the senior sisters' homework.
• Hot Witch:
  • Both Hilda and Zelda are attractive witches with very active love lives. Their sister Vesta is even more glamorous, played by Raquel Welch! The novelizations state that witches are granted with eternal youth and beauty - though the appearance of a few elderly witches suggests it's not completely eternal. Aunt Irma, played by Barbara Eden in her forties, is said to be over two-thousand years old. Great Grandma is said to be even older.
  • The Wicked Witch looks like a straight example of this trope, but Aunt Hilda's comment implies it's due to surgery.
  Sabrina: Wicked? But she's so pretty.
  Hilda: Oh, she's had a lot of work done.
• Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: It is stated that all witches must celebrate Halloween. If they don't embrace the horror, then the horror follows them. It happens to Sabrina in Season 4, where zombies party in the coffee shop she was taking care of (instead of celebrating Halloween).
• Human Outside, Alien Inside: Witches themselves may not be human at all, since it's stated several times through the earliest seasons that the Other Realms exists physically in a distant galaxy and that Witches "came to Earth" in some point throughout human history. The novelizations claim that witches are able to breathe in space.
• Hypocritical Humor: A staple of the series, though one particularly hilarious example is Salem being indignant to find that Nosy Neighbor Tobias is spying on them with a telescope... while he's spying on Tobias with binoculars.
  Salem: Some people have no moral compass.
• I Am Big Boned: In The Teaser of "Inna Gadda Sabrina", Salem has been putting on weight but is in denial, claiming he doesn't need to diet because "I am not fat, I am big-boned." Then he proceeds to get stuck in the cat door.
  Hilda: Need a push?
  Salem: You laugh, you die!
• I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!:
  • Sabrina becomes addicted to pancakes (part of an old Spellman family curse, of which there were many), and at one point gorges herself to bloatation. When she tries to go cold turkey, she experiences withdrawal symptoms, hallucinating that Salem is a pile of pancakes asking if she is hungry, imagining that the school is putting on an elaborate musical number imploring her to eat pancakes, and dreaming that a giant syrup bottle tries to convince her to come away to a haven for witches addicted to pancakes, where she can eat to her heart's content. It was a really weird episode.
  • In the later episode "Cloud Ten", Sabrina is feeling ignored by her family and friends. She visits a friend who works for an Other Realm travel agency, who suggests she go to Cloud Ten. To get there, Sabrina must open a bag full of cloud and inhale. Once there she's introduced as a "first-timer", and warned that coming down from the cloud can be unpleasant...
• Impossible Pickle Jar: Sabrina and her aunts can't open a jar. Sabrina's father visits and, after a great deal of effort, is able to open the jar. Her father is going through some personal problems at the time, so to unwind he sets about opening every difficult jar in the house.
• Incredible Shrinking Man:
  • A Season 1 episode has Sabrina shrinking after she feels so low from trying to sneak out to a concert.
  • Sabrina and Salem accidentally shrink while inside an Other Realm spacecraft...and fly up Libby's nose.
• Inelegant Blubbering: In one episode Hilda goes on an unsatisfying date with a man and so when she gets home later that night she casts a spell to "make him a better listener." It cuts to the man in his bathroom looking in the mirror: He now has ears all over his head and he's sobbing as he sees his new look.
• Inept Mage:
  • Dreama can't cast any spell without it going wrong.
  • Sabrina herself, most of time. Though in this case it's mainly from her being too quick to read the fine print or not thinking things through.
• Informed Attribute: Played for Laughs with one-shot character Eugene, played by Len Lesser. Eugene goes on and on about how much he loves to make people laugh, but despite many expectant silences doesn't do anything to back it up.
• In One Ear, Out The Other:
  • In 'Deliver Us From E-Mail' Sabrina contracts a magical virus that turns her into an airhead; at one point Zelda looks into Sabrina's ear and gets a clear view out the other side.
  • In an earlier episode, Hilda is shown to be addicted to using "Mental Floss" in order to push out her intelligence. The string is shown to actually go through her head.
• Intimate Marks: In "Third Aunt From The Sun", Hilda and Zelda try to convince Sabrina not to have her navel pierced.
  Hilda: You'll regret it. I had to wait two centuries to have the "Cromwell Rules" tattoo removed from my shoulder.
  Zelda: That's not where it was.
  Hilda: Be quiet!
• Invincible Incompetent: Sabrina went seven years without ever learning even one or two simple spells she could reliably not mess up. Notable in that there usually was no villain except for her mastery of this trope alternately causing and fixing problems.
• Insult to Rocks: In the Season 3 episode "Sabrina's Real World", Hilda puts on a belt that makes her uncontrollably tell jokes, which leads to this:
  Hilda: "You wanna talk about frightening, you should see my mother-in-law. They said she was ugly as sin. Sin sued."
• I Resemble That Remark!:
  Zelda: You'll do anything to work the fact that you're dating someone into the conversation.
  Hilda: That's not true!
  Sabrina: Has anyone seen my book bag?
  Hilda: The guy I'm dating has books!
• Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: Valerie once tried to imitate Sabrina...because of Sabrina misfiring, of course.
• Ironic Hell: One episode has the Roman Emperor Caligula being punished by The Other Realm court, for sneaking into the modern era in search of some novelty, in which he is sentenced to spend a hundred years in a decadent and hedonistic party and orgy. Because he has being doing that so long it has all just become passée to him. His response to the ruling is just and wearied "Same old, same old".
• Is This Thing Still On?: In "Bundt Friday", Principal Larue eats some "truth sprinkles" and announces over the PA that he's planning to skip work and go to a movie like he does every Friday afternoon, and that he'll be paying for his popcorn with petty cash. The following Monday, he makes this announcement over the PA:
  Principal Larue: Attention students, this is the real Principal Larue. Last Friday some prankster broke into my office and impersonated me. I, of course, was at the district office all day working to make your school a better place. Thank you. (pause) Do you think they bought that? Huh? Oh, oh no.
• It's Fake Fur, It's Fine: In one episode, Salem has a huge gambling debt to a guy (who later turned out to be a cheater), and the Spellmans are forced to work for him to pay it off. At his gambling hall, we see women wearing fur wraps. The furs are later stated to be fake when the Spellmans try to make a potion, and a hair from a fake fur is an ingredient.
• It's All About Me: Salem. Sabrina also lapses into this from time to time. She is a teenager.
• Jedi Mind Trick: Often used by Sabrina, especially on Harvey and Roxie. A good example from the episode 'Sabrina and the Candidate':
  Sabrina: I have a question for one of the candidates.
  Roxie: We're not taking questions from the audience tonight.
  (Sabrina twitches her finger in Roxie's direction.)
  Roxie: Although here's a crazy idea! Why not.
• Jerkass Realization: The whole class gets this in "The Crucible" when they learn no one has a witch card. Thus, they engaged in mindless mob psychology that proved they were no better than the Salem residents, scapegoating Jenny and Sabrina.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Salem is an egomaniac who tried to take over the world and still causes mischief, but he still loves Sabrina deeply.
  • Amanda mellows out in her teen years and becomes slightly less bratty, meaning she's this by the show's end.
  • Roxie is an abrasive Soapbox Sadie but has a soft side too.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: In "Nobody Nose Libby Like Sabrina Nose Libby", Sabrina and Salem accidentally fly up Libby's nose in a miniature spaceship and eventually reach her brain, where Sabrina discovers she can control Libby's actions and words.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Libby always wins. Mr. Kraft will always defer to the cheerleaders and give them whatever they want. Of course, after they graduate high school this doesn't make any difference whatsoever. Sabrina can usually taint her victory a little with slapstick, but Libby still ultimately gets what she wanted.
  • Mr. Kraft applies as well, he gives detentions out for things that would be cause for legal trouble (don't like their clothes, personality, or in Sabrina's case "just because" several times) yet never is reprimanded.
  • Later on, Morgan came and averted the rule. She always ended up with the short end of the stick, despite being mostly an airhead rather than a bitch.
• Kids Prefer Boxes: At the end of "A Girl And Her Cat", Salem ignores his Christmas gifts and spends all morning happily playing with the discarded wrapping paper.
  Sabrina: I think he likes my paper best.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Plastic, one of the most common substances in the world, is the weakness of magic. Subverted though, as only certain types of plastic affect magic and only to prevent magic from working on them. In other words, a witch could theoretically be surrounded by plastic and still be able to use magic. However, this would limit their powers to whatever could be done inside the plastic. (Teleportation and conjuring might still be viable options though, depending on the particular rules of the Sabrina universe.)
• Lame Pun Reaction:
  • In the 17th episode of season 3 (Sabrina The Teenage Writer) Sabrina writes a spy story on a magic typewriter and her characters, which mirror actual characters of the show, come to life. At one point the mirror character of Mr. Kraft (Dr. Bad) captures Harvey's character Derek and and ties him to a buzz saw in order to kill him.
  "Derek": There's always been an unpleasant edge to you, Dr. Bad.
  "Dr Bad": (with his hands on his ears) I am killing you, just to stop the puns.
  • In that same episode, the Spellmans received a chain letter, which was a letter with an actual chain attached to it. And when Hilda crafted a chain letter of her own to send on, it was made out of literal letters.
  • Also in "Dante's Inferno" Hilda gets a case of "punitis" which causes everything she says to be a bad joke and literally happen-for example when she wants ice cream, she looks in the freezer to find an "eye screaming." Another one of these, which is rather hilarious, is when Hilda asks: "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" Salem LITERALLY has Zelda's tongue in his hand...
• Last-Minute Hookup: Sabrina returns to first love Harvey instead of getting married when the network refuses to allow an hour-long finale.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: The show got this way with its seventh season due to the departure of long-standing regulars Hilda and Zelda Spellman, that it didn't take place with Sabrina still in school, and that the house set Sabrina lived in had changed noticeably despite being implied to be the same location.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: "It looks like the spell went wrong in an unexpected way. How unusual."
  • In her Bridezilla episode, Sabrina learns An Aesop and then gets annoyed when the spell doesn't wear off - "usually when I have these emotional revelations, the magical side effects tend to go away".
• Lethal Chef: A minor one episode case, in which we discover Sabrina brews coffee so strong it can RAISE THE DEAD!
• Leprechaun: Roland gets a job as a leprechaun in a Season 2 St Patrick's Day episode.
• Levitating Lotus Position: At the start of the "Sabrina Through the Looking Glass" episode, Zelda leads the Spellman family in some Yoga exercises. When they assume the lotus position and start meditating, Sabrina floats up and bonks her head on the ceiling.
• Literal Genie: Roland waits for Sabrina to wish for him to appear before he does so, thereby wasting her last wish.
• Literal Metaphor: Quite often, and lampshaded by Sabrina once.

  Sabrina: Gee, the Other Realm doesn't understand metaphors much.

• Little Miss Badass: Amanda is only a child but as a full witch is more powerful than Sabrina. As she's also a spoiled brat, she's pretty ruthless with her powers. Thankfully she grows out of it somewhat.
• Local Hangout:
  • The coffeehouse, in the college years.
  • The Slicery in the high school years.
  • The Spellman living room and the newspaper in the final season.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: Salem bets and loses the Spellmans.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: Morgan. NOT Libby. (Although they may have been headed there before Libby was written out of the show.)
• Lovable Nerd:
  • Gordy is bumbling and dorky, but a good friend to Sabrina. Valerie briefly crushes on him.
  • Miles too is a neurotic conspiracy theorist, but Roxie harbours a secret crush on him.
• Lovely Assistant: In the "Magic Joel" episode, Sabrina takes a job as the assistant to the titular Stage Magician and uses her magical powers to help him when he gets Stage Fright.
• Made of Iron: Witches seem to be very resilient. Hilda is stabbed with a cutlass sword by a pirate and is merely annoyed by it.
• Mage Species: Witches are said to be from across the galaxy, and they're a magical species who came to Earth thousands of years ago. Essentially this makes them Human Aliens.
• Magical Gesture: Pointing the index finger. While most witches and wizards use their fingers to cast magic, some others use another kind of gesture (Aunt Irma crosses her arms; Cousin Zsa Zsa Goowhiggie moves both arms over each other twice, while Zelda, Sabrina, Amanda and Marigold use their fingers and sparks, and Aunt Hilda uses a large puff of smoke).
• Magic Kiss:
  • The first time a witch kisses a mortal, the mortal will turn into a frog. To turn him back, the witch must return to the same place and give him True Love's Kiss. If it's not true love, the second kiss will cause the witch to become a frog as well.
  • In the pilot movie, it's revealed that a witch who uses her magic to impress a mortal (or otherwise buy/compel his love) will be turned into a cat for ninety years by that mortal's kiss. If the love is given freely, the witch will remain normal.
• Magical Incantation: Sometimes.
• Magic Cauldron: In early episodes, the Spellmans used one of this to prepare magical potions. When they work on this, they use stereotypical witch wardrobe (long black dresses and pointy hats with big brims). It seems to be a part of witches' lore and tradition.
• The Magocracy: Mostly in the first four seasons and plots regarding Hilda and Zelda.
• Mama Bear:
  • Zelda and Hilda—they may not be Sabrina's biological parents, but if anyone crosses their niece, that person (mortal or witch) is in for a world of hurt. This was evident from the first episode of the series—after Head Witch Drell (who Hilda used to date) refuses Sabrina's request to turn back time and do over a day that ended in her being ostracized from the whole school, Hilda (with a little prodding from Zelda) storms up the stairs, marches into the linen closet, and forces Drell to change his mind.
  • In a later season, Sabrina dated a witch named Derek who, though nice, came from a family of mortal-haters. Derek claimed that he wasn't prejudiced, but Hilda and Zelda, knowing better, disguised themselves to prove otherwise.
• Man in a Kilt: Mr. Pool wears one in an episode, as he's of Scottish ancestry. It isn't played for Fanservice, as it just confuses Sabrina, and the principal yells at Mr. Pool for doing so.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Spellman, and Salem the cat. Katrina would be an example, except that season aired before the infamous hurricane.
  • Also, most of the character's names Sabrina gave for her science-fiction story. The villains were Dr. Bad, Lydia Kissenkill, and Vivian Soontodie. Averted with Derek Kink, since his name was based on Harvey's.
• Mirror Reveal: In one episode, Sabrina is trying to impress Josh, a college student in his early twenties, who thinks she's not mature enough for him. She uses a magic face lotion that makes her more mature, and behaves like she's also in her early twenties. However as she continues to use the cream she continues aging until she starts behaving and looking like a middle aged woman. When a young witch she's mentoring shows her a mirror, Sabrina looks like her eighteen year old self. When Sabrina becomes an elderly woman, her aunt Zelda casts a spell, and when Sabrina looks at her reflection again, she sees that she's been turned into an octogenarian.
• Missing Mom: Sabrina's mother is mortal and is not allowed to have contact with her. She turns into a ball of wax if she sees Sabrina without approval from the Witches Council. in the series finale, the Witches Council does allow Sabrina's mom to attend her wedding, but demands that one of the aunts be temporarily turned into wax. Hilda volunteered Zelda and she is turned into a red candle.
• Mistaken for Gay:
  • Hilda and Zelda at a PTA meeting. In another episode they book separate rooms at a hotel but the receptionist assumes they're together and puts them into the same room.
  Hilda: I'm sure you realise now that you were very, very wrong.
  Zelda: Lawsuit wrong!
  • Morgan later claims that a drummer from a band must be gay because he ignored her.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Borderline-parodied in the episode Sabrina the Teenage Writer, with Sabrina's poorly written Bond villain "Dr. Bad."
• MRS Degree: The episode, Inna-Gadda-Sabrina, has the main character traveling to the 60s where she expresses interest in a certain university but the man tells he that he understands if she wants to get her MRS but they can't let girls in.
• Mr. Fanservice: Zak, a witch who Sabrina briefly speaks to in "First Kiss", is an extremely fit Walking Shirtless Scene. This is Justified, though, as the whole point of Sabrina's interaction with him is to pass a test of temptation. Humorously, Zak was played by an actual porn star, although the producers didn't realize that at the time.
• Ms. Fanservice: Aunt Vesta is played by Raquel Welch, one of the biggest sex symbols of the 1960s and 70s. She wears about eight different outfits over the course of the episode—including a professor disguise that pulls off a Hot for Teacher look—and all of them are very form-fitting and fantastic. The character of Valerie in Sabrina's spy fantasy wears a form fitting tight black PVC catsuit showing a very different side to her whilst in one episode Hilda and Zelda end up bikini mud wrestling with one another.
• Mundane Object Amazement: The spatula that Sabrina gives to a kid during Christmas.
• Multiple Demographic Appeal: In her autobiography, Melissa Joan Hart describes the show as this. Younger kids would love the magic, teenagers would relate to Sabrina's problems fitting in, red-blooded males would enjoy the pretty female cast, females would appreciate the various different female characters and focus on certain female issues, and the magic would also appeal to older viewers nostalgic for Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.
• The Movie:
  • Sabrina Goes to Rome, set between Seasons 2 and 3, where Sabrina has to solve a problem involving an ancestor trapped in a locket.
  • Sabrina Down Under, set during Season 4, where Sabrina tries to save a mermaid colony in Australia.
• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Aunt Hilda once had a problem with her biological clock (a literal magical clock) and began a series of desperate measures to try and become pregnant, including randomly choosing a guy off the street to marry. Sabrina eventually offered her own clock as a substitute for Hilda's, but luckily it all worked out in a timely fashion.
• Mythology Gag: In "What Price Harvey?" Cousin Zsa Zsa gives the aunts a spell that swaps their personalities. Possibly a nod to the comics, where Zelda is the ditzy aunt and Hilda the responsible one.

N-Z

• Nerdy Bully: In the episode "Geek Like Me", Sabrina uses her magic to turn Alpha Bitch Libby into a nerd because she believes that it would teach her a lesson in humility and kindness. This ends up backfiring when Libby takes over the Science Club and starts bullying her old friends in the cheerleading squad.
• Never Win the Lottery: An alternate take on this was featured in an episode of Sabrina The Teenage Witch: Sabrina is allowed access to a crystal ball that can answer any question. Her first question was, oddly enough, "What if Kenan and Kel won the lottery?". We then see a short segment of the two losing the ticket and coming to the conclusion that is was inside a sandwich that Kel just took a bite out of.
  • Kenan & Kel actually had an episode where they had and lost a Lottery Ticket, but it was different from the clip.
  • In the fifth season's Christmas special, Roxy buys Hilda several lottery tickets as a last minute gift.
• Names to Run Away From: There is a reason Aunt Irma is, most appropriately, called "The dreaded holy terror of the Other Realm". To put it lightly, she's not someone you want to annoy.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Sabrina her college roommates: friendly and optimistic Sabrina is nice, snarky and cynical Roxie is mean, and shallow Lovable Alpha Bitch Morgan is in-between.
• Never My Fault: In "Witch Trash", Sabrina's hillbilly cousins Racine, Boyd, and Maw Maw start giving her and her aunts trouble because they think they were cheated out of their Great Grandma's will when Hilda and Zelda get the family spellbook. Great Grandma later shows up (with the explanation witches live for so long that to them wills are the equivalent of garage sales to get rid of clutter) and reveals the reason Hilda and Zelda received the book is because Boyd and Racine chose Great Grandma's money. Which they then wasted on junk and stupid investments. The three hillbilly witches refuse to admit they squandered their inheritance and would rather harass Hilda and Zelda to get theirs.
• No Control Group: Parodied: Sabrina's aunts have decided to live apart and Sabrina is seeing what would happen if she decided to stay with Zelda via magic crystal ball. She is shown giving anti-aging cream of her own design to a regular looking Libby (after she gives a speech insulting herself and praising Sabrina) and to a very old looking Mr. Kraft:
  Mr. Kraft: Sabrina, you can be honest with me. I'm in the placebo group, aren't I?
  Sabrina: Maybe not. It's possible you were given aging cream. However, if you were you'd be suffering from hearing loss by now...
  Mr. Kraft: Oh, thank you. These are new shoes, actually.
• Noir Episode
• Non-Human Sidekick
• Noodle Incident: Whatever happened when it was Hilda's turn to figure out if she was the good or evil twin, with everyone mentioning how surprised they all were when she turned out to be the good one. Which also says a lot about how evil Hilda's twin must be.
• Not Allowed to Grow Up: The show itself. Archie Comics wouldn't allow a name change after Sabrina reached adulthood.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: In "Sabrina the Sandman", Valerie finds out she has a test that she hasn't prepared for and subsequently has a dream sequence where her clothes disappear in class and she has a Naked Freak-Out.
• Nothing Is Scarier: In one Halloween Episode, Hilda and Zelda have Edgar Allan Poe over for scary stories. Salem wants to tell his own and after resistance, he finally gets to. We never hear them, but when we cut back to the house, Hilda, Zelda and Poe are in frozen in scared silence.
• Notso Remote: In the penultimate episode, "What A Witch Wants", Sabrina, Roxy and Morgan are stranded on what they believe to be a desert island. It turns out to be Bermuda.
• Notzilla: An episode had Sabrina dealing with a Godzilla parody.
• Obvious Stunt Double: Salem: it is fairly easy to tell the difference between when he is being portrayed by a real cat and when he is being portrayed by a puppet.
• Odd Friendship: After learning Sabrina's secret, Harvey develops one of these with Salem.
  • He did so too before the big revelation, however briefly, when Sabrina casts a Doctor Dolittle spell on him.
• Odd Name Out: Father Christmas' grandchildren: Binky, Bunny, Boopsy, Winnie, Minnie, Mopsy... and Fred.
  • Also Lola's kittens: Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo and Peppy. When Sabrina asks why he didn't use "Gummo", Salem replies that that's his father's name.
• Official Couple: Sabrina and Harvey.
  • Roxy and Miles are supposed to become this in the future.
• Oh, No... Not Again!: An episode had her aunts warning Sabrina about wish magic in which if a witch desires something or someone enough that their magic can make them spontaneously appear. The aunts demonstrate this by saying the name of singer Randy Travis three times and he promptly appears in their kitchen. Travis looks around and instead of freaking out, he sighs and says "Hello Hilda, hello Zelda, and you must be Sabrina. I've heard a lot about you."
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: After discovering Sabrina is a witch, Harvey would repeatedly mention the time she got him pregnant.
• Out-of-Character Moment: There's a huge case of this trope in the opening scene to the final season.
  • First of all, Aunt Zelda gives up her "adult years" to save Sabrina after Sabrina refuses to give up her true love even though she agreed to to save Hilda (confusing already) and subsequently turns to stone and crumbles. Zelda turns into an 8-year-old to give Sabrina the rest of her life. Wait...WHAT? Zelda just gives up her entire life? Because Sabrina was an idiot yet again? Zelda agrees to this in a matter of minutes after Sabrina crumbles to pieces. Also, Sabrina, usually completely ignorant to most witch-things in the past, knows exactly what Zelda has done. But what is even more unsettling is that Sabrina merely gives her aunt a cheap, poorly written, and rapid "thank you" and tells her aunt that she is ready to live her own life. I guess with Hilda newly married they had no use for her and since Zelda doesn't have some convenient boarding school to be shipped off to (Libby) nor a family that is given a new job in Alaska (Valerie) this was their only option.
    • Actually, Sabrina turning to stone was her giving up her true love, as it was the exact same reaction Hilda had when she broke up with her boyfriend. Zelda giving up her adult years makes much more sense when remembering it was her and Sabrina who had convinced Hilda not to marry the guy in the first place. Yet Sabrina was the one who had to make a huge sacrifice to restore Hilda. Why should Zelda not have to sacrifice anything when she was equally to blame for Hilda shattering?
    • At least, they gave her a sendoff unlike Miles, Jenny, Mr. Pool, Drell, Mr. Kraft, Dreama, and Brad who just got Chuck Cunningham Syndrome and disappeared without explanation.
• One True Love: The final episode of the series reveals "soul stones;" everyone has one on the North Star, and those that fit together are soulmates. Sabrina's soul stone and Aaron's are a close match, but ultimately don't fit together. Desiring not to make such a life-altering decision with valid proof that she might regret it, Sabrina walks away from the altar. As she's leaving the church, she runs into Harvey. They kiss and ride off into their Happily Ever After, as their soul stones fall and fit together perfectly.
• Only Sane Man: After a while, Salem develops into this role, often either suggesting that Sabrina ask her aunts about the magical problem of the week or reminding her what had happened previously when she used her magic to fix something. Yes, that's right, the cat who was a man who tried to take over the world is the sanest of them all.
• Quirky Curls: Jenny's mane of curly red hair shows her as a confident non-conformist.
• Palm-Fist Tap: A common gesture for Sabrina.
• Parental Abandonment: Sabrina lives with her aunts permanently. Her mother is a mortal and is therefore forbidden to have any contact with Sabrina (and will be turned to wax if she does so). Her father visits on occasion, but he's a diplomat and spends too much time traveling to raise Sabrina properly.
• Parlor Games: There was an episode wherein in order to undo the wacky spell-gone-awry of the week, Sabrina had to get someone to say a certain phrase — but of course, Sabrina wasn't able to actually say it herself, because that would make things too easy. So instead, she initiated a game of charades and tried to get the person to say the phrase that way.
• Parody Sue: The appropriately named Cousin Susie is a virtual demigod of perfection - eternally kind, gracious and charitable to everyone. Zelda says "Susie can make everyone feel inadequate", and there's a moment where a ray of heavenly light even shines down on her. She's not 100% perfect though, as she does do something rather mean-spirited to Harvey in order to teach Sabrina a lesson.
• Passed-Over Inheritance: The Spellmans' hillbilly cousins in "Witch Trash" hate their relatives because their great-grandmother left the Spellmans the family magic book instead of them, and spend most of the episode trying to force them to give it to them. It's later subverted when Great-Granny (who's not dead; witches use wills to clear out what they accumulate over the centuries) turns up and reveals the cousins did get something from the inheritance, namely all of Great-Granny's money, which they specifically asked for. The only reason they want the book now is because they wasted the money and have nothing left to show for it.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The end of "Deliver Us From E-Mail"^note where Sabrina's Evil Twin causes her to become an airhead with a virus has Sabrina getting Katrina will a "Kill-Em-With-Kindness" spell.
• Personality Swap: An episode has this happen to Zelda and Hilda who willingly purchase some pairs of magical 'Walk in my Moccasins' to get a better perspective on each other. Zelda becomes a laidback practical joker while Hilda becomes a serious, professional musician.
  • Also happened, thanks to sunspots, with Sabrina and Libby. When they bump into each other, Sabrina's purity and Libby's inner darkness swapped places. This caused Sabrina to turn into a catty, vindicative Entitled Bitch who needed only the barest prodding from Salem to attempt to Take Over the World, was rude to her friends, verbally abused the police sent to arrest her and acted like a Card-Carrying Villain at her own trial, and Libby to become a good-hearted Friend to All Living Things who was nice to unpopular kids, bought Sabrina and her friends dessert just to be nice, set up a fundraiser to help the poor and showed affection towards Salem (assuming he was a normal cat).
  • Done again during Sabrina's time at Scorch magazine, when she tries to make notoriously unpleasant rapper Baby B 2 K "like her" as in enjoy her company, and Baby ends up "like her" personality-wise. Baby ends up baking the paprazzi pecan sandies, and Sabrina takes on a jerk neighbor in small claims court.
• Pilot Movie: Released shortly before the series began. Had much better production values than the series; set in Riverdale, home of Archie's gang, rather than Westbridge, MA. Also had an almost entirely different cast from the series that followed. Basically exists in an Alternate Continuity, along with other Sabrina TV movies released during the show's run.
• Plot Hole: In Dante's Inferno Zelda arranges a date with a man named Ron, but as soon as he arrives Hilda accidently turns him into a deer. Zelda is now very annoyed that the charming man she had planned to spend the evening with is now a deer munching on their couch cushions. But Zelda is a witch herself. Why doesn't she just use her own powers to turn Ron back into a man and resume the date as if nothing had happened?
• Poorly Disguised Pilot: 'Witchright Hall'. An earlier episode featured Cousin Marigold falling for a mortal man and the end implied she and her two daughters would live with him and his three sons - intending to make a series out of it.
• Power Perversion Potential From episode 18 of season 3, "Sabrina, the Teenage Writer":
  Sabrina: The people in my spy story, they came to life and are running around my school!
  Zelda: The only way that could possibly happen is if you accidentally used Hilda's magic typewriter, but she got rid of that years ago, didn't you, Hilda?
  Hilda: By "get rid of" you don't mean "kept", do you?
  Zelda: Hilda!
  Hilda: I'm sorry. I know I was supposed to give it away, but I just... I like writing romance stories with myself as the heroine and watching them come to life... that's not pathetic, is it?
  • Plus that episode where the guy turns invisible and the first thing he does is walk into the girl's locker room.
  • In one episode, Sabrina finds out that she can make things real by saying something three times. For instance, when trying to comfort an infant, saying "Be a big boy" three times will make that infant grow to an adult with an infant's mind. After Sabrina deals with that fiasco, the end of the episode shows her in her room, magic-ing up celebrities.
  Sabrina: ''Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt."
  • The entire purpose of Man-Dough.
• Pretty in Mink: In the first season episode "A Halloween Story", the Spellman's visit Aunt Marigold for Halloween, and she's wearing a cocktail dress with a fur neckline (since Witch's treat Halloween like Christmas). In the mortal world, a guest at Harvey's party is dressed as a 1950s prom queen, and her outfit includes a white rabbit fur shoulder wrap.
• Private Eye Monologue: attempted by Salem in one episode but interrupted by Sabrina several times. Also occurs when Sabrina goes to hire a detective to snoop on Harvey only to discover it's her old romantic admirer Roland the troll. She is transformed into a black and white 50s style femme fatale and he explains he charges so much in order to pay for his fashionably shabby old-style office and fog and voiceover machines.
• Product Placement:
  • There's a whole episode where they go to Disney World. Specifically Animal Kingdom, which had just opened the year the episode debuted.
  • They brought up NutRageous bars a lot in season 3.
• Promoted to Opening Titles: Elisa Donovan and Soleil Moon Frye are added to the opening credits in Season 7, replacing the two aunts.
• Protection in Mouth: In The Great Mistake, while briefly shrunk down due to magic reasons, Sabrina gets up onto her bed from the ground floor by asking Salem to carry her in his mouth. Neither are particularly pleased by the event when they relate it later.
  Salem: It took all my self control not to eat her.
• Puberty Superpower: Sabrina's powers manifest when she's the right age.
• Pull a Rabbit out of My Hat: Hilda teaches Sabrina a version of this with real magic. Zelda is not impressed:

  That's the oldest trick in the book. That's so old mortals are doing it!

• Punny Name: Gene Pool the biology teacher.
• Put on a Bus: Valerie is put on one to Alaska.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Hilda initially cast spells in a puff of smoke, but switched to CGI in later seasons. This is because Caroline Rhea was afraid of the pyrotechnics.
  • Zelda disappears in Season 7 as Beth Broderick felt the character was going nowhere, and quit the show. Hilda was written out when Caroline Rhea received her own talk show.
  • She also doesn't appear in the finale, as they could only afford to bring one of the aunts back. As Hilda was more popular, they chose her.
• Really 700 Years Old - Averted with Sabrina, but her two aunts are both in their mid-600s.
• Re-Release Soundtrack: Any time insert songs were used, about half of them were replaced for the show's DVD releases with generic music. These edits went into the reruns on Nickelodeon, TeenNick, ABC Family, and The Hub.
• Retcon: The decree about Sabrina's mother was originally that she would only turn into a ball of wax if Sabrina saw her before she turned eighteen. When the mother reappears in Season 6 (where Sabrina is at least twenty) it has been changed to Sabrina never being able to see her ever.
  • The end of season four reveals that Harvey has reached his magical quota and spells cannot be cast on him anymore. Season seven has him return and spells work on him again
• Retool: At least twice in Season 5 (Sabrina leaves home and goes to college, with brand-new friends, and Josh replaces Harvey as her main love interest) and Season 7 (Sabrina's aunts move back to the Other Realm, while Sabrina moves back into their old house with her roommates, gets a new job as a music magazine writer, and becomes engaged to Aaron), and arguably Season 4 (Valerie and Libby leave the show and are replaced by Sabrina's new witch apprentice Dreama and new antagonist Brad, and Sabrina gets a job at a coffee house) and Season 2 as well (Sabrina starts training with her Quizmaster to earn her Witch's License, and Valerie replaces Jenny as her best friend).
• Rich Bitch: Libby. Again averted with Morgan, who's more of an airhead.
• Romantic Runner-Up: Harvey Kinkel in later seasons, But in the end he got the girl.
• Running Gag: In the first season, Sabrina's notes never went beyond 'Mitosis is...' in several episodes. She finally managed to get the definition out in the season finale.
• Salem Is Witch Country: "The Crucible": During a class trip to Salem the town, the kids engage in witch trials, which lead to Jenny and Sabrina getting accused. Jenny maintains her innocence while Sabrina confesses. Libby is leading the angry mob to spite the girls and says they must be punished. After Jenny is convicted and Sabrina is exonerated, the program directors point out that this is for show and they aren't going to do anything to Jenny. They say just pretend she was hanged. Libby keeps annoying them, saying at least put Jenny in the stocks. Sabrina then uses real curses to get Libby to admit she committed perjury, with Libby saying there's a monkey around her neck that no one can see, and the directors put her in the stocks until the bus comes for her crime.
• Sarcastic Confession: From "The Halloween Scene":
  Hilda: Why are you in such a hurry for us to leave?
  Sabrina: Oh, well, the sooner you leave then the sooner I can throw that wild crazy party I've been planning in secret.
• Saw a Woman in Half: Cousin Mortimer saws Hilda in half. Things go awry when Hilda's legs run off.
• School Clubs Are Serious Business: Especially in the episode Geek Like Me.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Played straight or subverted depending on whatever is funnier at the time. Sabrina herself keeps running afoul of a surprisingly large number of laws governing witch behaviour that are as byzantine as they are draconian, but most other witches seem to be able to do whatever they want to whomever they want as long as a stronger witch doesn't oppose them.
• Sealed with a Kiss
• Secret Chaser: Notably absent, much to the surprise of all. Until Brad showed up.
  • Libby played this role for an episode. (Sabrina was allowed to tell one friend she was a witch and chose Valerie, who told Harvey. One of them later inadvertently mentioned it in front of Libby.)
• Secret-Keeper: Harvey Kinkel in later seasons.
• Seen It All: Sabrina's reaction every time she comes home to find her aunts engaging in more wacky antics. Lampshaded in "Disneyworld":
  Sabrina: And he is?
  Hilda: A two-million-year-old fossil that Zelda found, brought to life, and evolved so he can speak.
  Sabrina: Okay, I can't remember what it feels like to be astonished.
• Self-Deprecation: Sort of occurs in the season 4 episode Jealousy. (In the form of the character insulting the actor who plays him):
  Sabrina: Why are you so anxious to talk on the phone anyway?
  Salem: I need to call into Nick Bakay's sports show on ESPN radio. All he ever talks about is the Buffalo Bills and his voice...lord is it annoying.
• Shaming the Mob: This trope is examined in "The Crucible":
  • Subverted when Sabrina defends Jenny and calls out Libby for her Insane Troll Logic, and she tells the group that there's no shame in being a witch. The crowd refuses to be persuaded despite Sabrina's passionate speech.
  • Played straight when the program director tells them no one was a witch; all their cards said townspeople. She says that the class gave in to mob psychology, as the Puritans did before them. Everyone goes on the bus with a Jerkass Realization and Sabrina vindicated.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults: Melissa Joan Hart is 5'2" making Sabrina much shorter than both of her aunts.
• Shout-Out:
  • This show continues the tradition begun with the comic series and perpetuated by Bewitched of giving most female witches a name ending in the letter "a"—Sabrina, Hilda, Zelda, Vesta, Lydia, Amanda, Sophia...
  • At least a couple jokes and references to Mystery Science Theater 3000, possibly because one of the producers is Frank Conniff, who might be better known as "TV's Frank" of MST3K.
  • The first episode to feature Dreama is called "Dream A Little Dreama Me", which is reference to an old love song.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • When Morgan catches Sabrina's Evil Twin kissing Josh, she says she'll forgive her for that - but it'll take a while to forgive what was said about her outfit.
  • Morgan again when movie star Babette Storm frames Sabrina for shoplifting; she worries about what would happen if Babette knew they were friends and decided not to wear Morgan's clothes.
  Sabrina: I'm so sorry, Morgan. I was only thinking of myself!.
• Snarky Nonhuman Sidekick: Salem.
• Sorcerer's Apprentice Plot: Pretty much a lot of the episodes in the earlier seasons used this kind of plot. Sabrina would use or borrow a spell from her aunts to fix a problem in high school, only for the spell to backfire and cause even more problems, and she (with the help of her aunts) have to reverse the spell. Sometimes the episodes would usually end with the aunts punishing Sabrina for it.
• Space Whale Aesop: Parodied in "Sabrina and the Beanstalk" - don't slam doors or you'll wake the wicked witch!
• Special Effects Evolution: Beginning with "My Nightmare, The Car", the Salem puppet is provided by Chiodo Bros Productions. The change from the previous puppet makers Animal Makers is subtle at first, with Season 3 being where they become most noticeable. Specifically, the puppet becomes more rounded and more animated compared to the original.
• Spell Book: Sabrina has a big spellbook, though it doesn't tend to do her all that much good as she often lacks the experience to cast its spells properly. It also functions as a supernatural Great Big Book of Everything.
• Spiritual Successor: To shows like Bewitched.
• Spoiled Brat: This, plus magic powers is a bad combination in Amanda's case.
  • Check that-bad combo in general. In one episode when Sabrina turns into a Spoiled Brat herself, she starts turning into a pile of slime not dissimilar to a months-old peach.
• St. Patrick's Day Episode: "Salem, the Boy" happens on St. Patrick's Day and involves Sabrina allowing Salem to inhabit the body of a classmate, but things get out of hand when the feline once again attempts to take over the world.
• Stacy's Mom: Aunt Zelda is a very beautiful older woman (as is Aunt Vesta, played by Raquel Welsh), the show explicitly parodying the film The Graduate when Sabrina's college friend Miles Goodman becomes attracted to her in season 6.
• Stanford Prison Experiment: One episode had her class simulate the Salem Witch Trials and, of course, Sabrina ends up getting persecuted by her classmates, led by the Alpha Bitch.
• Stock Punishment: In the Field Trip episode, at the end of the episode Libby ends up in the stock, but does not get things thrown at her.
• Storm in a Teacup: Salem the cat accidentally breaks a special mirror. He spends the episode meticulously putting it back together, finally succeeding and dragging it back up to the attic at the end... and someone else breaks it while he's dragging it up the stairs. And then it turns out that they had another mirror just like it and don't care about it being broken.
• Stuck in the Doorway:
  • In the episode "Pancake Madness", Sabrina becomes extremely fat from eating a ton of pancakes (due to a family addiction) and gets wedged in her front door trying to get inside.
  • Another episode has Salem get stuck in a pet door after he's been overeating.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Valerie (replacing Jenny) and later Dreama (replacing Valerie) and Brad (replacing Libby). The first is often regarded as an improvement by some fans. The other two not so much...
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: It is a sitcom about a teenage witch (and her witch family and talking cat) that lives in a normal New England suburb that has to uphold the Masquerade, after all.
• Talking Animal: Salem. This appears to be punishment for witches who break the law, as he later encounters a witch called Juliet who was turned into a cat for trying to take over the universe, and claims at one point to be talking to a camel who used to be an Amway salesman on a chatroom. Sabrina Down Under has another called Hilary, and Sabrina Goes to Rome has a guinea pig called Stonehenge.
• Temporary Bulk Change: A favorite trope of this show:
  • In "Sabrina and the Beanstalk", Harvey eats some magical jelly beans and is swept up a beanstalk, where he meets a fairy tale Wicked Witch. She feeds him large amounts of food covered in sprinkles called "Fatten Up"; the combination makes him obese.
  • In "Pancake Madness", the Spellman family turns out to have an addiction to pancakes. When Sabrina loses control at school, she comes home so big that she can't even fit through the front door.
  • In "Oh What a Tangled Spell She Weaves", Sabrina tries to help Harvey become a football star by casting a spell on him; it makes him grow huge muscles.
• Terrible Trio: Libby and her two friends.
• Tickle Torture: Zelda, Hilda and Willard are subjected to this when they're framed by Sabrina's pen pal. Willard is passed out by the time we see him(either from laughing or fainting) but Zelda and Hilda are made of sterner stuff.
  • Not exactly torture per se but one episode has the very ticklish Sabrina with a witch pager set to vibrate while she's in a study group. Hilarity Ensues.
• Unplanned Staycation: "Sabrina Nipping At Your Nose" ends with a blizzard cancelling her family's flight to Jamaica, so Aunt Zelda conjures up a tropical festival inside their own house.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Sabrina and Josh.
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Amanda chanted "I won! I won!" whenever she won some board game or card game.
• Useless Superpowers
• Vacation Episode:
  • Season 2 has one where Sabrina and her class go to Disneyland - because Sabrina needs some of the plants that grow there for a quiz.
  • Season 3's finale takes place at a family reunion in Hawaii.
  • Season 4 has a different spin on this trope, where the plot is about them going on a ski trip and struggling to get there.
  • Season 7 has two - where the Christmas Episode takes place at a resort in Miami, and the penultimate episode is the girls going on a cruise for Sabrina's bachelorette party.
• Valley Girl: Morgan, though done with a twist. She's not as dumb as some examples and she's red haired. She gets Flanderised into a straighter example by season 7.
• Victimized Bystander
• Videogame Adaptation: There were a number of Sabrina the Teenage Witch video games that tied in with the show.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch was a PC game that focused on Sabrina miscasting a spell and ending up turned into an inanimate object (or a fish)and needing the player to find four ingredients to reverse the spell in time for a date with Harvey.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch: Brat Attack, also on PC focused on Sabrina trying to get the Beanie of Ultimate Power away from her bratty cousin Amanda after it was delivered to the Spellman house by mistake and Salem took off with it.
  • Sabrina the Teenage Witch: A Twitch in Time for Playstation focused on Salem accidently freeing a being named Chaos from the Cosmic Clock and Sabrina having to find all the broken pieces to trap him again.
• Waiting Skeleton: In the episode "Quiz Show", Zelda recalls how she was a teacher once, but became so fed up by the students constantly asking questions that she fled the classroom, leaving them behind. She wonders what became of them. The scene then cuts to said classroom, where only two (now very old) students are still alive and waiting while the others have turned into skeletons and are covered in cobwebs.
• "Walk on the Wild Side" Episode: Zelda temporarily moves in with Sabrina and her college roommates and decides to become a "hang-loose gal" which involves eating the entire contents of the fridge, spending all night at a rave, driving around in a van with a guy named Vick and trying to get a tattoo. In this case it's resolved by Zelda's subconscious stopping her from doing something untrue to herself.
• Wham Line: In the season 4 finale "The End of an Era". Harvey asks Sabrina this question:
  Harvey: ''Sabrina, can we talk about the fact that...you're a witch?"
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • In the first season, there were recurring characters, like Libby's posse of Jill and Ceecee, Principal LaRue and a girl named Emily that vanish, never to be seen or mentioned again.
  • Dreama's storyline applies. Dreama getting her witch's license was very relevant in early season 4, however, we never learn if Dreama earned it or not, and she doesn't even appear for several of the last episodes of season 4, never to be mentioned or referenced again.
  • In Dante's Inferno Zelda gets a date with a charming man named Ron. Unfortunately, Hilda is suffering from Punitis and when she describes him as a "real dear" Ron is instantly turned into a literal deer. Zelda proceeds to go on a date with him anyway. But what happened to Ron after that? Did they later change him back into a man? Or is the Punitis spell permanent? Either way Ron's fate is never revealed.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Harvey found out that Sabrina was a witch, he called Sabrina out on her using magic to mess with his life for years.
• What You Are in the Dark:
  • In "Sweet Charity", Libby starts kissing up to Sabrina's adopted grandmother Nanna because the latter "knows" so many celebrities. Turns out, according to Sabrina, Nanna's actually suffering from dementia and doesn't really know these people. Furious at Nanna's "lies", Libby goes to confront the innocent old lady on her 'tall tales'. When she arrives at the nursing home, she doesn't hesitate to call Nanna a "sad pathetic old woman". ...Thankfully, that wasn't Nanna: that was Sabrina who disguised herself with magic.
  • Sabrina, on the other hand, decides to spare Nanna the cold truth about Libby and tells the sweet old woman that Libby's gone to spend time with her own grandmother.
• Who Even Needs a Brain?: In "Deliver Us From Email" Sabrina gets hit by a stupidity virus that literally leaves her brainless.
• Wicked Witch: One episode has Sabrina encounter a wicked witch— who is said to be the Wicked Witch.
  Zelda: She feasts on mortals.
  Sabrina: That's horrible!
  Hilda: Hence the 'wicked' part of Wicked Witch.
• Witch Hunt: In a Field Trip episode.
• A Wizard Did It: Or rather a witch. A rare justification for this trope.
• The World Is Not Ready: Various episodes show that mortals can't handle the idea of witches existing. From recreating the Slaem witch trials to showing that most mortals freak out on the realization, Sabrina is resigned to keeping her life a secret from most of her loved ones.
• World's Smallest Violin: Principal Kraft, under a spell, mouths off to Libby:
  Kraft: Aww, here's the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song just for you!
• Wrong Genre Savvy: When defending Sabrina during a mock witch trial, Harvey points out that in stories, witches are ugly with warts and melt when they encounter water. He splashes Sabrina to prove his point. Sabrina wipes her face, appreciating the sentiment but knowing how wrong he is.
• Wrong-Name Outburst: This happens twice in the episode "Spellmanian Slip", with Sabrina blurting out the wrong guy's name instead of the name of the guy who's engaged with her. The first time it happens is Played for Drama, as it causes Sabrina to use magical means to delve deeper inside her subconscience to find out why this happened in the first place (and because the guy is someone Sabrina has only recently broken up and is currently Amicable Exes with), while the second time is Played for Laughs because the guy in question was an Unlucky Childhood Friend whom Sabrina no longer harbors romantic feelings to at all.

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