Trivia : Buffy the Vampire slayer

Early in its development, the series was going to be simply titled "Slayer".

Series star Sarah Michelle Gellar initially auditioned for the role of Cordelia Chase, and Charisma Carpenter, who plays Cordelia, auditioned for the role of Buffy.

Others who auditioned for Buffy and got other roles include Julie Benz (Darla)

Elizabeth Anne Allen (Amy Madison),

Julia Lee (Anne)and Mercedes McNab (Harmony Kendall).
Other actresses considered for the lead role as Buffy also included Katie Holmes

and Selma Blair



Bianca Lawson, who played Kendra the Vampire Slayer in season 2, originally auditioned for the role of Cordelia.



Nathan Fillion (Caleb) originally auditioned for the role of Angel when the show was first being cast in late 1996.


Danny Strong (Jonathan) originally auditioned for the role of Xander.

Ryan Reynolds was originally offered the role of Xander.

Seth Green played Oz, the werewolf boyfriend of Alyson Hannigan. He also played her boyfriend in My Stepmother Is an Alien.



Originally, Joss Whedon didn't want either of Buffy's parents to appear as characters on the show. Accepting that that could get complicated, he settled on just having her mother, Joyce, appear. Joyce ended up staying on the show for five seasons.



Originally, the third member of the sixth season's nerdly Trio was to be Tucker, who appeared in the third season as a student who wanted to kill everyone at the prom. Plans fell through with that, so the writers replaced him with Andrew, Tucker's younger brother.
Many of Andrew Wells's (Tom Lenk) lines include references to the online fan community (the male slayer discussion, his inability to understand Dawn and Buffy's link).
Tom Lenk originally appeared in the 5th season's Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Real Me as Harmony's minion, Cyrus.



Joss Whedon supplies the voice of the Mutant Enemy mascot which says "Grrr ... Arrgh" heard at the end of almost every episode.
"Mutant Enemy", Joss Whedon's production company, was the name he gave to his first typewriter when he was 15. The logo was created in 20 minutes when he was told he had to have one.

Series Creator Joss Whedon has said that the idea for Buffy came from all the horror movies he had seen featuring a helpless young blonde who would almost always be the first to die. He felt she needed a better image.



The character Jenny Calendar was originally to have been called Nicki. This was changed to Jenny to avoid confusion on the set, Nicholas Brendon being generally called Nicky by his co-stars.


The Summers' Sunnydale address is 1630 Revello Drive.


The entire first season was filmed before the first episode went to air, giving them the opportunity to go back and re-shoot various scenes. The scene in the library where Buffy states "it's my first day..." was actually filmed on the last day of shooting after they decided her original performance was too forceful and aggressive. (The library is stocked with all real books.)
Another scene added to the pilot (to fill in time as it was shorter than expected) was the infamous "you have something in your eye" scene where The Master blinds a vampire who had failed him.

The first Sunnydale High School set is the same set used in Beverly Hills 90210 as West Beverly Hills High.



Joss Whedon gave the character Riley the last name "Finn" after hearing executive producer Marti Noxon talking about taking her dog, Finn, to the vet.


Kali Rocha, who showed up in the sixth season as vengeance demon Halfreck, first appeared in a flashback episode in the fifth season as Cecily, the woman who spurned William, causing him to become the vampire known as Spike. Having already cast Rocha as Halfreck, the writers knew the loyal fans would immediately recognize her, so as an inside joke between them, when Halfreck first saw Spike, she said, "William?"



The character of Dawn was originally intended to have the power to speak to the dead. She was also supposed to be able to move objects with her mind. These powers were later dropped.

After the series ended, Eliza Dushku was offered her own spin-off series as the character Faith. But then she turned it down to do Tru Calling.


Buffy, Xander and Willow each have at least one episode where their character is doubled. There are 2 Willows (regular Willow and Vamp Willow)
Buffy appears alongside the Buffy-Bot in several episodes

and Xander is split into 2 Xanders in The Replacement.

In the case of Buffy and Willow, this was accomplished with stunt doubles and optical effects. For Xander's doubling, Nicholas Brendon's identical twin brother Kelly Donovan played the Xander double.

The character of Angel was supposed to stay dead after the season finale of the second season, but the WB network came to Joss Whedon with the desire for a spin off series, so Angel was brought back during the third season to set up his spin-off series.



Spike's trademark coat cost $2000 from a top fashion store. It was then run over repeatedly by a truck to give it that distressed look.


The headstones in Sunnydale Cemetery are actually made out of Styrofoam.


There are 43 churches in the town of Sunnydale (something to do with it being located on the Hellmouth).



It costs $5000 to "dust" a vamp using computer graphics.



Nicholas Brendon was told by producers to stop working out, because they didn't want Xander "looking too buffed."



Originally another actress had been cast as Anya, but backed out after finding out it was only for two guest spots. The role wound up going to Emma Caulfield, and, starting toward the end of the third season, Anya became a regular character throughout the rest of the show's run.


Joss Whedon toyed with the idea of making Xander gay instead of Willow.



The Oz-Veruca storyline in season four was supposed to last longer, but had to be cut short when Seth Green left the series.



During Angel and Buffy's first lovemaking scene, Joss Whedon and sound editor Cindy Rabideau provided the heavy breathing, because they were too embarrassed to ask Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz to do it.





According to Nicholas Brendon, he and Sarah Michelle Gellar proposed a storyline for season seven where Xander and Buffy get together romantically. Their idea was shot down, and they continued with the Buffy-Spike relationship.


The even numbered seasons (2, 4, and 6) each feature a Halloween episode ; Halloween,

Fear Itself,

and All the Way
while the odd numbered seasons do not.

Anthony Head tutored James Marsters in his London accent for Spike. In reality, Head's accent is more like Spike's than the clipped English tones that he sports in the show.

James Marsters originally auditioned for Spike with a Texan accent. This was quickly jettisoned in favor of a London accent instead.

Oz was originally supposed to wear thick rimmed glasses, much like the lead singer of Weezer. This was dropped at the last minute as Joss Whedon felt that it looked tacky.


Series creator Joss Whedon wanted to do a musical episode as early as the first season, but the network wouldn't allow him to. When the show switched networks after the fifth season, he was finally able to get his wish, resulting in the episode Once More, with Feeling.


There are just eight episodes in which no vampire appears. The episodes in which there's no vampire are "Witch",

"The Pack",

"I, Robot... You, Jane",

"The Puppet Show",

"Inca Mummy Girl",

"Living Condition",

"Fear, Itself"

and "Beer Bad".



According to visual effects supervisor Loni Peristere, an average episode has 18 to 50 visual effects shots, about 10 percent of the total number of shots. The two most common are vampires morphing into game-face

and vampires being dusted.

For those, the effects team uses Maya V.4.5 with Stroika, a collection of plug-ins/software, which lets the artists take image maps or photographs and emit particles of the same color and lighting.

Coincidentally, the actresses who played the characters Harmony

and Darla,

the main blond female vampires, are named Mercedes McNab and Julie Benz.

Apart from the first and last seasons, there is always a "Buffy's birthday" episode, always with bad events: Surprise in the second one,

Helpless in the third,

A New Man in the fourth,

Blood Ties in the fifth

Older and Far Away in the sixth one.

In this last episode, Spike suggests Buffy to not celebrate her birthday anymore, and in next season there's not a Buffy's birthday episode.


During an interview on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," Joss Whedon told interviewer David F. Bianculli that during the first few years Buffy was on the air, he used to frequent internet message boards about the show. On one such board, there was a discussion of what the posters perceived as sexual tension between the characters Buffy and Faith. Whedon posted that he disagreed, that he thought some viewers saw "lesbian subtext behind every corner" and that they just wanted "to see girls kiss." One poster asked Whedon to look at her website, where she had analyzed multiple Faith episodes and systematically laid out the subtext between the two slayers; after that, Whedon returned to the original posting board and apologized, saying that the original posters were absolutely correct about the lesbian subtext between Faith and Buffy.


With the exception of the unaired pilot. Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan were the only two to appear in all 144 episodes.


David Fury said in some DVD commentaries that Sarah Michelle Gellar doesn't like to act laughing because she found herself too fake. To tease her, Fury wrote scenes where Buffy laughed whenever he could.


In total, eighteen characters appeared in both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel:
Buffy Summers,

Angel,

Willow Rosenberg,

Cordelia Chase, Oz,

Spike,

Wesley Wyndham-Pryce,

Darla,

Drusilla,

Faith Lehane,

The Master,

Andrew Wells,

Harmony Kendall,

Collins, Jeff Ricketts (Weatherby), Kevin Owers (Smith), Julia Lee (Chanterelle / Lily / Anne Steele) and Zitto Kazann (Gypsy Man).

Spoilers
The trivia items below may give away important plot points.

The characters of Spike, Oz, Faith, Wesley and Drusilla were all supposed to be killed off, but have ended up living long past their initial storylines. Also, the characters of Jenny
and Joyce were supposed to be killed off sooner than they were.

Many actors were able to reappear on the show, despite the fact that their characters were killed off. Among those who reprised their roles, once their characters were killed or murdered, were Mark Metcalf as The Master, Robia LaMorte who appeared several times after the character of Jenny was killed, Cassie Newton, Jonathan, Maggie Walsh and Joyce.

Darla, played by Julie Benz, was killed during the first season, yet not only did the character appear in flashbacks, but she was also later resurrected from death on the sister-show Angel.


Almost all of the main characters have been demons at one point in the show in Nightmares;

Xander was a vampire in The Wish

along with Willow whose vampire self also appeared in Doppelgangland. Angel and Spike have always been vampires. Cordelia becomes a demon in "Angel", the Series. Oz is a werewolf.

Anya was a demon when she first appeared on the show
and Giles turned into a demon in season 4.

Riley, Tara and Dawn are the only main characters who were never demons, although Dawn used to be some sort of mystical Key-thingy up until season 5 and Tara's family had her convinced she was one until Family.